If you've spent any amount of time reading up on content creation, you've most likely seen a post or two with a similar title to this one. In my experience, these articles are typically littered with buzz-phrases such as "have a call to action" or "write compelling content" and consist of 30+ overlapping ways to do either of those things. While asking your readers to comment and creating comment-worthy content are certainly important concepts to understand, I'm going to assume you're already on-board and looking for something a bit more actionable.
Why are comments important?
The benefits of user generated content are obvious to most. Not only are you generating additional unique, (hopefully) on-topic content for your pages, comments may even contribute to your article's freshness score. While it's debatable whether the number of comments on a page is directly correlated with higher rankings, we all understand the value of having more fresh, relevant content on a page to say nothing of user engagement and community building.
No matter how in-depth your keyword research is, you'll never be able to naturally incorporate every iteration of a key phrase onto your landing page - and you wouldn't want to anyhow. With user generated comments, you're able to get some of those alternate queries (long-tail or otherwise) without having to shoehorn them into your on-page copy. Let me give you an example of this in action:
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The highlighted text isn't actual copy from the page itself. It's from one of the comments towards the bottom of the page. Google has determined that this page is relevant to the query in part because of a comment that includes text that the webmaster hadn't even thought to include on the page. Would the page have ranked without the comment? Possibly. But to me, an example like this shows that Google clearly uses comments to help determine page relevance. In a competitive space where most competing pages look startlingly similar, you're going to need any edge you can get.
I'm sure you've all had the experience of landing on an article after searching for something only to "ctrl + F" your way to the comments section to find your answer. Content from users can provide real value, and this article will arm you with tips to help increase your user comments.
Actionables
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Okay, so maybe you didn't need much convincing as to the importance of user generated content. You're here because you want to read something you haven't read before about getting users to comment on your posts. Over the last 10 years, I've founded several fan community pages covering such nerd-tastic staples as Magic the Gathering, Nintendo, and Game of Thrones (yes, ladies, I am that cool). While building these communities, I've picked up a few tricks for attracting article comments that I thought I'd share with the Moz community.
1. Make it as easy as possible to leave a comment
Does "website" really need to be a required field? Are your CAPTCHA images harder to solve than a Rubik's cube? Sometimes the effort it would take to comment on your blog outweighs the potential user benefits. Take a look at each field and ask yourself "is this a hoop I'd be willing to jump through to leave a comment on a blog I've never visited before?" Most users are wary about giving out an email address, so assure them that their data won't be used for anything other than unique identification or just let them login using Twitter of Facebook (more on that below). In the end, you should be mostly concerned with their username, email address (to distinguish their comments from others, gravatars etc), and the comment itself. Anything else is a barrier to entry that should be scrutinized and broken down wherever possible.
2. Comment placement
So many widgets, so little real estate. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that the end of a blog post is the hottest piece of property on the net these days. After you've pumped your full author bio, social buttons, "other articles you might like," opinion disclaimer, and multiple ad units, the comment section often ends up an entire page screen below the actual content. I know, I know, it's tough to demote any of these widgets because of course ad placement is important; of course, "related content" and extra pageviews are important, but if you're truly serious about getting the conversation going on your article, then you should consider giving the comment section a more prominent position on the page.
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At the very least, give users an anchor jump at the end of the article that reads "Leave a Comment" or "Join the Conversation" and bumps them down to the appropriate level.
3. Social logins
If for whatever reason you simply must require users register for commenting (a rather large barrier to entry) consider allowing them to log in using the social media accounts they're already using. If you're running Wordpress, this can be done by installing one or two plugins of your choice. Simple Facebook Connect will get the job done and the Twitter version will do the same. If you're looking for a more comprehensive solution (all social networks), try Social Login. Social logins on custom CMS' obviously vary and can be achieved using OAuth and following the developer instructions from Facebook and Twitter. There's also the all inclusive Disqus comment system that you've probably already seen in use on many blogs.
Not only does this offer users a 1-click login option for commenting and other community activities around your site; this option also gives your users an automatic avatar and social identity. Comments coming from a person with a traceable identity are almost surely of higher quality than those coming from completely anonymous users. And hey, once they're logged in with Twitter or Facebook, it stands to reason that the chances of someone sharing your page on one of those networks increases considerably.
4. Profiles, Awards, and Rankings
You've probably used (or been used by) a piece of ego bait in a link building campaign and the same principles of human nature apply to community building. In-depth profiles, award systems, and commenter rankings are great ways to encourage your contributors to keep coming back for more. .jpg)
A simple database comment count for each individual is all that is required for deployment. Attach fun titles such as "Youngling," "Aspirant," or "Padawan" to these values and you'll not only please current commenters, but you'll also give readers a way to gauge that person's standing within the community.
Grab the Top Contributors plugin for Wordpress and show your top commenters some love. You could also display "X-Year Club" awards on user profiles or a "She's Over 9000aaaand!" badge for your most ambitious contributors. Anything you can do to give your loyal commenters a feeling of community and importance will encourage more comments.
5. Join the conversation
This one's a no-brainer. Respond to comments on your articles. You took the time to write the piece, so get in there and stand by it! Keep the conversation rolling with questions of your own and address things you may have glossed over in your initial publishing.
Try highlighting author comments so that they stand out a bit. This immediately communicates to readers that the author is paying attention and will most likely respond to their comment if they take the time to write one. The reality is that articles with comments get more comments. Articles without comments have trouble getting initial comments. The difference between 0 comments and a handful can mean everything. Who wants to be the first person to comment on a post? Each new user post offers an entry point for new lines of discussion. Help get the chain reaction going by helping the initial conversation to get started.
6. Email notification on reply
With great power comes great responsibility. If a loyal reader has given you their email address and contributes to your site on a regular basis, the last thing you want to do is lose their trust. You've got their email address but no one wants a "quarterly site update" or "Jan 1st Happy Birthday" email from every website they've ever commented on, right? But what most people would probably be okay with is a notification that their thoughtful comment has just received an equally thoughtful reply thus giving them the chance to respond.
Try Comment Reply Notification for Wordpress if you're looking to add this feature to your blog. You can choose to alert everyone on the thread whenever anyone replies or limit it to personal replies. You could also allow users to choose for themselves with a simple checkbox as they reply. Disqus also offers this feature.
7. Tracking your progress
For many blogs it will be obvious when the influx of new commenters come in, but on larger sites it might be more difficult to track your progress. One simple and universal way to track your progress is to set up a Google Analytics goal associated with a new comment. Here are some instructions on how to do this. You can also easily set up GA event tracking any number of ways using the Raven GA config tool.
Have you found other effective methods of attracting commenters? Try some of the above and leave a comment below!
Oh, and don't forget to "create compelling content" and "have a call to action."
Great tips! I admit, when I first saw the title I originally thought it was going to be another post about "remember to ask questions at the end to get people to comment!" This offered a ton of great advice, ty.
AND OMG Yes, please listen to this, webmasters:
Does "website" really need to be a required field? Are your CAPTCHA images harder to solve than a Rubik's cube? Sometimes the effort it would take to comment on your blog outweighs the potential user benefits.
Can't count how many times I tried to leave a comment and completely gave up.
Uh oh. SEOmoz isnt following their own advice. When I went to leave a comment there was no way to login w/ Twitter/FB. I had to create an entire account to leave this comment..... a barrier to entry.
At any rate, one thing I find that also entices people to leave comments is to have an optional field for them to put their website url. That url is shown publically. That entices industry experts to want to leave comments as they try to build their presence and gain SEO brownie points.
Just a quick note that this is a guest post from a Distilled team member and that SEOmoz may have other reasons for having us create accounts to comment :).
Haha, well I can't speak for Moz but once you reach a certain level of user activity you can stand to put a few barriers up. The rest of us on the other hand...
Now that you have an account, you can do a lot more than just comment on the posts.. Take some time and check out the resources that are now available to you. There is some pretty cool stuff.
I have to say I don't agree about having the option to add a url. Not only is it an additional barrier (who said I have a website?), it isn't beneficial to the hosting site. Most comments you'll get through this tactic are straight-up spammers who send bots to put false, unrelated comments just so they can steal link juice.
Great Post! Thanks for the WP plugin suggestions, by the time I finished reading the post I had already added most of them to my blogs.
Hi,
Great advice, i am agree with all your points that you have described over here how to attract potential commenter. CAPTCHA plays vital role in distracting cementers so it is one of the strongest point. I think we should avoid it.
If Google is going to pull snippets of comments into the SERPs then it's imperative that you monitor them. I know it can be a hassle to sift through the 100 spam comments for the good ones, but it's important you keep tabs on what people are saying on your blog. You don't want to limit conversation but knowing what is being said and in what context is really important.
I was going to get into spam prevention with another 300 words but I think that could be another article entirely.
With Wordpress you shouldn't have too much of a problem if you use Akismet and/or another spam prevention plugin. On other platforms I know it's next to impossible to keep the bots out without putting up barriers.
Just be smart about it. Make sure your captcha is easy enough without being crackable. Ask a simple "human or not" question to verify a comment. Either way I don't think disabling comments entirely (a recommendation I've unfortunately seen countless times on webmaster blogs) is the right answer.
Is it tough to deal with spam particularly on large sites? Yes. But the benefits of figuring out a way to make it work are worth it to me.
Do a quick google search for "how to stop comment spam" and arm yourself with some tools that make sense for your setup. There are many options beyond hand sifting through 1000s of entries a month.
Good luck out there!
I believe you are 100% right. But Akismet can get expensive. How about using Facebook comments or other third party providers such as disqus. You will still get your rouge Facebook account spamming every now and then, but at least it's a barrier that humans don't have to overcome.
Hi Jacob, solid post. I think the most difficult one for businesses is "joining the conversation". A lot of times businesses can do everything else, but it really takes commitment to maintain a continued conversation with readers.
Consistency...just like any campaign, conversation marketing demands consistent effort on joining topics and issues while they are hot :)
Great post Jacob
Hey George,
It's true, you can't respond to everything but certainly come back to your posts once in a while and throw a comment into the mix! One author comment is infinitely better than none.
Hi Jacob, very true. It definitely shows more involvement than none and many people will think again before commenting if they feel like their comments are never read and that their time could be better used somewhere else.
Has anyone else seen the 'comments' link on a blogs home page were all the articles are listed? Usually followed by the amount of comments that have been made on the article.
I think that's a pretty good idea, as it gives readers an idea as to whether or not they have the opportunity to start a new discussion or simply add to it. :)
Some really great tips here. Thanks for the post!
Thanks Jacob for this useful post that has enligtened me not only on how to get comments on my articles on my Great Home Business Ideas but also on the importance of comments in improving my content rankings in search engines.
Very well and illustrated post. Of course getting comment on a post definitely proves the attention has been drawn and therefore it receives comment and readers attention. The post should be well written and informative so that it deserves to be commented on.
Great article! I liked the idea of highlighting the author's comments.
Good post. I only confuse about putting so many social buttons or just satisfy with facebook, google+ and twitter... suresh.... https://myinvestmentideas.com
Very well said Jacob. Thanks for this useful reminders and advice. It's true that if you will post an article you should make sure that other people in the community could easily respond to it to make it worthy. Great post!
Excellent post! I noticed a couple people in the comments had mentioned Disqus as a commenting platform. That's what I use on my blog and I love it!
The new Disqus has made their commenting platform almost identical to how Reddit does theirs. Readers are able to upvote and downvote comments. This allows readers to have a more enriching experience on your blog. I have actually written a blog post about what is new with Disqus!
Also, do you think that with Disqus new paid discover, geting comments will be even easier?
Thanks for the tips Jacob and good to see you following your own advice and responding to the comments :) This is most likely a tactic that everyone is very familiar with but I have found that posing a question at the end of even the dullest of articles can really get some debate going.
Tips are always great because comments are one of those confusing parts of SEO work and there's not a particular way to approach it every time. I like what you said about making it easy for people to post comments--that's very true and something a lot of people do poorly.
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Rather than install another 3-4 plugins, you'll find the Jetpack plugin adds most of these functions including social login with Facebook and Twitter and comment reply notification.
Good point. Jetpack is a good option as well. But I'm not entirely convinced that 1 giant plugin that is essentially 10-12 plugins rolled into one does you much more good than choosing the four or five you like and using those performance wise.
Used Jetpack but found that I wasn't happy with this or that aspect of it and ended up installing a different social sharing plugin, a different gallery program etc.
It's a good option for those who love everything about Jetpack though! Definitely check it out:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jetpack/
Very useful post. I think its hard in the beginning to get people reading your blog so these tips are very insightful - Thanks.
That is interesting, I am glad of every visit or comment I get. The real joy for me is clicking on the person in the comment section having a look at their blog and clicking through a comment on that blog and following alice down the rabbit hole…… It is a very interesting world and this crazy wordpress community lets me see a lot of it from my desk.
Thanks! By following these activities i hope I will be able to get more comments on my academic writing help blog!
Good !!
What the Edit Ew..
I can possibly understand what is stated above but the problem is I am so new in SEO. Even so I am a Chiropractor I want to learn this SEO thing and help get more comments and visitors on my chiro blog. I hate posting and posting while it seems that no one reads my blog post. Sigh......
Excellent tactics about the improving comments on articles. I think it will helpful for all marketers to promote their content. Our blog layout is also very important for attracting more commenters.
Thanks for the article - interesting content and will have to keep on top of responding to comments.
I find this blog very informative, such a great topic to read too! I totally agree with you about why comment is important, if you don’t mind I have some idea to add. Comment is not only important for ranking on Google and the reputation of fresh content, Comment is a very important tool for marketers as well, if you sell a product and you write an article about it, make sure to read all the comments not just to engage conversation but to collect data of customers input about your product or services that can be used to improve your products or services. I learnt this idea from the helpful people over at Internet Marketing Experts Ballarat.
But some of the comments are spam.How to get rid of this.
Thanks for the helpful info. "freshness score" hey. I didn't think that fresh comments affected my raking that much, but I guess it all makes sense now that you mention it.
Thanks Jacob for sharing this great article to get more comments on Article.It is also useful to get more user on the website.
I've been wondering how well social media comment plugins are picked up by search engine spiders. I mean they are not exactly static, but generated by some plugin script which is loaded on the client side I supose. Can anyone confirm that they are actually indexed by major search engines and that they show up as fresh content in the result snippet?
Great Post Jacob. Encouraging your readers to participate in commenting and honoring them with best contributor, best comment, etc. gives you a chance to have more comments on your post.
I agree that comments section can get lost in clutter. A method I use to help counter this effect is to have navigation link to the comments section at the top of the post as well.
Hey Jacob. Thanks a lot for the great post. I really like how actionable these tips are.
With regards to tracking comments as a goal in Google Analytics, do you know how to do so without also tracking all of the spam a blog gets? I'd only want to implement this suggestion if I could count only those comments that are legitimate.
Any advice is certainly appreciated. Thanks again for sharing the post.
Great question.
This obviously varies from CMS to CMS but a simple count of the rows in the "comment table" of your database taken once a day should give you a nice graph. Your spam comments, I assume, are being deleted and won't be figured into that count.
Not sure how GA could distinguish between legit and spam comments though. Perhaps if you moderate all of your comments you could put the tracking code on the "approve" button so that only approved comments counted.
Good luck!
I haven't seen it track the automated spammers as they mustn't support JavaScript or cookies which Google Analytics requires to run.
It will however track people visiting site to site leaving comments though. Its simply unavoidable in GA.
Great suggestions for making commenting easy!!
As I know, disqus comments (as the facebook comments) are not visible in source code of the page. So Google do not crawl them as a part of webpage and those comments can't help your page out to rank for some long tail keywords.
Hmm.. not what I'm seeing! Check out an article with comments at SEOroundtable.com (they use disqus). Looks robot-readable from here!
Do you know if they use any kind of method with XML files or something like that to display comments in the source code? I don't see how you can do that with the JavaScript these services usually give to their users.
Solid Post Jacob, I agree with every single point you mentioned here...
I think the comment section should be friendly enough that user didn’t really find it difficult to comment on your blog. (Obviously if you are an entity like SEOmoz then this is not for you...) I think blogs that contain comment box will allow registration from social profiles like facebook and twitter... or even the facebook comment section are few of the option that can REALLY help you increase the numbers of comments on the website.
Testing and tracking to enhance the performance is a real game... testing is great and you should invest more time testing new things and track performance accordingly.
Great stuff!
Great article with good insights. Another important point is that comments help generate new content ideas. People might ask questions, make suggestions and that is another good source for follow up or new articles.
The choice of which login system you use should be partly determined by your audience persona. Not everyone likes to comment using their facebook login. Knowing your audience can help you decide which route is best.
Hi Jacob, I do agree with the points you explained to increase comments on your post/article. But sometimes it becomes difficult to take a look always on comments and do comments on what people say about your post, so it becomes difficult to be a part of conversation.
Great post, Jacob. Short and full actionable goodness. Number 4 is by far my favorite because it's one of the most of the most effective yet most underutilized ways to build readership that will turn into community. I immediately think of places like Moz (beep), Ravelry and Etsy - all of which have armies of active users.
Hi Jacob,
great post, i find that these are always important tips to utilize when trying to get people to comment on anything. I run a blog for my company, and I have used these strategies time and again, however to no avail. it's certainly frustrating to spend so much time every week on this blog, and i feel like i have a solid routine for posting, relevant content, i post to all our social networks, and still get only a few nibbles. any suggestions?
Getting comments is tough no matter which tricks you're employing. Depending on the amount of traffic your blog is getting and the interest level around your content it may just be an issue of getting more readers. Comment Conversion Ratios (yeah, I just made that up) are extremely low. So I'd first work on building that readership and hopefully, using some of the above you can maximize the number of comments on your articles as you gain readers.
I sort of poke fun at the idea of just "writing engaging content" but if you're not already doing so that's the first step before any of the above! It can be difficult in some niches to write things that people want to comment about but take a look at Hannah's article on content in "boring" niches:
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/companies-in-boring-niches-creating-great-content
My apologies for assuming you're in a boring niche. For all I know you're in the electric guitar or technicolor firework business. But knowing almost nothing about your site I can only give you general advice.
Thanks for the comment!
Great post, Jacob! I like the reminder from #2 to not overkill.
I'm using Disquis and it has all the tools one need to create good atmosphere for commenting.
One other action that can help encourage more comments/opinions is at the end of the post to ask questions or say something like "It's your turn now. What actionables help you get more conversation going?"
Perfect article, well explain regarding adding new comments. Coz' one of my clients hate comments esp. those spammy one. I'll try use this article as reference if my client try to argue about approving new comments.
Excellent article, Jacob.
I'm going to rethink my widgets and social commenting. Given the choice, I would prefer someone to leave a comment than to subscribe. Besides my Analytics data indicates that Blog commenters are >100% more likely to subscribe to my blog than non-commenters.
My other web properties (ones that I have neglected for years now) are almost entirely sustained by commenters now. It's great getting fresh content without lifting a finger.
Also, thanks for linking to my post.
Great post, Jacob :)
I like the part of Tracking Progress using Google Analytics. The instructions are simple and clear.
Adele <3
Great advice, you should make it as easy as possible for users to actually comment. In terms of increasing participation, I've found simply asking for comments / feedback at the end of the article, such, "what methods do you use to encourage comments?" is pretty effective ;)
I saw a website today that had a captcha that was a broken image. Didn't work even on refresh. That could've gone in the antimatter version of this post.
Thought I'd comment on your great article on commenting. Seriously, great reminders.
Great post and good job of highlighting the Top Contributors plug-in. We'll definitely take a look at that.
It's important to remember that on comments, that it only takes a few minutes to reply back to a comment which might make a customer/viewer a life long fan.
Great site, great post, as a newbie to everything, I particularly like "comment reply notification" I will try this, of course only when I get to the point where i actually visitors to my site.
jimi.
You made my day Jacob! Great information and so happy you are sharing just how important comments can be in so many ways. I have clients tell me they just don't have time to leave comments so they just want to tweet, like and be done.
Your article is proof on just how comments can build that community and visibility all at the same time. I'm looking forward to sharing this with my community as I think you share some golden nuggets for everyone!
How ironic. This post emphasizes the importance of keeping the barrier to leaving comments to a minimum, yet I just spent 5 minutes registering for a new account here just to leave a simple comment. It seems the folks here at SEO Moz should take some of their own advice:) If this wasn't such a popular site that I follow regularly, I would have never gone through the hassle of registering for an account. Come on guys...
Travis Van Slooten
Just a quick note that this is a guest post from a Distilled team member. Replied to Nate above too. Perhaps SEOmoz will use some input from this post and its comments to make it easier in the future. I don't particularly mind if it's part of how they limit spam.
Travis that is the point. Moz is providing content that you want, so you don't mind registering. Now that you have registered you can track your comments and build your profile. They also reward you in return by sending you seo nuggets like the moz top 10.
its simply the best article, full of knowledge and to the point, Thank you so much for sharing your ideas