Do Blog Comments On Your Site Help SEO?

[marcperry]

There is a lot of debate as whether or not having comments on your blog is helpful from an SEO perspective.

Proponents believe that more comments (1) creates more content, which search engines love, (2) creates more relevant keywords that can be searched, and (3) helps with "freshness" of the site/content leading to greater site authority.

Others like Joost de Valk believe that comments can actually hurt SEO because keyword density cannot be controlled.  He argues that his top SEO content are pages not posts for this very reason.

What is your opinion?

[SEODinosaur]

IMO it helps if you have real comments and not spam on your site. If you allow real people to comment and what they write adds value (questions, opinions, humor) then it will help your site because more people will bookmark it, and return to it. I've read in many articles that when you start your bogging, you should also visit other blogs within your niche and get them and some of their users interested in your blog and add comments (value) to your site/articles.

[ewanTHH]

I would agree with the 3 the proponents say but add 1 other and that is that seo is become more about trust/useful user friendly sites. So if you have posts on your blog which are getting comments this must be a key indicator to search engines that your content (post) is worth talking about and thus I'm sure helps with seo.

Quite possible Joost de Valk is correct that his top seo content are pages and not posts but posts are not pages they're something very different. Just my thoughts.

[marcperry]

Thanks for sharing, Ewan.  I completely agree that number of comments is a very important indicator of site quality.

[tgerencer]

Hi Marc, Where does Joost say this about comments hurting SEO? I've been trying to find it online.