Seems recently there is talk about turning off comments on a blog. The reasons seem quite valid.

It’s probably not what your thinking, it’s not just because of comment spam, though thats a pretty good reason and part of the discussion. The reason is more to keep the blog focused on the main theme, such as internet marketing. Often comments can be just lame attempts at marketing or traffic generation for another site.. Not to mention, some on the edge of abusive or name calling, etc.

While I don’t really disagree, it has it merits, but four things come to my mind.

First and foremost, if your going to have your trackbacks on, you better have some security. Comment spam is only on part of the problem from spammers, trackback spam is just as bad if not worst. When I first started blogging some time back, I made the mistake of having comments and trackbacks wide open. We all learn the hard way don’t we? Long story short, I was slammed with 100’s if not 1,000’s of trackback spams. Of course you can turn them off and use plug-ins to block, but the bad thing is they continue to show up in your stats as traffic, making it quite the mess. Amazingly even after blocking them, they still hit your site day in and day out. Only solution is to try contact those sites and get them to stop pinging your sites. Pretty bad when WE have to track THEM down to stop them from doing what they should’nt have been doing in the first place.

Second thought is losing the community value. From all the social networking success, we know that a community can be a powerful source. Although a blog is geared towards one or more authors posting, a community can still be created though reader comment. Not only adding to the topic on hand, but also giving them another reason to come back to your blog, for either adding their own opinions or possibly bringing new idea’s into the conversation.

Third and just as important, a comment is often a one way linkback. When posting on another blog you normally have the option of entering a website url. They say blog links have been devalued, but to me you can never have enough one way, in links, even if they are of less value. You also have to put in the equation that some blogs use nofollow tags on out going links.

Last but not least is continued addition of on-topic content. Content can be king and creating that content can be very time consuming, creating quality and most important unique content. Much of social networking is based on user created content, along with interaction. YouTube is based on users submitting video content, digg works off users contributing interesting article content. They all work off the interaction of the users on the site.

I dont think any one can argue that search engines love regularly updated on-topic content.

I guess in conclusion it’s a trade off, at-least in my opinion, and it’s just that, my opinion. There is also the time factor, managing comments can be quite time consuming.

It’s up to you to weigh the pro’s and con’s, after all it’s your site, your choice. Comments can also be a gauge, if readers are reading your posts and from the comments if they found the post of value. I know I can never get enough feedback, good or bad. You could also learn what they want.

The post that got me to throw in my two cent was this post on the James D. Brausch blog and another post on Value Jewelry Course.



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