Appreciating commentators and contributors


Comments on blogs are now harshly viewed, both article writers and readers see comments as spam traffic.
I’m not really going to say no to that, since a lot of advertising is being done through blog comments, but not all comments are spam and that’s why bloggers have to be extra careful and embrace the contributing relevant comments and I personally disagree with the ‘NoFollow’ tag on the commentator’s website link.

I feel that a DoFollow link towards their website is a normal way to appreciate their contribution for commenting on articles and it’s the article author’s job to check whether the comments are content related and help the on-going subject.

I’ll have to, however, be reasonable and understand those who choose not to share their search engine page importance so they can offer better advertising juice, but I, for one, am not looking to win anything from this blog.

With that in mind, just wanted to announce that my blog is NoFollow free and I also installed the fantastic ComLuv Plugin which identifies whether your URL is a blog and it will add a second link towards the blog’s last published article.

I do however, ask you to be on topic when commenting and avoid leaving 2 words comments (i.e. Great article.), or auto-generated non-sense messages.

Your comments and any other kind of feedback is highly appreciated!

Catalin

My name is Cătălin Berța and I'm a front-end web developer. I was born in Focsani, Romania and currently living in Bucharest. Started playing with some good old html tables ever since 2004 as a hobby, turned out to be a full-time career! :) I've had the chances to experience and witness web development's rapid growth over the years where I've mainly focused on front-end web technologies.

25 thoughts on “Appreciating commentators and contributors

  1. You’re right in saying that the comments are advertising. However, for many, a blog is also advertising. We can all grumble about comments and I’ll be the first to admit that even this comment is some form of advertising. However, the web is built upon links and I wouldn’t have found this blog if it wasn’t for the links to it. Similarly, some outbound links (like the one I’ve added- hopefully) can be valuable to sites and given that page rank no longer exists, should certainly not affect ranking if controlled. So, to surmise, decent comments, with links pointing to relevant sites, shouldn’t be considered spam, rather they should be considered a good addition

    1. I fully agree Richard, I may have pointed this theory a bit more difficult, but I also indeed believe that relevant comments are and should be highly embraced, I was merely suggesting that a DoFollow tag on their links should be a sign of appreciation, unless they try to reserve the page’s importance for advertising purposes. As long as the comments are relevant, I don’t consider the links as spam, not even if they’re not content-related, I’d care only if the websites deal with either illegal or immature activities. And yes, all links here are external :) Thanks for the feedback!

  2. i just found commentluv myself and it has proven to be effective in two ways, helping more people find my blog to leave their comments and helping me find more interesting and “active” blogs on the interent, before i would find blogs only to see they had not been posted on in a couple of years, now i can see posts as they are created!

  3. This is really great stuff (couldn’t find your name) You do get a lot of spam out there and especially on blogs but i feel if the person slips in a keyword(like myself :D) it is no big deal. The main issue is in their comment like you said, if they have posted a relevant in-depth comment which also shows that they have read your blog i feel this is fair to give a do follow link but if it is a 2 world “great article” comment then i feel it doesn’t derserve a dofollow. Whether the comment is spam or not it is still traffic and all traffic is good traffic right? :)

    Thanks for being a fair blogger! its nice to see for a change.

  4. I felt appreciated when the blog owner make a reply to my comment. Of course a reply in a nice way, not in a way that he’s questioning my ideas or he knows more than me. I’m trying to share my experiences, my thoughts then all of a sudden someone will tell me negative things in a very rude manner.

    1. Replying to commentators is definitely a great way to make their contribution feel important, it’s why I do my best to reply to all of them. As for negative feedback, it usually comes in two ways, rude, which I don’t embrace as much, and proper criticism, which is something I expect and I’m willing to learn from.

  5. I do blog commenting on many blogs and most of them use commentluv and keywordluv plugins. So i personally think “Gone are the days of sppamer.” If you properly use anti-spam protection tools or plug-ins then it will be too easy for you to block spam.

  6. I agree with you Catalin any person writing articles on topics or giving their own opinion on certain matters should be able to take the right criticism. You can learn a lot from people who disagree with you because they allow you to see through other eyes.

  7. Comments are certainly advertising, but as long as you add some value to the web your comments shouldn’t be looked at as spam. We cannot allow the few bad apples out there ruin the perception of the good bloggers out there that add sensible comments that help contribute to the web.

    1. Like most bloggers, I’ve installed the Akismet plugin which seems to be doing a great job catching spam, but I still go through all the comments as Akisment rarely filters real comments as spam. So far I haven’t felt the need for a captcha system on comments, but that might change along with this blog’s traffic :)

  8. Thanks for the useful stuff, I enjoyed reading this post and commentary stuff as well.

    In my view, allowing commenting on blogs give you so many ideas, tips and advice to improve blogging skill as well.

    More importantly, it increases traffic also……

  9. We saw that your blog is dofollow. We just launched first wordpress dofollow search engine and we have added your site. This will will bring some visitors. You have our adress on our name on this commnent. We will be very happy if you will help us too a hand in promoting it by adding our url somewhere on your blog.

    1. Hey,
      I’d love to support any business that will help our dear friendly bloggers, however, ‘dofollow’ blogs such as mine are a way to help commenters benefit link juice for free with a small effort of reading a post and posting a comment, your business on the other hand, is trying to ‘earn’ from that no-cost procedure and I personally cannot promote it, I’m sorry.
      Best of luck

  10. Leaving a comments to a certain site is important because you will gather and learn a lot of information, lessons to learn and some which are great advices. Commenting is fun that is true and that’s what I definitely doing now.

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