A user blog on seomoz recently discussed the problem of attracting comments to articles. It is a problem which many working in SEO will recognize.
Naturally, posting good quality that content that has something to say for itself is important . However, the concept is a little more scientific than this alone.
Ahead of anything else perhaps is making it easy for people to leave their comment.
All too often, websites are incorrigibly difficult to navigate around to leave a comment. If it is not instantly obvious how to leave a comment, most visitors will simply move on. This is something which increasingly happens, for a number of reasons.
Naturally, online marketers want to attract leads and garner user information, so will likely request content details and request user names to be created. However, with the rise of CAPTCHA and ReCAPTCHA, the registration process is very slow.
Problems can occur even before a user gets that far though, with ads, data protection disclaimers and all manner of widgets pushing the comment section down the page. Whilst ad placement is important, it should never compromise the flow of a site – this is an SEO basic if ever there was one.
The blog also discusses other areas that could be improved. Allowing login through social media accounts is a fine idea, whilst offering rewards of some sort could be viable for some companies.
One of the best suggestions raised though is to always respond to comments. If possible and relevant, a personal response to each is best. However, should this not be possible, regular and relevant replies should be left.
- New report hints how content can be successful - June 19, 2018
- Improve your web presence with help from Google - April 18, 2018
- Complementing your content marketing strategy with email - March 7, 2018
The personal touch is, I think, the key to getting visitors to engage and return to a blog again and again. If you leave a comment there is a real sense of interaction and personal interest when you return to find a follow up comment from the blog writer.