Why Do Bloggers Make Commentators Sign In?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 16 of September , 2007 at 3:50 pm
I love getting comments. Comments mean three things for me:
- People are reading my stuff. Thanks!
- I’m at least making an impact, be it positive or negative, and that’s always a good thing for a blogger
- My blog stays active in the search engines
Comments are good for a blog. Even if the majority of comments received are negative, they’re good because it means that the search engines have more content to crawl. More content means more ways I can rank. If I write a blog post on dancing, for instance, and highly optimize it for the keyword “rhumba,” even if none of my commentators use the keyword that I use in my blog post, I could still rank well in the search engines for that keyword. I could also do well for related keywords.
For instance, if I get 15 comments and eight of the commentators mention the polka when I primarily concerned myself with the rhumba then I could rank for “rhumba,” “polka,” and “dancing.”
Of course, all of this is contingent upon what my competition is doing as well as some off page factors, but comments help bloggers with their SEO. Since all of that is true, why do some bloggers insist on making their site visitors sign in before commenting? I rarely will sign in to leave a comment. If I have to sign in to help you with your SEO then I’ve got better things I could be doing. Like nursing my Uma Thurman fetish.
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Category: Blogging
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Comment by Astrit
Made Sunday, 16 of September , 2007 at 5:03 pm
How in the hell should we know? Well at least i have no clue since i don’t restrict commentators to signup in order to comment. Maybe someone that is doing that can pass by and let us know why.
Good question tho.
Comment by walter wimberly
Made Sunday, 16 of September , 2007 at 6:54 pm
I’ve seen two reasons (one more legitimate than the other) for requiring someone to sign-in.
1) The blog author is actually trying to get people to sign up for something, and its a pre-qualifying thing. If they sign-up the really like me, and then they might be interested in buying x widgets from me.
2) Not many spam bots will sign-up. (Of course this makes me think of “if the dog won’t eat it (and it licks itself), why should we”
Comment by Beth
Made Sunday, 16 of September , 2007 at 8:26 pm
After being threatened and stalked online by someone I knew almost twenty years ago, I enabled comment moderation on my blogs.
By the way, I just tried commenting here without using my name, and WordPress denied me access.
Comment by namecritic
Made Monday, 17 of September , 2007 at 1:55 am
hmmm. I comment here without signing in. Anyway, I think some blogs should have moderation while others should not. I have a couple of nonprofit blogs where I don’t even encourage comments. They are just informational like http://www.missingchildrenblog.com and http://www.mostwantednewspaper.com
I think each blogger has to determine what they want to accomplish with their blog and set it up accordingly.
Comment by Edward Vielmetti
Made Tuesday, 18 of September , 2007 at 6:31 pm
You’d get more comments if your RSS feed was a full feed and if you had a feedburner feed flare in the bottom of the feed that made it easy to click through to comment.
Comment by namecritic
Made Wednesday, 19 of September , 2007 at 12:33 am
I agree about the feedburner flare and I am adding feedburner to my blogs, but where are statistics to back up the summary vs full feed deal as far as which one generates more comments?
The idea is to get people to come to my blog, not for them to read it all in a newsreader and never actually visit my blog.
I can’t speak for Nick, but I leave my hlogs on summary. Many bloggers use the “read more” method even for visitors to the blog, so you have to click through to read a whole post. It creates more page views. Personally, I don’t use that method. People who visit my blog can read the entire post.
I’m just curious if there are any stats that prove using full feed generates more comments. I’m open to being proven wrong, so prove away.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Wednesday, 19 of September , 2007 at 7:10 am
Beth, WordPress requires a name. It doesn’t have to be your real name. It can be a nickname or a fake name. But it does ask for a name because it ties your name to a website. You can, however, sign a name without including a website and your comment will appear without being linked.
Comment by Jennifer Merritt
Made Thursday, 20 of September , 2007 at 10:27 am
I am split on whether those who comment on blogs should be required to sign in. I leave comments to bloggers and would not object to signing in if I felt the need to provide feedback on the bloggers topic. What negative things will happen if you sign in? I can’t think of anything. But if the blogger has security reasons for requiring a sign in then go for it. Either way I will comment if the topic is one which I want to speak out on.
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