00:00:11another edition of ask Evan in today’s
00:00:13video I’m going to answer questions from
00:00:15my form administrator GT who kicked off
00:00:18a debate in our forms around the new
00:00:20post that he put up around should you
00:00:22allow blog comments on your blog or not
00:00:24so his exact post was I was just reading
00:00:27an article web pro news and one of the
00:00:29subjects covered is whether or not you
00:00:30should allow blog comments on your block
00:00:32one point of view is that they’re good
00:00:34because it provides user feedback and
00:00:36the opportunity to interact with
00:00:38visitors the other point of view is our
00:00:40comments add little value and can often
00:00:42have a negative impact on your site a
00:00:44Google engineer is quoted as saying that
00:00:46blog comments may possibly be diluting
00:00:48the quality score of a page so he’s
00:00:51wondering about it has to look into it
00:00:52too much and he was one in our thoughts
00:00:53should you allow block comments or not
00:00:56so here’s my take i do allow blog
00:00:58comments and i do it two different ways
00:01:00i’ll share my experiences and hopefully
00:01:02this can help everybody the first part
00:01:05is i really believe that you should
00:01:06allow blog comments on your site i like
00:01:09it because it allows you to start
00:01:11interacting with your customers and
00:01:13people who are coming to your site and
00:01:15they start interacting I’m more likely
00:01:16to hang around the more likely to sign
00:01:18up for your newsletter the more likely
00:01:19to buy your products and services so you
00:01:21want to encourage participation in
00:01:23interaction because it makes it a little
00:01:25more sticky ties into your brain and
00:01:27makes me want to come back if there’s no
00:01:28ability to comment then they’re less
00:01:30likely to come back and less likely to
00:01:32become a customer of your business so
00:01:34you definitely want to encourage people
00:01:35to participate in your business stay
00:01:37longer on your website and be able to
00:01:39take that next step if it’s sign up for
00:01:41news that are buying your product over
00:01:42it is the second thing is I think it
00:01:45provides a lot of valuable feedback for
00:01:46you so it tells you which post you’re
00:01:49creating are getting a lot of response
00:01:51it tells you people like the content
00:01:53you’re coming up with or not and people
00:01:55might also offer other suggestions for
00:01:57how you can make your blog better and as
00:01:59businesses if we want to become better
00:02:01entrepreneurs we need to make sure we’re
00:02:03listening to our customers listen to
00:02:05your feedback and try to take those
00:02:07advice that we get from them and and put
00:02:10it into our business to make it better
00:02:11so shutting off the ability of people to
00:02:13tell us what they think I don’t think
00:02:15it’s a really smart idea now the last
00:02:18part is
00:02:18you do run a blog and you are getting
00:02:20comments it can also add a lot of
00:02:21credibility to your website so when
00:02:24people first visit a blog one of the
00:02:25things you’ll see is how many comments
00:02:27are left on here and if it sees that
00:02:28there’s a lot of comments it looks like
00:02:30it’s an authority website and they’re
00:02:32more likely to read the content it to
00:02:34come to the site and see if there’s no
00:02:35comments a lot of people thank God I
00:02:37know if I want to trust this person or
00:02:39not and they may take off and go to a
00:02:40different site so if you do have a blog
00:02:42with a lot of comments it can add a lot
00:02:44of credibility which can help you with
00:02:45new customers coming in and also with
00:02:47media and partners and suppliers it
00:02:49makes you look a little more respectable
00:02:51so definitely try to encourage comments
00:02:53now that being said you do need to
00:02:55moderate them right you need to make
00:02:57sure that its value I type of comments
00:03:00that are being put into your blog posts
00:03:02and useful information right so it’s
00:03:06okay to help this different point of
00:03:07views but you have to make sure that
00:03:09it’s being added to the conversation
00:03:10it’s not just being spam so there are
00:03:12some plugins you can use especially if
00:03:14you’re on a wordpress back-end to help
00:03:15you moderate your comments but you
00:03:18definitely have to make sure you’re
00:03:18looking out for them the second part is
00:03:21if you’re really worried about the
00:03:22negative impact it might have the
00:03:24quality of comments aren’t great and you
00:03:27want to make sure it’s only your content
00:03:28that’s being indexed in Google another
00:03:30option you can use is facebook comments
00:03:32and some of the bigger blocks have moved
00:03:33to trying facebook comments and
00:03:35basically facebook gives you a plug-in
00:03:37to allow people to leave comments the
00:03:39facebook profile and it shows up on each
00:03:42individual blog post and this is good in
00:03:46the sense that you can still get
00:03:47participation from your readers it
00:03:49forces people to use their existing
00:03:52facebook account so it’s harder to post
00:03:54anonymous posts you have to use your own
00:03:57account and it might even get you a
00:03:58little bit more exposure for your blog
00:04:00post because when they do put a post on
00:04:02it sends it up to their friends that hey
00:04:05you know they just posted on this blog
00:04:07their friends might be interested in
00:04:08checking out the blog as well so it
00:04:09might give you some back to exposure at
00:04:11the same time it doesn’t show up in your
00:04:13HTML so the content of the the block
00:04:16comments don’t show up in your HTML so
00:04:18Google doesn’t crawl it so that can be
00:04:20good or bad if you’re worried about the
00:04:22the quality score then facebook comments
00:04:25is a great way to do it because it’s not
00:04:26going to show up in the code of your
00:04:27site so it’s google never get it
00:04:29so GT I hope that helps everybody else
00:04:32has been discussing in the farms I hope
00:04:34you found that useful that’s what I use
00:04:35on my blog I’ll use comments just like
00:04:38any other wordpress blog and then on my
00:04:40articles on the site will use facebook
00:04:42comments so we’ve kind of split it up
00:04:43between the two I love to hear what you
00:04:45guys have to think if you want to leave
00:04:46a comment below the video please do and
00:04:48please give the video a thumbs up
00:04:50encourages me to make more these types
00:04:53of videos and hopefully you’ll stay
00:04:55tuned for the next episode
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