Allowing comments on your website can be both an advantage or disadvantage, depending on what your website is intended for. There are many points of view as to whether comments are of benefit to a website.
I am writing this post based entirely on my experience of both receiving comments on my website and leaving comments on other people’s websites.
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A First Experience of Comments on a Website
The first experience with receiving comments on my website was rather overwhelming. The site was quite new and as I was new to internet marketing, it was completely trial and error. Error being the predominant word!
Did I not receive comments you may be asking? Wow, did I receive comments. Yes I received them not by the dozen, but by the hundreds. I had no idea of how I could have become so popular in such a short space of time. However, I was well aware that there was something wrong with most of the comments received.
In fact, they were probably all spam. There were a few that could be taken for real, but looking back, it is more than likely that the total number of comments were ‘genuine spam’.
How green I was! I had little knowledge about building a website, or internet marketing, and I was very trusting in those days.
Also, my knowledge of how to remedy this spam was nil. The only thing that I had going for me was my passion for my website which was, and still is, about dog training.
Eventually I learned about spam and robots that distribute unwanted content in form of comments. That was when, not only did I delete all the comments but, I no longer allowed comments on my site.
So this brings me into the present and my advice on allowing comments on your website.
If your site is a Blog, then my opinion is to allow people to comment on your posts.
Your visitors have spent their time reading your content and allowing them to leave their comments is a courteous way of acknowledging them. When visitors to your blog enjoy the experience they are very likely to return. They may also share your content in social media which is a great way to bring more traffic to your site.
Also, the comments that your visitors leave will often give you inspiration that will help you to develop your blog in a direction that perhaps you hadn’t thought of, and that direction may prove to be one of advantage. Great ideas have developed from of interaction with others.
Responding to Comments
Answering comments left on your blog needs to be done in a timely manner. In spite of the fact that you have many tasks to deal with in your business, importance needs to be placed on responding daily to comments.
I personally have found it disheartening that questions I have left on a blogs have not been acknowledged. Consequently, I do not return to those blogs. There are more important things to deal with than waste time on a blog run by an uncaring blogger.
On the other hand, I frequently revisit blogs where commenting is appreciated and responses are given and warmly received.
That is just a word of warning. Value your visitors and their comments. They are looking to you for advice or inspiration and they will return if you respect them.
Allowing Comments on Your Website
If you have website that is designed to promote a service or training, then allowing comments is not likely to be of advantage.
On the other hand, if your website includes a blog, then allowing comments is the sensible thing to do.
Protecting your blog from Spam
As I mentioned earlier about receiving spam in abundance, I had no idea that a plugin would eliminate the problem. Spam no longer is something I need to deal with as the plugin I use has solved the problem.
There are many plugins that will stop spam and the one I use is WP-SpamShield.
Thank you for reading this post.
I would love to know your opinion about comments on your website.
Please leave your comments, or questions, in the space provided below.