These days I’m not as lenient with comments on my Wordpress sites as I used to be. Letting junk comments flood your pages with text that is useless to anyone but the author (such as “great job with this post”) takes away from comments that are engaging and helpful later down the page.
Of course, if you are a blog owner I assume you’re already dealing with comments that you know had to be hand written. Since there are so many options for comment spam protection: 5 Spam Blocking Posts
Footer Importance - Even though we tend to not put a lot of weight in what is in our footer, I would wager that the most basic of links you have down there are more important than someone’s praise to take up another 200 pixels of scrollable height on a post.
Proper Channels - If you like the post, use the contact form so it doesn’t look like you’re spamming your website URL. Also include more than “great post”. Google analytics can easily tell us what posts are “great” based on traffic. If its worth posting a comment, its worth emailing us with the exact reason of why it was so great. What did you do with the information? What were your results if it was a test or tutorial for something? This information WILL help the author. More often than not I will do follow up posts once I’ve accumulated responses and include your name& url in that! Not everyone does this and it might not happen for every posts. But if your results are unique, and if you summarize your own posts about them, I would link to that too! Also, I notice emails and respond to them with more weight more often than comments. Especially when its personal feedback.
What Is A Good Comment?
A good comment is:
- Coherent and thought out - Reread what you write before posting. I’m not great with grammar and spelling at times but if its horrendous, its going to rub off in a bad way on you. No matter how much of an expert you are at what you do.
- Spell check! (Firefox has built in functionality for this, no excuses). More info here: Firefox Spellchecker
- Is at least two sentences - Not that once sentence cant provide quality, but on average I find it to be rare that it does.
- Adds value to the initial posts by responding with your own results, adding to the post, or correcting/clarifying a part of the article.
- Asks a question about the post that is not so basic that you cant EASILY find it in Google. If you can, Google it, and use that as your comment! Coming to the table without any basic research at all can often make you look like a fool. That can reflect on your own blog if you leave a website URL with your comment.
Following these practices could open unforeseen doors when used on the right websites. The effort is greater but so is the prize. To many, that is a better wager than a limited and predictable outcome which will more than likely end with your comment being marked as spam and deleted. Which means zero price and an effect that lasts onto other blogs if they’re using something like Akismet.










































