Do blog comments matter for SEO?
Blog comments are exactly what they sound like- comments on a personal or company’s blog post.
The thing is, blog comments used to work and be an integral part of SEO. As more and more research is published, it points to all signs showing that they have not worked and for a long time. Just like keyword stuffing, quickly growing backlinks and so many other black hat SEO strategies that Google has shunned, blog comments can fall into this category.
They are not necessarily shunned from Google but part of a no-longer necessary strategy.
Blog commenting has quickly become the space for spammy, incoherent, generic comments left for keyword-rich anchor text.
Do blog comments help SEO? Our Denver SEO experts explain this in more detail below.
Let’s review the data
HubSpot analyzed over 100,000 websites with blog comments ranging from hundreds to thousands of comments, and based on their extensive research, the correlation between the number of visitors to that blog was very limited.
However, keep in mind that there were some websites that had blog comments that did bring in some visits and website traffic.
HubSpots’ final conclusion- blog comments are not correlated with increased traffic.
There is never a clear consensus between the marketing community because there is not a one-size-fits-all for digital marketing strategies. This causes a common debate with marketers that question again if these comments are worth it or you should disable this from your blog content.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
Latent semantic indexing is when blog comments on a post are synonymous with the keyword/s that are integrated within the context of the blog itself. It is suggested that these synonyms are indexed by Google to help a blog rank based on the most LSI keywords in place.
In 2019, John Mueller replied to a tweet and debunked the idea that LSI is still a major role in ranking in search engines, specifically Google.
And even more recently, Bill Slawski with Go Fish Digital explained the same notion that this no longer works in search engines.
Why are SEOs finally saying this?
It is because of the change in Google and technology! Yes, while backlinking itself is an older strategy that still works today, this is no longer the case for LSI. (LSI is an even older strategy than backlinking itself.)
To answer this question: No, blog comments for SEO do not matter anymore. If you get comments, awesome work, but if not, do not stress. If you are working hard on backlinking strategies with blog comments integrated, our Denver SEO experts suggest that you pivot that strategy elsewhere.
For more information on updating your SEO strategy or getting started today, contact our Denver SEO experts at Denver Media Group!