Revising My Commenting Policy – Keywords Gone!

The URL is the one thing that I find annoying. It’s especially unattractive when it’s not in html. I don’t see why anyone would use it on a blog with CommentLuv. Isn’t that the point of it?

I find that I mostly comment as a learning tool. It pushes me to go to blogs that are informative. In order to comment, readers need to review the post and other comments. That’s a great way to learn whether it’s in or out of your niche.

Gennaros last blog post..Olympians Name Top Snowboarding Locations

I totally agree with you Caroline. Comments (and I don’t get that many yet!) are such a frustration. You’re forever wading through the rubbish to find the occasional hidden gem. Given that we must all do the same in deleting the obvious “Just there for a link or two” comments, I really don’t understand what those people are hoping to achieve.

Mikes last blog post..The Dreaded "List"

And that’s the dilemma for newbie bloggers. It’s great to read other comment policies when you start out because when you do receive a comment at your new blog, you go, “Great!! Someone commented.”

Only to find out it’s someone going after a link, but you don’t really know that until you gain some knowledge and have experienced what you’re talking about.

Now some of them are extremely obvious (forex trading) but there are some that are questionable. I guess with time, for the newbie, it gets easier to determine what’s what.

It’s the excitement factor of receiving a comment – good or bad. Which reminds me of the saying, “Bad breath is better than no breath at all.” ;) Obviously bloggers should not prescribe to that.

Then I start wondering if there’s a plugin that could check for certain commenting rules. Sounds like an opportunity.

Generic comments like “Thanks for the great post” or “Great layout, love it” annoy me because I feel like that person didn’t really read my post at all, but are simply name/link-dropping. I let it go because my comment links are nofollow until they reach a certain number of comments, and I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they did read my post, but just didn’t know what to say :/

The signature in comments is REALLY annoying though. As a matter of fact, I find it slightly offensive. My comment section are for your feedbacks to my posts and to create a discussion around the topic. Not for you to plug your site.

Mimis last blog post..Removing Ads For Your Regular Visitors

This is a very good idea and one that i have been considering for a long time on my blog.

I have always used my name and not my blogs keywords when commenting as i use other methods for getting links with my keywords.

Commenting for me is about getting my name out there not my blogs keywords.

David Hobsons last blog post..Seo Education 101 Part 3 – Search Engine Basics

The whole thing just always feels so icky to me. Whenever I see that keyword thing or the link or the obvious link to a post in their blog just to try to get traffic, I feel dirty, LOL.

I would rather add real value and never get any traffic back to my blog than be one of those “ultra-marketer” people. They’re like the distant relatives that come to funerals and weddings just to try to sell life insurance!

People need to think in terms of blog karma. You get what you give folks!!! So contribute and eventually the traffic will come. Even if it doesn’t come from the places you’ve been commenting. That’s blog karma :-)

Melissas last blog post..A Second Chance at Life for the Passengers and Crew of US Airways Flight 1549

Yeah, when I get a comment I just want to know the person at least read my post, and when I see a person with a sig at the end and keywords in the name, I think they’re trying to take advantage of a good thing. It’s kind of sad because you know that’s not the picture they want to paint.

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Caroline this got me to thinking. You also mention the length of the comment which can be another annoying thing so i did a quick google search.

I came across this plugin from Yoast that puts a minimum character value on your comment box which will mean no more short one line comments.
http://yoast.com/wordpress/minimum-comment-length/

David Hobsons last blog post..Seo Education 101 Part 3 – Search Engine Basics

Hey Caroline,

Great post ! ;-p

Seriously though, I know exactly how you feel. As an occasional marketer, I understand why people want to try to get their keywords into comments. But as the owner of several blogs, it still annoys me when I see a new comment come in with something like “MakeMoneyOnline” instead of a name. And as you said, it’s even funnier when they prove to know so little about why their even doing it, that they use keywords on a nofollow blog.

Kind of a funny story for you … I am subcribed to the comments on a post here on your blog about commentluv. Every once in a while, I’ll get an email about a new comment on one of my blogs. As I’m reading it, a new email will come in informing me that there is a new reply to your post. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the EXACT same comment in both emails … which makes me feel not bad at all about sending it straight to akismet land.

Actually, in your post, you mainly talk about deleting. What is your “trigger” for sending to akismet (or other spam filter) as opposed to just deleting? I’m almost sorry to say, that my trigger is honestly usually the mood I’m in that day.

Talk to you again soon,
Todd

Hi Caroline. As usual, I enjoyed your post. One of my pet peeves is also people who put their url as their name or beside their name.

Since my blog is relatively new, I need all the comments I can get so I don’t delete many comments. I do delete the “great post” comments and links that people add for a product they are selling. If they had asked, I might have left it in.

Thanks for sharing.

Valeries last blog post..Twitter Me Pastor! (I know, it’s Tweet)

I totally, 110% agree with you Caroline. It’s quite annoying reading comments that was posted by “MakeALivingOnline” or “MyPokerSite”. For me, it ruins the purpose of commenting which is a place for discussion and probably social networking too. It makes me feel like talking to a sleazy salesperson. (Imagine going to a party and someone approaching you and say ‘hi, my name is MakeMoneyOnline and I want you to visit my website’…)

Oh well, maybe they just haven’t learn about personal branding…or they just forget that they’re talking to real humans at the other end, not search engines. But seriously, building your own brand is more important than getting backlinks.

Reyn Arias last blog post..The Online MLM Mastermind Newsletter Is Here!

Ahh, the perennial favourite topic – it’s good to see bloggers have the same arsenal of such stories up their sleeves as mainstream media do.

I agree in the main with what you are saying, however – people come here to read and interact with you and your other readers. They are here discussing the finer points of IM. Most of them are or want to be internet marketers.

It’s no surprise then that most of their URLs are names like http://www.howtomakeamotzablogging.com or http://www.makeabuttloadofmoneyonline.com. Hence while I notice that their domain looks like IM spam, it doesn’t really discourage me from checking out their site, if what they have said here piques my interest.

What makes me immediately close their tab is when I find that the article I’ve jumped to on their site has nothing to do with what they were discussing on your site (unless I’ve just been dropped onto their homepage).

Ben “previewing is for wusses” Helps.

Ben Helps (YES my real name)s last blog post..WordPress plugin for embedding YouTube videos

Heya Caroline,

Again you probably get this a lot – but great blog post! The quality of a comment is very important. I tend to look at blog commenting from this perspective, – a blog is written by a person who has a passion about the subject, how would I feel if someone wrote a ’spammy comment’ on my blog which provided no value whatsoever? I wouldn’t be too happy either. Thanks for reminding everyone that its not about the quantity of comments you make on blogs, it’s the quality that counts.

Brandon

Brandon Walkers last blog post..Monetizing A Website To Earn An Income

@Mike, if you’re getting that much rubbish perhaps you need a good spam filter plugin. The vast majority of my comments are great, it’s just the odd one that isn’t but due to the general volume increase of comments in general, the volume of not so good ones increases as well.

@Bill, perhaps on a brand new blog its okay to be more lax in your comment policy in order to just get some comments! For some reason I have been lucky with this blog and got comments from day 1.

@Mimi, you raise a good point which I mentioned in my comment strategy post. Sometimes a blogger can write such a comprehensive, superb post that he or she leaves no room for anything else and the readers are left with nothing but ‘great post’ to write!

@David, hmm I wouldn’t want to put in any strict rules like that because there is always the occasion where it is legitimate. I sometimes leave very short comments myself.

@Todd, it’s a fine line between deletion and spam. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes spam is obvious – they just talk about viagra or something. Other times I’ll suddenly get 20 comments all on really old posts all with a keyword in the name, all useless. They get marked as spam but it’s not all that often that happens.

@Reyn, lol I had never thought of it put in a real life setting and yes indeed that would be quite ridiculous to introduce yourself as your website name!

@Ben, there’s two fields to fill in – the name and the url. It’s perfectly fine to plug their marketing site in the URL, the objection is when they misuse the name field.

I’m going to go against the grain here a bit and say that as long as someone isn’t spamming my comments section, I generally don’t care what they type. Even if they only throw in a “great post,” then they’ve at least taken the time to comment, which means they might come back. Sometimes when I am reading a blog and I can’t think of anything great to say, I’ll still leave a great post comment just to show that I’ve read the post and I’m still hanging around.

Nathan Hangens last blog post..World Domination – The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself

I agree with Nathan that, unless it is spammy, almost any comment is usually a good thing.

Super-bloggers with huge readerships don’t need or want “great post” type comments, but for the great mass of us who are just getting established in blogging, it can be nice to see that someone out there noticed us!

I like to follow interesting Twitter comments back to the Tweeter’s blog. I usually do this late at night when I’m low on energy and creativity and just not up to writing anything very meaningful.

If I come across a blog that appears to be new and not getting many readers but has some value I will often leave a “great post” type comment just to give some encouragement.

I hope the authors of those blogs take my comments in the spirit in which they were given.

Of course it may help that I don’t sign my comments “Make Big Money!” :-)

Margaret Flanigans last blog post..When Twitter is a Disappointment…

Dang, you beat me to the post! I’ll just have to give ya a back-link. ;)

I leave the combo names in as I am do-follow. I even leave full keywords in if they sign their name under (not sig link though, just name).

I recently started using a threaded comments plugin that auto-installs the @name when I reply, however I may still start deleting pure keywords with no name to be found.

I think I’m overly generous as it is. :)

Dennis Edells last blog post..FINAL CALL: $100 Blog Review Contest Ends The 31st!

My blog is young, and I welcome comments.
I am struggling with the format, though. Do I let people comment without signing in? Do I set-up a comment form like the one in which I’m commenting right now?
My blog, right now, is not any kind of marketing enterprise. That could change, however.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks for the change to chime in here.

Its hard to argue with your logic. It drives me crazy too when people leave keywords as names. Its hard to have any kind of discussion with “Forex trading”. Since my blog is still pretty new I’ve been letting it slide for awhile, but at some point I’m sure I’ll follow your lead and allow only names.

Mike Collinss last blog post..Ever Wonder Why You’re Not Making Any Money?

My real name is Ilaria, but very few native English speakers can pronounce it (it’s Italian and pronounced Ee-LAH-dia, where the “d” is a rolled “r”). So I have adopted an online identity tied to a tattoo of a turtle I have on my arm, Swimturtle. Very often I leave Swimturtle as my name when I comment on blogs to remove people’s feeling of slight awkwardness (how do you pronounce that? Are those two “L”s at the beginning?)
This whole comment question is extremely interesting and I think there are a couple of things at play:
1. Bloggers who teach other bloggers how to succeed at blogging, frequently, like you, Caroline, tell people to be very active in the comments sections of other blogs. Because these days there is so much competition for traffic, I think some newbie bloggers are frantically visiting a hundred blogs a day and saying, “Great post!” or the equivalent, just to get their link on there. This does not necessarily mean they’re bad people, just inexperienced. They have not yet realized that real content is key EVERYWHERE, whether in your own blog or in other online presence.
2. Sometimes, people are thrilled that a post has really answered a question they have or that it contains something that really resonates with them, and “Great post!” is just a sincere, earnest expression of their appreciation.
Yesterday I read a very interesting guest post, I think it was on Problogger, about Gravatars. I think that you might enable gravatars on your site, Caroline, because putting a face to a name will, I think, help improve the quality of the comments you’re getting, and therefore MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER (believe me, I feel your pain!). If people have their face go up next to their comment I think they will be a little more careful to actually contribute something useful to the discussion.
Having said all this, I am a relatively new blogger myself and I used to follow all kinds of blogs in my various areas of interest. In an effort to make MY life easier, I have stripped down my Google Reader to only a very small handful of blogs, the ones that can help me achieve my goals as a successful blogger.
Caroline, your blog is really great. I subscribed to it after listening to the podcast of your interview with Yaro Starak. I too am a Blog Mastermind member. I’m about halfway through the course, and like you I agree with many of the things he says, but you have added your own spin to the process of selling, marketing and making money that I think is absolutely brilliant! In fact, I kick myself that I wasn’t taking notes, and I’m going to have to go back and listen to it all over again.
Thanks for everything you write and keep it up!

Ilaria Papinis last blog post..An Overview of Google Reader

Hi Caroline,

I am surprised you get the Keyword as the name if your blog is “no-follow” (haven’t checked and really don’t care if you follow links or not though).

I agree with you on the one liner posts as most are obviously there to either leech traffic from your site or grab an easy backlink if your site is follows links (which isn’t really worth it…blog commenting IS NOT a viable link building plan).

I don’t really agree with not allowing someone to put their keyword as their name though. After all, one of the things that most beginner bloggers don’t realize is that comments not only contribute to conversation BUT also help you with getting ranked for long tails as well since google will scan the entire page….

…in other words, if you have a pretty active community that is supporting you, THEY are contributing to your success organically as well as socially…

So, in light of that, I think that it shouldn’t matter one way or the other if the commentator is actually adding value to your posts….after all, they are giving you something…why not give back?

Leos last blog post..114 Things I Wished I Knew as an Internet Marketer When I First Started

I don’t like my commentators using keywords as names because it takes away from the social aspect of having comments to express their opinions. Most of the time that people use keywords, they try to solely target those keywords and most of the time comments are not relevant to the discussion

Donny Gambles last blog post..Top Commentators Plugin: A Race to the Top

This method is smart for the blogger, but also quite destructive if your commentators are usually only commenting for a backlink or some traffic. I used to hate “keyword” names too, but I do it, so I stopped caring. Even if it’s no follow, it’s just a strategy to get a simple click.

-Mike

I know where you’re coming from Caroline. My little gaming blog has been hit with so much spam over the two and a bit years it’s been running. But I guess I look at this whole issue a little differently.

First, I like to reward commenters, especially those with blogs so I have a do follow blog. But I use that plugin — can’t remember the name, and it’s Sunday morning here, too lazy to look it up — that holds the comments as nofollow for a couple of days before setting them as dofollow. This gives me a chance to cleanup any spam and make sure the spammer isn’t rewarded.

But if I get a spammy link attempt, I just don’t delete the comment. I mark it as spam with Akismet which is a lot worse for the spammer. Deleting a comment, just removes it from the blog. Marking it as spam adds it to Akismets system, so that URL may then be blacklisted. While many spammers don’t care about this, they just move on, but for a blogger trying to build up a blog using spammy methods, it wouldn’t be good at all.

Other than that, if it’s a reasonable attempt at a comment, or if it doesn’t take away value from the conversation, much of the type of comments you are deleting don’t really bother me.

Yes, I would say that your are very generous, including comment luv.

You have set up a great forum for your followers to connect. I agree with Donny that you loose the social aspect of blogging when it becomes about grabbing links.

It is kind of like going to see what a person is talking about on twitter and the link takes you to a sales page. Come on! Social marketing only works when it based on creating relationships, creating trust and giving value.

I come to your site because I find those qualities in your posts and in the comments.
Thanks for the extra effort.

Sheila

Sheila Atwoods last blog post..Gone Fishing

I use a plug-in called Keyword Luv that many people don’t notice, but it basically lets users get a relevant keyword link instead of the link to their name.

Unfortunately though I’ve had a lot of people abuse this, so now they have to leave A LOT of comments before it will go through as do-follow. It is sad, but so many people abuse it.

Chelles last blog post..10 Reasons Nobody Is Reading Your Real Estate Blog

@Stropp, I will mark as spam any comment that is obviously spam but there are also a large chunk of people who are just lazy or don’t know how to comment properly but they’re not spammers so I just delete their comments.

I think the plugin you’re referring to is Lucy’s Link Love or something like that.

@Chelle, there’s also the Top Commenters plugin that gives a real do-follow link. I have seen KeywordLuv but I won’t use it here for the reasons you describe.

Close, Lucias Linky Love is one of the ones (assuming there’s more then one) that offers options to pick how many comments…it’s what I use.

Dennis Edells last blog post..FINAL CALL: $100 Blog Review Contest Ends The 31st!

When I’ve been commenting on blogs lately, I’ve been writing Jessica @ThriveYourTribe because Jessica’s such a common name and my last name is a little awkward (hard to pronounce). Since TYT is my id on sites like Twitter, it also makes sense from that standpoint. Especially if a blog already has at least one Jessica there who seems to be an active commenter, I worry about stepping on toes (a little silly, probably, but that’s what happens when you grew up one of 3 with the same name in every class ;-)).

It was great to read a blog owner’s pov on the topic!

Jessicas last blog post..The Stupidest Thing to Do With a Domain

Caroline,
I believe you have it all wrong. Your blogs purpose is to boost both the value of the commenter and your blog and your Status. Everything you said in this article is all about you.

You could easily do as Josh Spaulding does at his blog.

I understand the deleting of irrelevant comments is a pain. Why can you not answer my comment here as “Molly”. What difference does it really make to you if the link says “Molly Tracfone Deals” or “Molly” to you? It makes a significant difference to me and others who make good relevant comments and also wanting a valuable link.

You do not believe that nofollow links give any value? You are totally wrong there. Do a little research and you will find that a nofollow link is nearly as valuable as a dofollow link. There have been a couple of interesting tests that have been done that will surprise you.

I saw a Nofollow test the other day. They had linked to a site with 6 nofollow links with a misspelling of one of the keywords for the page. This was a strange misspelling and was not on the site it was linked to at all. Within a couple of weeks the site came up in Google, Yahoo and MSN for the misspelling and it was no where to be found before the nofollow links were posted.

In my opinion
Not using one of the new plugins like Lucia’s Linky Love is selfish on the part of Blog owners. Much of the content on a good blog is from the comments. These plugins are simple and good for your community of bloggers which is good for you.

Molly

Molly tracfone dealss last blog post..Refurbished Tracfones

I love the information you are sharing. For someone who is new to this blogging thing, I am still learning about the no follow and the back linking, so any information you share is great. Keep up the good work Caroline!

Caroline,I have a question.When you post an article you tell the readers how much words it contains and how long it will take to read the post.I really like this piece of information as it is a neat way of really wrapping up your post.What intrigues me is how do you know exactly how much reading time your post will take?
Or is it simply based on a mathematical calculation of word count multiplied by so many seconds for each word?
I may add my two cent here.I find “easy comment” plug in handy for faster blog commenting.
I am a complete novice.
I read all the information on your site on a regular basis and I am learning a lot.
And here comes the cliche again………”Thanks for a great post”.

Puspanjalis last blog post..Does Your Lip Plumper Work?

Hello
I love getting comments, even when they’re off the point. Yes, the “great post” comments do nothing for me but as a new blogger, I appreciate every visitor I can get. I will however ask the “great post” commenters for a favor:

Instead of telling me how great my post was (which they likely didn’t read), let’s be a bit original and honest and just say “please return the comment”. I’ll respect you alot more and probably return the favor.

T

T Edwardss last blog post..Finishing My To Do List: Marketing This Blog

Hmm, @Jessica(TYT) has a point. My full name (while daggy) is relatively rare, however how much of a faux pas is it to use non-product-advertising keywords in your name? For example, my business is called Wigglebum, which isn’t spammy in my opinion (not IM/selling products related keywords). Is it bad form to refer to myself as Ben @ Wigglebum?

Just typin out loud :P

Ben Helpss last blog post..Setting up tests of other platforms

@Jessica and Ben,

I really think it depends a lot on what you keywords are … and the website that they’re point to.

Probably 95% of the time, I just comment with my name.

But on occasion, I do also use “CandleMonkey” and/or “Alohateam” which correspond to blogs of the same name. These have never caused me a problem … even when commenting on blogs where I don’t already know the owner.

Now, if I tried to use the keywords from one of my “make money” domains, or a domain that leads to an ebay store, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find some of my comments deleted at best, and quite possibly in akismet.

Even though Caroline is having a rant here, I think even she would admit that it’s usually not too hard to tell who is leaving a legitimate comment, using a legitimate name … and who is just there to try to get a little self promotion.

Just my three pennies,
Todd

Todd Morriss last blog post..Can Your Wordpress Theme Inhibit Your Writing?

@Margaret, ‘any comment is a good thing’, is very often the thinking when a blog is in it’s initial growth stages. But once it gets to the stage where every post is receiving 20, 30, 50, 100+ comments on each post, the sheer volume degrades the experience for the readers and then the less valuable comments are not so good to have around.

@Nancy, in the early stages you will certainly want to do everything you can to encourage comments. Don’t make them sign in – that is a massive barrier. They should simply be able to leave a name, url and their comment.

@Ilaria, if I saw a comment with a name such as ‘Swimturtle’ I’d leave it as it looks as it is supposed to be – just a nickname. Those who frantically leave as many comments as they can have obviously not read my commenting guide :-) In there I state what I consider to be good etiquette. Getting traffic from commenting comes from quality and not quantity.

I did try a Gravatar plugin a while back but it caused all sorts of technical issues with the blog so I removed it. Now that it is built into WordPress I may have another look at putting it back. I see the images of the commenters in my dashboard but they are not shown on the posts.

@Leo, many commenters simply have a standard name they use for all blogs and they don’t differentiate depending on whether or not the blog is dofollow.

@Molly, it’s not about being right or wrong, it is simply a personal preference. A blog is the home of the blogger and the blogger makes the rules. I have a rule that says people don’t get to smoke in my house or in my car, if they don’t like it they don’t come to my house or ride in my car. This is just the same.

I’ve left your comment there unedited as you’ve left a valuable opinion but in future I will delete it if you leave the keyword in there.

@Puspanjali, that is a plugin that does that – it’s called Post Teaser.

@Ben, there are always going to be oddities – things that don’t quite fit. Because this policy is something I do manually, and it’s not enforced by an automated plugin for instance, it allows me to bend the ‘rules’ when I feel like it such as with Molly’s comment earlier.

@Todd, that’s very true. You can tell whose leaving legitimate comments. The problem I was finding is that it was taking too much time to make that decision so I’ve made this choice to reduce the amount of time it takes to read the comments daily.

I agree with you on several points, “the thing is you are a popular blog” so it’s understandable that people will want to leave more than one link with the impression that they will get some linkjuice back (freeloaders are everywhere). Using comment luv is for me the ideal solution. I have stuck to being as open as possible and i use the do follow plugin along with other plugin enhancements to give some value back to the visitor. The problem with this approach is invariably letting the spammers in, so I think i will just go with comment luv and cut out the do follow rule.

Thanks’ for the read

Bill Masson (WWAH)s last blog post..Free Website Resources

Thank you for doing this Caroline. Now your blog is definitely not the worst when it comes to people hunting backlinks but I agree that there have been quite a few “forex trading” comments lately.

Personally I don’t allow any keyword names on my blogs and unless the comment is truly valuable I’ll delete it instantly.

Since I use blog commenting as one of my strategies for getting backlinks (I always try to leave useful comments) I’m also subscribing to the individual posts in cause the author of the blog will respond to my comment. For blogs that are “attacked” by these 1-line commentators I get an awful amount of emails which is no more than “spam” to me.

So thank you for implementing this to your blog!

Mikael Riecks last blog post..The Benefits of Cheap Cat Insurance

First thank you for leaving my name as Molly tracfone deals.

I will state my opinion another way. Any time you are commenting you are promoting “Caroline Middlebrook” because that is your brand. Dennis Edell is promoting his brand. If I am trying to promote something in another niche and obviously I am–lol– why not give me that opportunity. Unlike you and Dennis my brand is not my name.

You are an online educator. I am sure that in your classes you teach that adding anchor links to your site is very important. I do not understand why you are against me using my name as an anchor link.

I just went back and read your reason for not wanting me to call myself “Molly Trafone Deals.” How is responding to that any different than responding to “Dennis Edell?” I believe that posters having a keyword in their name improves the blog. I have been to Dennis Edells blogs–he has more than one–and I came to yours from Josh’s.

Giving your readers a clue about my blog before they get there is extra information. It will keep them from wasting time. My comments are totally about the post I am commenting on.

You mention at the beginning of the post that having the link to my blog as “Molly Tracfone Deals” is way more beneficial to me than having “Molly” as the link. Then in effect your next comment is “I do not want to give anything back.”

In the name of education you should be telling the new posters to your blog that they should have their web page URL in the spot.

I would encourage newbie web marketers to use a keyword at the end of their name to add anchor links to their site. We get a lot more by giving.

Molly

Molly tracfone dealss last blog post..Refurbished Tracfones

I think that the more you give back to your community the better it is.

I do not believe in nofollow comments. I give all the valid comments on my blog Dofollow links. Yes I am trying to increase the number of comments on my blog but I am also trying to help the people that are helping me.

I view relevant comments as your gift to my blog.

Why do I not believe in nofollow? Nofollow was designed to cut down on the Google pagerank leakage from a blog. Are you more worried about Google pagerank (which is a purely mythical number) or are you more interested in the community around your blog.

Does Google penalize blogs that regularly get 100+ comments on posts? I do not think so. They rank well what other people rank well.

I instantly delete posts that are not relevant. I do not have the following you have Caroline but maybe someday.

Rick

Rick Imbys last blog post..Finding Lucia’s Links

Caroline – I really appreciate this post. As I have just started my own blog, it is important to learn these type of things from those that are more established.

As for the nofollow issue – I am on the fence, but would like to hear what your motivation is of being a nofollow comments blog? I recently wrote about Google PageRank Juice – so I see the issue with that – but like Rick said – what about giving back to those that are investing in your community?

The more I have read about it – the more I feel the need to turn off the nofollow side of comments. Have you ever tried it? Has it produced more spam than anything else?

Will Lowreys last blog post..Money To Fund Your Online Business

Hi Caroline
I am a relative blog newbie, started following other peoples maybe 6 months ago and started by own photo blog on Xmas eve. Over the last 6 months I have read many blogs on subjects that interest me and more recently I have added more techie blogs, like yours and Suzannefranco to this few that I read. I want to learn how to do blogging better.
I mention the above because I sometimes comment on a new blog, because I have searched for help on Google and I eventually find the info I need. I like to say thanks and I usually say more than a word or two.

As for the keywords as names, I agree it is not very nice to have someone comment as “florida real estate”, however on my blog I am quite happy for someone I do not know to be “lois – Tally daily photo” thereby I can get a quick idea of who and where they are coming from. I have yet to need real policy, but I look at each comment before I accept comment.

Pauls last blog post..Lion – Leeds Town Hall, The Headrow, Leeds

Caroline,

You are the victim of your own success…

In 1999, when i first develop an interactive portal using php, when the first stranger commented (open comment, no login needed), i thought great!!

At least i knew my site have actual visitors other that my family & friends (who were trying to be supportive).

Then the comment grew from 1-2 comments a day to 200-500 a day before i closed the site in 2001 (for other reasons, despite its wild popularity)

Now, I am thinking to revive the site and I am fully aware the situation I will be facing when it become popular in 12-24 months down the road.

How will I do it?

1) probably by using captcha. But this only preventing automated bots, not real person from posting “great post!” comment

2) Forcing visitor to register/login before commenting? This will be a chicken-and-egg problem. People will not register if there were nobody ever commented before. In the end my site will look like a deserted, haunted house.

3) a combination of both!
First, when the site is not popular, I will let anyone comment anything… even crappy comments like “great post!”
Then after achieving a certain level of visitors/comments a day, I will switch to register/login before comment.

I am not sure yet if (3) will work but I could’t think of any other better solution right now.

@Puspanjali – Post teaser is awesome, I use it as well. I use it as it’s the only “teaser” plugin I found that doesn’t mess with my full feed RSS. I don’t however use the “counter” stuff as I thought it looked cluttered.

Personal preference. You can change up the settings in your admin panel. :)

Dennis Edells last blog post..FINAL CALL: $100 Blog Review Contest Ends The 31st!

Wow Caroline,
This has turned into a great conversation. Thank you for posting about changing your comment policy to bring out the comment opinions.
Rick H

Rick Hoovers last blog post..Hoover S3765040 Canister Vacuum Review

You reap what you sow baby. You showed people the blog commenting strategy. Out of every 10 good people, there will be 1 or 2 black sheep.

It is your own making. Dont cry over it.

@Badrulnazar, you might be overthinking it. It takes literally seconds to just hit the delete link on a few rogue comments each day. There is no victimisation here, it is just natural blog growth and a natural change in policy to accomodate it.

@Friend, hehe there’s no crying here, I’m just stating what my new way of dealing with comments are so I can refer people to this post if I start getting emails about missing comments!

Hi Caroline,
I have been reading your blog for over 8 months and have really enjoyed what you have to say. I really don’t see a problem if someone says “Nice Job” as a comment. If it is a no follow then I don’t really think it is for backlinks. Sometimes that is all I have to say. I just want to let the blogger know I appreciate what they do. It seems like if there is a minimum word count the only thing that would do is have people fill the comment up with drivel so they still get to comment.
Personally, when I read comments I don’t mind the ones that are just a few words, they are quick to read.

Andy Bacons last blog post..MLM Leads On Squidoo

Much better with this. Less than a week before the top commentators list below has the keywords removed. Every blogger with dofollow should think about using this policy.

When I talk to someone, I want to talk to “Caroline” not “SEO Canada”. If the purpose of your blog is as a medium for visitors to discuss something, then this should be it.

I understand that other bloggers want to reward people who take the time to leave comments but what they attract are people who spend their time with comments without particularly feel being part of your blog.

Once you enable nofollow, they will be gone in no time.

Personally, that’s not the kind of readers I want to attract. I’ve never tested this, but I think they are also hard to turn into customers or clients because chances are they are not interested in what you have to offer in content or product.

There are always exceptions though.

Hendry Lees last blog post..How to Make Web Content Work for You

@Hendry, yeah I agree about the kinds of people you attract. In the main I have been very fortunate on this blog and I tend to attract people who comment freely and are quite opinionated which makes the comments section oftentimes quite lively. The people using keywords represent only a small minority.

Caroline,

I think it’s cool that you so often seem to put into writing the same thoughts that are in my head. ;)

In the past I’ve left comments with a name/keyword combination. However, normally I will just use my name.

As a blog publisher, I hate to see great comments with a keyword as the name. I never approve them, and I hate it because someone took the time to add to the discussion – and their thoughts will never be seen because they used a name such as “Colon Cleanse.”

There’s a fine line between encouraging participation and opening the doors to spammers. Perhaps someday my traffic will reach the point where I’ll have to create a “policy” on the way I deal with comments. Today, however, I just quietly delete.

Kelly Verges last blog post..Autoblogging Case Study

Hate to see the change in comment policy. I don’t comment spam and feel it doesn’t help the spammer either. People will not be inclined to follow “nice post” comment regardless of length. Put a bit more effort into a comment and it 1). adds to the conversation, 2). improves the chances of people visiting the comment link due to value of a thoughtful comment.

But only approving comments by name, misses those who would like to comment but use a brand name to be known by. Darryl does nothing either in SEO or in branding. It would be if I wanted to brand myself like Caroline Middlebrook or John Chow. But even Jeremy Shoemaker uses ShoeMoney. I understand not wanting some comments by “Acai Berry” or “Forex Expert”, still, shouldn’t comments be judged by the substance of the comments?

@Darryl, as I replied to an earlier comment, this is not being automated so if I saw a comment from somebody who uses a name like ShoeMoney I’d know that was not a spam attempt so would allow it.

Great post!

Just kidding, please don’t delete me! LOL!

It really is a good post, and I have to admit to previously leaving the short comments on others blogs. I have a new business blog and have yet to get a comment that isn’t spam (that’s another ‘why do they bother’ issue!)

Actually, what I really took out of your post is the nofollow (didn’t know you could do that), the commentluv plugin, and some guidelines to follow when I do start getting comments. Maybe not the lessons you intended when you wrote this!

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Hi Again Caroline,

I don’t have thousands of readers (yet), so I suppose we are in a much different situation.

But ironically, since I commented on this post the first time, I’ve actually gone in the exact opposite direction with my blog. Rather than fight against the keyword commentators, I decided to just embrace it by going dofollow and installing the keyword luv plugin. I may still end up policing the really spammy and silly comments. But in the long run, I think it will actually make for a whole lot less work.

Keep havin FuN!
Todd

Todd Morriss last blog post..DoFollow and KeywordLuv

@Todd, another thing to think about is that all blogs are different and attract a difference audience so what works for me may not work for you…

It’s a problem every successful blogger faces. But with new blogs sometimes it helps to allow keywords and can get more readers!

Actually I get alot of those great post comments as well. I know how irritating it is but I never thought of deleting because why turn down a potential reader?

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I think its a good policy to have Caroline, but I can imagine how frustrating it must get for you when the user leaves a great comment but yet they have a “keyword” in their name. It must be very hard to make a decision on what to do with that comment.

I agree 100%. The comments should be relative and relevant otherwise it must be deleted.

Since I subscribe to all the comments in posts that I comment on I find it great that these nonsense keyword comments are deleted. I actually find that Caroline is being VERY large in what is allowed in the comments.

It is SO easy to just write a little bit more when commenting and actually write something that could just provide a little bit of value or encourage to a discussion and yet people are still only saying “great post” or “I agree” or “Me too”. Come on people!! :/

Mikael
Mikael @ Retire Early´s last blog ..To Retire Early You Will Have to Keep Focus

Thanks Caroline for helping me decrease my blogging ignorance.

Is it hard for online marketeers to stop thoughtlessly using marketing hype and tricks when they comment? I thinks so.

I have a lot of respect for the “Marketing Experiments” web site (I have no relationship with them) and the advice they give about writing online.

Like not “selling”, but instead telling stories. People hate to be sold at and I bet you who are reading this feel the same. But story-telling is the original teaching/learning method and people do enjoy it.

So, if we have something to say and we can replace the hype with clarity, recapture some of the fun of talking around a campfire, and show our readers some respect – maybe we can raise the level of online marketing way above what we inherited from the radio and the tube.

Seems to me, as a new blogger, that we might be able to do some good in the world.

Well, I’ve come back to confess….
Not that it’s a big deal or anything, but my last post was dishonest.

You see I really didn’t have anything to say.
But as a new blogger taking the common advice to comment on other blogs, and seeing that your blog has intelligent discourse, I felt compelled to come up with something – something readable and hopefully something that would leave a good impression. I’m sorry.

My own expertise is in making art and in Windows computing and other tek, quite distant from this discussion.

What do you suggest for people in my predicament?
Just learn from others and hold our tongues?
Try to contribute the best we can?
Or what?
jim coe´s last blog ..Notepad is So Handy!

@Jim, I used to be in that predicament sometimes when I used blog commenting as a traffic strategy. In the end I concluded that it was far too much effort trying to force myself to come up with something to say when something didn’t immediately come to mind so I stopped trying.

Caroline,

I’m a big fan of yours and have read your blogger bible book. However, you’re very fortunate because you have a very big following and you can afford to pick and choose relevant comments. I on the other hand would love any kind of comment on my blog. Not to feel sorry for myself, but it’s extremely difficult to get a blog up and going with traffic. So, I hope I’m in your position one day.

Thanks-
steve
Steve Roth´s last blog ..What is Hard Money Lending?