Blog comments are helpful in so many ways;
They help you increase your blog’s authority They increase your overall brand awareness Blog comments are great for your website’s SEO Blog comments act as social proof and the list goes on and on
So if you’re struggling to increase your blog comments, this post is for you. In this blog post, you will be discovering 10 killer tips to help you get lots of high quality comments on your blog posts. Let’s dive into the details without further ado.
Top 10 Blog Commenting Tips for 2023
1. Start leaving thoughtful comments on other blogs
The less known blog commenting strategy is to start leaving comments on other blogs. Don’t leave random comments but make sure you’re leaving thoughtful and genuine comments on other blogs. That way when other bloggers will also find your blog to start leaving genuine comments on your blog posts.
Top 10 Blog Commenting Tips for 20231. Start leaving thoughtful comments on other blogs2. Create controversial content3. Provide incentives4. Increase your overall blog traffic5. Dofollow Comment Love6. Make sure to respond to incoming comments7. Running Contests8. Comments Notification Email9. Use Top Commentors Widget10. Call to actions are powerfulDo blog comments affect your website’s SEO?How to encourage people to leave blog commentsFinal Thoughts
Here’s a lengthy comment which I recently left on MostlyBlogging.com run by Janice Wald. Do you know why I leave such lengthy comments? Because it works like a charm. So how to leave really thoughtful comments that actually help you build relationships and get more genuine comments on your own blog? Read the post before commenting: Most people make this huge mistake: they leave comments without actually reading the post. You don’t have to read every single word but you need to at least understand the gist of the content where you’re commenting on. Don’t repeat what the post just said: This is another biggest blog commenting mistake. If you’re commenting on a fitness related blog post and saying the same things in your comment what the blog author has just said don’t make any sense. Add your own flavour, spark a discuss and make sure to add value with your comments. Make your comments detailed enough: Whether you know it or not, whenever I leave comments on other blogs, I make sure the comments are really detailed. Usually all the comments I leave on other blogs are around 200 words that means they all are massive comments where I usually spark a conversation, ask questions, share more tips etc. Don’t go insane when someone disagrees with you: Internet is full of trolls and there’ll be people who often leave hatred comments. You can find a lot of trolls even on sites like YouTube videos, Instagram, Facebook posts etc. So when you face such comments, either share your thoughts or simply ignore them. Quick tip: You should create a list of some popular blogs in your niche and start sending your valuable comments on those blogs. When you send your knowledge-based comments to other blog owners, they will notice it and appreciate your efforts by leaving comments on your blog. You should subscribe to your favorite blogs RSS in your RSS Reader and send comments as you notice a new post being published on any of your favorite blog.
2. Create controversial content
If you want to get people talking, create controversy. Creating controversial content can be the most effective way to attract hundreds (if not thousands) of comments, social shares and buzz online. If you’re running a fitness blog, you can talk about why keto diet (popular diet for weight loss) is actually bad for you and give some solid reasons why people should avoid it and we bet that it will create a ton of buzz online because you’re talking about something controversial. According to research from Wharton Business School on When, Why, and How Controversy Causes Conversation, it turns out that people tend to avoid discussing things of “high” controversy in many instances because it can make situations and conversations become uncomfortable. So controversial content always works and if you want to get people talking about your content, brand or website, make sure to create it. It’s your content that will play a major role in deciding whether people will comment on your blog post or not. It’s your content quality that will decide if you will get zero or tens of comments on each of your blog post. Lack of good content, will make you end up with very few comments on your blog even if you have a high traffic blog. So you should write engaging content and look for maximum ways to get feedback from your blog readers about your blog content quality and what kind of posts they want you to publish on your blog in the coming days. So you should spend lots of time while creating your blog posts and should keep some elements of engagement for your blog readers in your posts. Use Lists in Your Future Posts
3. Provide incentives
Why should someone leave a comment on your blog posts? Is there any benefit for them? If you really want to attract more blog comments, make sure to offer great incentives that persuade people to leave comments. If you’re wondering about what type of incentives work like a charm, here are few proven tips for you that you can use to get more comments on your blog posts in 2023 and beyond. Write guest posts for your top commenters: Few years ago when we desperately wanted to get more blog comments on Bloggers Passion, we tried this strategy where we used to write a guest post every month for one top commenter (who left more number of comments within 30 days). Did it work? You bet! In fact, it worked like a charm so much so that we tried that tactic only for a couple of months and eventually we stopped doing it since we got that traction where now every blog post is generating decent comments. So give it a try once. Give a link: Another thing you can do to encourage more comments on your blog is to provide a link to your top commenters and make sure to promote this strategy on your social media profiles such as Facebook groups so you can attract more people to leave comments on your site. After all, who doesn’t like getting free backlinks? Ask them to contribute on your blog: If you really want to attract genuine and thoughtful comments, try this tactic where you can ask your top commenters to write guest post for your site by giving them a link. It really works like a charm and most people would be happy to write guest posts for you, so it’s a win/win approach. Giveaway something: Do you offer premium services or do you have any paid products that you sell from your blog? If yes, you can giveaway them for free to the top commenters so more and more people have enough reasons to start leaving comments on your blog posts. Use default WordPress commenting system: Most people are either disabling their commenting section or using Disqus commenting system instead of default WordPress commenting system. Let us tell you one thing that, if you really want more blog comments, WordPress commenting system works great where people can add their names along with the URLs to their site.
4. Increase your overall blog traffic
If you want to get more blog comments, start attracting more visitors to your blog posts. It’s as simple as that. Here are two simple ways you can get more blog traffic even if you’re a beginner to attract more comments.
- Get more organic traffic: While we know that increasing your search traffic is not so easy and it usually takes a lot of time but it’s the most effective way to increase your overall comments as organic visitors come to your site naturally (day after day). Here are few quick tips to get more search engine traffic to your sites in order to attract more blog comments.
Before you write even a single word on your next blog post, make sure to do keyword research. Finding and using the relevant keywords that your target audience are using on Google to find your sites is the quickest way to get more traffic. In case if you’re still wondering about it, here’s how you can use a great tool called Semrush to do keyword research with ease. Focus on building backlinks as Google considers backlinks as the most influential ranking factors to rank a web page. So if you want more traffic from search, make sure to try guest posting, blogger outreach etc to build links to your site.
- Bring more visitors from social media sites: We would highly recommend you to promote your blog posts on Facebook groups. You can simply make a list of 10 to 20 Facebook groups where you can promote your blog post links and ask people to start commenting on your posts. If they really find your content interesting, you’ll attract a lot of shares and comments. Here are few quick ways to use social media sites to bring more visitors to your sites.
Try to connect with influencers on social media. Whenever they tweet something, reply to them, tag them and often keep sharing their stuff to get into their radar. If an influencer tweets or shares your stuff, you’ll definitely see a huge spike in both your blog comments and traffic. Schedule your social media posts in advance so you’ll be always updating your social media profiles like pages to get more followers. Also ask your followers to start commenting on your posts.
5. Dofollow Comment Love
It’s highly advised to make your blog comments dofollow to get more comments on your blog. Lots of SEOs and bloggers keep searching for dofollow blogs to get maximum search engine ranking and page rank benefits. Lots of link builders us dofollow blog commenting as a powerful method to increase high quality backlinks for their websites. So being a dofollow blog, your blog will receive lots of additional comments from seo and link builders type of community members. There are some dofollow blog directories available on Internet where you can submit your dofollow blogs. You should highlight to your blog readers on prominent positions that they are making comments on dofollow blogs by adding a comment luv kind of image in your blog sidebars as shown towards left. If you are running a WordPress Blog, there are plugins available to help you make its comments links dofollow.
6. Make sure to respond to incoming comments
If you reply to comments coming on your, that will leave positive impression for you in your blog readers eyes. And when blog readers sees their comments are being noticed and replied by the blog owner, motivates them to send more high quality comments on your blog. So you should make sure that you send your thoughts to most of incoming comments on your blog. I used to check all incoming comments on this blog once a day at least. When I have a new comment coming, if its good and genuine comment, I will approve it and if its just spam, I will simply delete it. For each approved comment, I send my replied at least where my blog readers are expecting some feedback or information from me.
7. Running Contests
I have noticed lots of blog owners using contests to increase comments on their blogs with great success. For increasing comments, bloggers run interesting contests where they offer some cash, freebies, gifts or advertising on their blog to contest winners. I’ve not used contests on this blog so far for improving comments. But in the coming days, you will see some contest coming on Bloggers Passion to motivate blog readers to write more comments on this blog. I may be running top Commentors kind of contest on this blog where the top commenter for a month will get some prize with regular backlinks and branding for their websites and blogs.
8. Comments Notification Email
You should give your blog readers the facility to subscribe to your blog comments via email. Your blog readers will be able to keep track of new comments coming on blog posts they have subscribed to. When they feel they should send more comments on that post, they can do easily. Email Notification feature in comments section creates a great level of interest among your blog readers. With such kind of features, you will see lots of threaded comments rows appealing against your blog posts. If you are running a WordPress based blog, here is the plugin you can use to allow your blog readers to subscribe to comments against posts of their interest. Easy to Comment Functionality You should make the whole commenting process on your blog really easy. I used to notice some bloggers using ugly captchas and sign up forms etc to Commentors on their blog. They make the whole commenting process really difficult. Some blogs have so difficult code words behind captcha that it becomes really difficult for you to recognize them. If you are doing all this to avoid spam comments on your blog, there are tools and plugins available to avoid them. And if you are running a WordPress blog, there is a plugin popularity known as Akismet to help you fight against spam comments on your blog. Here is the installation link for Akismet plugin for WordPress self hosted blogs.
9. Use Top Commentors Widget
If you’re a WordPress, we would suggest you adding a Top Commentors widget on your blog. I have noticed lots of blogs that have this kind of widgets available, gets lots of comments from its blog readers. You can add this widget in your blog sidebar or in the footer section. In top Commentors widget, top Commentors for that month are shown up in descending order. Lots of readers to your blog will start sending comments to your blog simply because you have installed top Commentors widget on your blog. Here’s how this top commentors widget looks like; Availability of bloggers in top Commentors section gives them decent traffic, branding and backlinks for their websites and blogs. These days’ lots of SEOs and bloggers have started including blogs that have top Commentors kind of widget in place, in their overall link building strategies. So if you notice top commentors on your blog, you will find some guys from SEO community are sending their valuable comments to get the benefits of backlinks from your blog, If you are running a WordPress Blog, there are plugins available that will add top Commentors widget on your blog instantly.
10. Call to actions are powerful
If you’re following and reading Bloggers Passion blog posts for awhile, you should notice by now that we use “Final thoughts” and “conclusion” section at the end of each and every blog post we publish. Do you know why we make sure to include that? Because we know the power of call to actions. If you really want your audience to do something on your blog, you should use CTA (call to action). It works like a charm even for blog commenting as you can people to do:
Sharing your stuff Leaving a comment on your blog posts Linking back to your stuff and so on
You can use the call to actions as simple as, “what are your thoughts about this post, do let me know what you think about it” and so on so that it helps your readers to share their thoughts in your comment section. How to create call to actions? Here are 3 simple tips to create powerful call to actions that can help you get more engagement in terms of social shares, comments from your audience. Traffic to your blog will also play a big role especially if you have a blog with good traffic numbers and high quality posts. So look for ways to get lots of traffic to your blog. Apart from asking questions and seeking advice from your blog readers will also help you get additional comments from your blog readers.
Do blog comments affect your website’s SEO?
This is one of the most popular questions: do blog comments affect your SEO? Yes. Blog commenting really helps you in a ton of ways in terms of getting additional value from search engines like Google. If you’re wondering about how blog commenting helps in SEO, read on. Blog commenting leads to user engagement: User engagement is one of the biggest metrics in SEO. If people are spending more time, sharing your content and leaving comments on your blog, that means your website audience are loving your content. Search engines like Google are smart enough to give rewards to the sites where the user engagement is high. Blog commenting also reduces the bounce rates and increase the overall dwell time of your site since people will be spending more time in reading and commenting on your content. When you’re leaving comments, you’re actually leaving your URLs. Here’s how it looks like; Blog commenting helps in better networking: If people are leaving more comments (and you’re doing the same on other blogs), you’re doing a great job. Networking is one of the reasons why most people leave blog comments. You can use your relationships later to increase your traffic, links, social shares and what not? Remove unwanted comments: Just make sure to approve only those comments that you feel are genuine. There are thousands of spammers who leave comments on other blogs just for spamming. They either leave one liner comments or post random stuff while commenting. Just remove all of them if you want to keep your blog commenting system safe from spammers.
How to encourage people to leave blog comments
There’s nothing like putting time and effort into a blog post, only to see it go live and have no one respond. For many bloggers, this is the kind of thing that happens often. And then, it has them asking if they’re doing something wrong or if, after all their work, there’s just no one reading. Have you ever felt this way? Do you want to spark conversation on your site but aren’t sure how?
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The truth is, comments are more than just validation for bloggers—they’re also social proof to everyone who comes in contact with your site. When readers see high numbers of comments, they ascribe more value to your site because it’s clearly being read and being responded to. This increases your online authority as well as your influence. So in other words, getting comments matters. What does this mean for you? Are there ways to encourage readers to leave comments and build a sense of conversation on your blog? Where do you start? The good news is it’s not difficult. There are lots of ways to encourage discussion on your site—in fact, in most cases, starting a conversation could be a lot easier than you think. Consider these tips for getting people commenting!
- Ask Sometimes getting people to comment more is as simple as asking them—putting out a question in your post or saying you want feedback on what you’ve posted. This could be as simple as a “What do you think?” at the end of your article or maybe a “Have you tried these strategies in your business?”—the point is to start a conversation that they’ll want to engage in.
- Make It Easy To encourage comments, you need to make the process as simple as possible, with a system that’s user-friendly, clear and intuitive, in order to draw in even newer blog readers. Take a look at your current setup: is there a ‘leave a comment’ button prominently displayed? Are there any hiccups in trying to respond? Do users have to login to a system, which adds an extra step to the process? Do whatever you can to make commenting simpler.
- Build Traffic Before you’re going to get comments, you need to get visitors—because without good traffic coming to your blog, there won’t be anyone to respond to you. So all the steps you can take to increase traffic can also work, indirectly, to improve commenting. Take a look at this previous Bloggers Passion post on 11 tips for increasing website traffic for specific ideas to implement.
- Show Your Weakness You know what they say, content is king. And in the world of blogs, content that gets to readers’ hearts is the surest way to build comments. Readers respond well to posts that are authentic, especially when you are coming across as vulnerable and transparent. So to incite comments, show your own weaknesses, and you’ll be more likely to connect with readers and prompt them to have something to say.
- Have a Strong Opinion Generally speaking, there’s nothing like controversy to get people talking. Share your strong opinion on something, whether it’s about organic foods or a certain hosting provider or why you decided to get off Facebook, and someone’s going to disagree or agree with you and want to say so. Just use this tip with caution because it can work against you as well, when you turn off readers or polarize groups of people.
- Be Open-Ended One of the biggest de-motivators to leaving a comment is feeling like a post is the be-all end-all on a topic. Rather than providing a too-thorough post that leaves nothing left to say, try to be a little open-ended, inviting more tips or encouraging other perspectives.
- Respond When readers see that you respond to questions and comments within the commenting system, they’ll be much more likely to participate. This is especially true in the beginning, when you’re trying to build a blogging audience and community; as your blog gets larger, you may need to be less active, but it’s still good to respond to direct questions or comments asking for a response.
- Reward Comments When a reader leaves a good comment—either with helpful feedback or a discussion-provoking question—highlight it to give them some attention. Tweet it or post it on your Facebook page, or maybe refer to it in another post. This tells readers you’re paying attention to them and encourages them to comment more. What do you think? How could implementing these tips change the activity in your comment section? Are there any changes you’re resisting and if so, why? Or what other strategies have you seen to be helpful in bringing in new responses? Browse more Blogging Resources:
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Final Thoughts
Blog commenting is the surest way to build strong relationships with other bloggers. It always feels nice to see a ton of comments on your blog posts (which also increases the social proof of your content). I hope we’ve covered most of popular methods to increase quality comments to your blog. Hopefully you can get more blog comments by using the tactics mentioned here and do let us know what are the other techniques you use to increase your blog comments. If you feel we missed any of your favorite blog commenting tips, please share in the comments section below.