If you have a blog on your content management website, you will have the option to enable or disable commenting. For bloggers who plan to blog at least once a week, commenting provides an interface to interact with your viewers. However, some small business owners are noticing the malicious nature of spammers and are receiving more spam than actual comments. In this case, disabling commenting may be a better option, especially if blogging is done less than once a month.
To help you decide, here is a rundown of the pros and cons of allowing commenting on your website:
PROS:
- If you are an active blogger, the comment system can open your blog up to interacting with your users and readers, sometimes allowing valuable feedback on your posts.
- Comments discussions on your posts can often lead to increased traffic on your site.
- Trackbacks and Pingbacks are comment links from other blogs. Allowing these types of comments can help create a network of links to and from related blogs around the internet.
CONS:
- Spammers love the comment system. By allowing comments on your blog, you open your site up to the exploitation of spammers.
- In order to rid yourself of SPAM comments, you will need to regularly moderate the comments on your blog, and you must learn to be proficient at spotting SPAM and removing it.
- Comments on your blog are likely to take up your time, even if you don’t get large amounts of SPAM.
Making your decision:
When deciding whether or not to allow commenting on your blog posts, the most important decision to ask yourself is “Do I plan on blogging regularly, and will my posts benefit from the potential feedback of my readers?” If the answer is yes, it is probably worthwhile to enable comments on your blog. If your answer is no, and you only plan on using your site’s blog to post periodic updates about your company, or other “read-only” posts, you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by disabling comments on your site.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns about comments on your site, please don’t hesitate to contact me.