Every blogger likes to get feedback and encouragement through comments. Sometimes, you will get a negative feedback or a rude comment or spam. If you publish all the comments that has been submitted to your blog, then your blog’s comment section will definitely look awkward. To keep it clean you need to publish a guidelines for commenting and approve comments that adheres the guidelines.
Which will make a border, a limit in what a reader can say and can’t say in their comments. If any comment is a violation to your comment policy then you can simply hit “trash”.
Google already is very serious in their algorithm updates, they are killing several sites for some reason, so it wouldn’t be good if you let spams in your comment section or let unrelated sites link posted in your comment section. If Google gets strict, we must also be strict.
How To Write A Comment Policy For Your Blog
1. No Links In The Comments
Let your readers know that they are not encouraged to include a link in their comments unless situation makes it a must to include a link. For Eg, in case a comment asks for a link to something then the reply could have a link.
2. Only English
English is the universal language, so let them know that only comments in English will be approved and others will be trashed.
3. No Keywords In Name
To get more quality backlinks some commentators will put a keyword instead of their name. Let them know that it’s not allowed and only comments with proper name will be approved.
4. No Unrelated Comments
Let them know that if a comment is off-topic then it’s going to find it’s place in trash.
5. No Promotion or Affiliate Marketing
Comment section is not a place to promote anything or to market affiliate products. Let’s tell them if any of the comments seems to be promoting stuffs it will be deleted.
6. Should Not Be Harassing
Let your readers know that harassing others isn’t allowed and such comments will be deleted.
7. You Have Rights To Edit The Comments
Let your readers know that you have rights to edit their comments in case of grammatical error or typographical error or for any other reasons.
8. You Have Rights To Remove Their Website Links
It would be awkward if someone leaves a completely off-topic site’s link in your site isn’t it? So let them know such links are not allowed and you have rights to remove them.
9. NoFollow Or DoFollow
Let your readers know whether their links will have a nofollow tag or not.
10. You Have Rights To Delete Comments That Are Violating The Comment Policy
Lastly, tell them you have rights to delete their comments if it is violating your comment policy.
I got irritated when I see comments having links in the comment body and keyword in the name field.
Nice pointers. Thanks.
Yes, I do agree with you Atish. That is one of the reason it took me long to check the comment folder because I will have to remove links and do stuffs like that until I installed a plugin to do that for me.
Having these things into consideration is a great way for chasing out the bad guys. Thanks Praveen for your post.
I too agree with you guys. Its irritating if someone spams your comment page. I never do that. Thanks for writing nice article about the same.
But some people may get annoyed by someone telling them what to do and what not to do when they are trying to express their comments.
Yes, I do agree with you Gautham. That is one of the reason it took me long to check the comment folder because I will have to remove links and do stuffs like that until I installed a plugin to do that for me.
Nice tips for comments. Will implement it while writing comments
Thanks Sandip, I appreciate it.
Best Tips.. We should never comment for just promotion of website. Be real and always do good comments.
We simply use the WP settings to require admin approval and commenter must have a previously approved comment. To that we add captcha. Should a spam comment somehow get through (which is rare), we make sure to mark it as spam (as compared to trashing it). That way the identifying information is available to blacklist organizations.
You are right, except that it’s not rare. Lots and lots of spam comments will get through all the captcha plugins.
Praveen good post! I own quite a few very successful blogs and I know how big pain these comments could be!
Trust me out of every 20 comments I receive only one is that I can approve, I have all the guidelines and conditions, but no body listens. One more thing that really pisses of off are the automated tools to comment, they are the biggest pain in the back!
Yes, it’s almost the same care here. I suggestion is to write a comment policy and delete comments that violate, so that they knew it why their comment wasn’t approved.
So there are chances next time they will follow the guidelines or atleast they will stop sending mails about their comments.
Automated tools is the real problem, I use AntiSpam Bee plugin and it works great.
I think what you have listed is the basic etiquette in forum commenting. Readers who violate those must re learn how to interact online.
Great. actually some people are doing commenting just to be linked up. They forgot the proper etiquette and end up spamming.
@Praveen,
Again, we use captcha IN COMBINATION WITH the WP approval settings. And again, it works very well.
You can write all the policies you want. Spammers don’t care. It’s like putting a speed limit sign on a street. Until you provide a negative conditioning response that frustrates them into doing something else, it’s meaningless.
Having a comment policy is quite important for sure. The lure of free backlinks makes many people leave useless comments otherwise. It is hard work to monitor every comment but it is worth it.
-Jean
Good commenting policy there. For me, I just remove spammy-look comments and approve those that are written by humans! Haha… cool eh?
So, do come over my blog and see if you want to post a comment or two.
(All right, hopefully my comment will get approved.)
I have to agree with you Praveen– it is your blog, and you should have total control over it to keep the quality up! If people spam or link from bad neighborhoods, it can hurt your rankings, so it is completely up to you to make sure that does not happen. Most everyone realizes these things, so I think they are pretty much non-issues, especially since Google Penguin— it’s more important now to build relationships and use common sense when working online.
Hi,
I came across your blog via google. Really, I have spent the last 3mins reading these great articles you have here.
Hopefully, soon, I will do a gugest blog here.
Cheers!
Chibueze