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September 1, 2010

How to increase comments on your blog

If you get a conversation going on your blog – you are a winner. Well, all of us want people to comment on our posts as that is the single most encouraging factor for a blogger to continue blogging[well, along with monetary benefits of course :)]

Increase comments on blogAlong with great content, we also need give our readers something for those informative comments. So, here are a couple of ways which will help you boost or skyrocket comments on your blog:

  1. DoFollow – This is the first thing you need to do. As per the standard settings, WordPress blogs are NoFollow i.e. they do not give backlinks [immensely helpful for SEO purposes] to the bloggers who comment on their posts. Once you enable DoFollow; you will see a drastic rise in the number of comments. Download.
  2. Comment Luv – If you go into the comments section in this post; you will see a tab called ‘comment luv’ under the comment bar. This plugin gives the blogger an option to leave a link of his last post on his blog. The link will help him drive traffic to his own blog as well as give you the much needed comments. Download
  3. Threaded Comments – This plugin gives you a reply option on each and every comment and when you comment; you reply goes directly under that comment.  This plugin helps increase comments, makes it easy for people to reply and at the same time prevents readers from scrolling down to look for answers to their questions. Download
  4. Top Commentators: This plugin displays the names of the readers along with the number of comments on the side bar of your blog. The plugin provides you the option to reset the list every hour, day, week, month or year. Download
  5. Subscribe to Comments – This plugin let’s your readers subscribe to comments and the ongoing discussion. Readers get a notification when any comment is posted in the discussion. This helps in continuing the discussion. Download

IMPORTANT – To increase your backlinks here is a list of some of the best blogs with both DoFollow and CommentLuv enabled. Comment on them and increase your search rank and page rank – Click Here

A point to remember – Approve only RELEVANT comments and comments that add to the conversation. For comments like ‘great’ or ‘thank you’ you will always have the option of removing do follow and as well as commentluv from that comment. Also, while you use all these plugins; don’t forget that what matters the most is CONTENT. So, ensure you have the right content in place.

If you know of any more important plugins, do let me know and I would be happy to add it here.

Comments

  1. Is it applicable to only wordpress blogs or also for blogpost?

    • vishalgaba

      Sir, these plugins are only for wordpress blogs.

      • But its for wordpress.org right?
        I don’t think the wordpress.com people have an option for installing a plugin.

        • vishalgaba

          Yes Bhavia – this is only for wordpress.org

  2. Comment Luv Zindabad:)!!

    • vishalgaba

      Lol…Yes…:)

  3. I agree to most of the things you have mentioned. But as soon as you make your blog a dofollow, be prepared to face the flood of spam comments. That is one reason I had to revert back to nofollow 🙁

    • vishalgaba

      I would agree with that but would still recommend keeping your blog DoFollow atleast till you have actual ‘Readers’ and a known name in your niche.
      …and to control spam…you can use Akismet [ a small relief but a help would be to select and delete all spam comments in every 2-3 days].

      • @Vishal – that can be a pain if u hv a blog with high readership since Akismet is not perfect, at times it does categorize the right comments & trackbacks as spam too and going thru the entire list of spam and unspamming the right ones can be very time consuming..

        • vishalgaba

          Hey Vaibhav – Yes, I agree with you and that’s what I had mentioned above as well. In that case I think it is a good idea to keep your blog as do follow for a while [atleast till the time you achieve good readership] and after that in case things are out of hand, you can remove it.

          My suggestion would be that you still go with it since it has more advantages than disadvantages.

    • @Mohan: You should try Akismet plugin for wordpress, which is generally pre-installed whenever you install WordPress on your custom domain. Since I’ve started using this plugin, even a single spam comment has not appeared in my to-be-approved list. This plugin is quite good.

      • vishalgaba

        Yes, it is a good one…the best that I have seen in a while. It keeps the spam comments in check.

  4. Nice article Vishal. I have been looking at the pros and cons before implementing it on one of my blogs

    • vishalgaba

      Thanks Sowmya 🙂

  5. This post is quite informative for those bloggers who want to increase comments on their blog (as five above ways). Thank you for your post. And one more, I would like to thank you for sharing the list of some of the best blogs with both DoFollow and CommentLuv enabled. I will try to see all these blogs.

    • vishalgaba

      Thanks a lot…you should surely go through the list 🙂

  6. darn! Mine is blogger. I wish I had started in wordpress now. I have been searching for a better comment widget in blogger. But I haven’t come across any yet. 😐

    • vishalgaba

      Well, I have been on wordpress so can tell you only about it…but even I havnt seen any such widgets.

  7. Some of the plugins are for wordpress only and presently I’m using blogger but I think I’m also trying wordpress I heard that it offers a lot of functionality that some blogging sites doesn’t have.

    • vishalgaba

      Yes, as far as my opinion is concerned…I’d prefer WordPress anyday!

  8. Agree with you, btw i’ve add Comment Luv & Top Commentators and now i use dofollow plugin
    Btw how to create sliding in your footer that shows your other post, please share

    Thank you

    • vishalgaba

      Hey…I will soon be putting up a post on how to insert the sliding footer..will share the link with you.

  9. Great tips… I think social networking is also important… you should share your blog posts in twitter, facebook, digg etc. they do provide a lot of traffic.

  10. Awesome blog. The Keywordluv plugin has been kind to me. I have to say, that there weren’t many sites that I commented on prior to the plugin. Why? It takes time to post comments and I don’t have much. Now that we’re awarded a link for doing so, it is worth it. Thank you for using it.

    • vishalgaba

      Yes, commentluv and do follow have a made a big difference to my blog as well:)

  11. Yeah you’re right mate DoFollow blog will increase comments, Thanks for great tips 🙂

    • vishalgaba

      Your welcome 🙂

  12. the tips you posted found useful. by default are blogspot blogs dofollow?

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