by Gloria Rand
Ever get stuck for blog article ideas? Client questions are a great resource. In fact, that’s exactly what sparked the topic for today’s article!
One of my clients recently asked me, “Can comments on web-based articles help with rankings in Google as far as SEO is concerned?” The reason for his question is because he had just received this comment from his webhost: “Content” does influence SEO but it’s only the content inside an article or post. Google, Bing, and Yahoo do not look at the comments to determine any type of SEO ranking.”
It would seem, then, as if blog comments don’t have any SEO value. But if that were true, why do people still comment on blogs and why do so many spammers carry on the practice?
The fact is, comments indirectly help your website, especially if you allow real people to comment and what they write adds value (questions, opinions, humor). Good quality comments will help your website because more people will bookmark it, and return to it.
I recently read an article that provides clear evidence that blog commenting does have SEO value. A woman left a thoughtful comment to an article, and included a link to a website of her client in the article cloaked in anchor text. That means the keyword phrase was highlighted like this: Here is an example of anchor text in a sentence. The phrase “anchor text” links to another website. (although not in this case – I just used bold font for demonstration purposes.)
The blog author liked her comment so much that it sparked another article on the same topic, and the blog author reused the woman’s anchor text link in the article!
Read the full article here: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-blog-commenting-can-still-be-a-healthy-part-of-your-postpenguin-seo-strategy-case-study
The moral of the story is: The next time you want to give your blog a boost, try commenting on someone else’s site!
Image courtesy: KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Related articles
- Ethics in SEO: Your Website’s Best Defense Against Google Algorithm Updates (forbes.com)
- How to Tell if Blog Comments are Spam or Sincere (Gloria Rand’s Blog)
