Do You Appreciate Your Readers?

May 13, 2011

Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.

This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.

This was originally posted in 2009.

Do You Appreciate Your Readers?

I have written about this subject in the past and I thought it was time to take another look at this subject.

I have visited thousands of blogs and forums over the last few years. There are two trends that always appear on my radar screen. They are a large group of blogger’s who want more comments on their blogs. The second group of blogger’s don’t seem to care who is commenting or what is being said.

The whole idea of social media which includes forums and blogs, as well as many other types of sites such as FaceBook or MySpace is about being social. Being social is about connecting, discussing and carrying on a discussion. A discussion requires ongoing input to be effective. That’s where many forum posters and blog authors fail.

I see it all the time, someone starts a conversation on a forum or blog and abandons the conversation. You know, someone starts a topic and let’s say its about marketing on Twitter. Then others begin to make comments and some ask questions, but the questions go unanswered. I’ve seen this many times over and over again. Blog posted are started all the time, the discussion begins, and questions are asked but they are not answered by the blogs author.

The problem is that so many blog owners and forum posters don’t follow the post or thread that they started. So these valuable questions go unanswered. The net result is that there is no real conversation. I don’t know about you but I am less likely to return to a blog that has chosen to ignore me or if I see others regularly ignored.

Most of these blogs are not moderated and the comments generally are posted immediately. Now, if that is how these folks want to treat those who leave comments that OK by me. I prefer to take the time to answer the question because I feel it my responsibility, after all I started the conversation and I want to show my appreciation.

These people I believe are missing the whole point of social media. Then there is the second group of blogger’s who needs, wants, and desires to have more comments on their blogs. For this group I have a few easy to implement suggestions. The first one is that you need to reward your visitors for making comments.

I am going to make some suggestions here that are basically useless if you have lousy content. It is better to post great content every three days or so or maybe once a week than to waste your time posting just to post. People respond when you post ads value to their lives or stirs up emotions.

You then must learn to promote your blog. I have read hundreds of really useful blogs that lacked comments. We all have heard content is king but that only true if it is found and read. I am not going to go into detail about how to market a blog that’s been covered way to many times by others. If you new to blogging and blog promotion then go to Google and search for something like blog promotion tutorials. You will find lots of useful info.

The easiest way is to increase comments is to make your blog Do Follow. Yes, it will increase spam that’s the is the price you pay for attempting to acquire more comments. Here is how you make Do Follow work for you. First, your blog must be moderated so the spam doesn’t appear on your blog. Then you will need to add a plugin to protect yourself from bot spam. You might want to look into the Bad Behavior plugin. I have since added other layers of anti spam defenses..

This plugin will do nothing to stop comment spam from low wage countries such as China, India, Eastern Europe, or from unscrupulous link builders. Most of these comments will end up in your spam filter and will be easy to discard. This blog was averaging about 250 spam comments a day until I installed Bad Behavior. That has been reduced by about 95%. Be careful to actually review these spam comments. I usually pull several comments out of Akismet everyday. They are easier to find when I don’t have to sort through hundreds of comments to find the good ones.

Now, you will want to add the Comment & Keyword Luv plugins. The Comment Luv plugin pulls a permalink from your blogs latest post automatically. The newest version allows you to pull a much wider variety of posts from up to five different blogs. That permalink is added to the end of their comment. So others blogger’s are rewarded with a second link. Other blogger’s tend to leave better comments and they just might write about you if you have a great blog. (I no longer use these or recommend them.)

The Keyword Luv plugin allows you to use your name along with your anchor text link of the commenter’s choosing in the comments name field. This is an extremely valuable incentive for someone to leave a comment especially if they don’t have a blog. However, many purists will never use this plugin because they believe people should comment solely based on the posts content and that they should use a real name. Keyword Luv allows you to use both.

While I respect that opinion I think this position misses the dynamic changes that are occurring in the industry. Acquiring links that allow link juice to flow (Do Follow Links) are increasingly more difficult to obtain. This is especially true since Google began waging war on the practice of buying and selling links. Blogs are now ground zero in the link building game. So why not use this to your advantage?

Finally, there is one final piece of this puzzle to be put into place. You should consider thanking your commenter’s in an email. I am not talking about using an auto responders here. What I am suggesting is a short email response of a sentence or two that expresses gratitude for the commenter’s efforts. This shows that you genuinely care about the person who left a comment. This will encourage them to return or maybe even mention your blog on their blog. OMG what a concept, showing that you care!

If someone asks a very specific question I often will often answer that question on the blog. I will then respond in person with an answer or I will provide a link back to the answer on the blog. This encourages this person to return to the blog to see your answer. This approach was provided bunches of accolades from my readers. They often are very surprised to get a response. I can’t begin to express the huge amount of good will this has produced.

Now, I will admit that when I get busy I can not respond to all comments. Thus I get a bit choosy when responding. However, if someone has left a truly worthy comment that got my attention I will definitely response. I am still new enough to blogging that I really enjoy most of the comments that I receive here. What really makes my day is when I read the return emails thanking me for responding personally. These are often very real, warm, and heart felt.

In closing I have one more suggestion for you to battle comment spam. I placed a minimum requirement on comments to obtain a link from this blog. The commenter must leave a 20 word comment before I will approve it. Anything less and the comment usually will get deleted. If the comment is short but useful it will be posted without a link.

What this posts is really about is treating your visitors with respect and giving them an incentive to comment and then rewarding them when you get the desired results which are great comments.

Update 06/10/2009 – There was another point that I would like to mention. I verify almost every website that wants a link from me. You need to be careful who you link to these days. While I am verifying if the website is worth linking to I often leave a comment on the blog if they have one. That’s really shows appreciation and really spreads good will.

Update 01/24/2010: I have not done any of what I have suggested over the last few months. This has been due to the fact that Geri, my life partner, is critically ill and has been in and out of the hospital over the last few months. Yet, this has also been a lesson about appreciating your readers. Many of those whom I have personally thanks for there comments have returned in our time of need and shared their caring and warm support. So being nice and appreciating your readers can pay off in ways that you never imagined.

Are you ready to grow your blog comments and possibly your search rankings?

What say you?

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