I was recently doing some blog hopping by following the links back from blog posts via comments. I really enjoy leveraging the CommentLuv WordPress Plugin in that you can see the titles of bloggers posts so you can see if something interests you by a title.
One thing I experienced visiting bloggers who leave their posts on CommentLuv is that the article that is linked to can be fantastic and interesting, but when I want to comment I see the "Comments are closed". This shuts out a reader from providing interaction with a blog post and I was wondering why blogs would want to close comments, especially when they do so within 14 days after a post goes live?
I mean, I can see shutting comments off on a post older than say 6 months or 1 year because chances are unless you wrote something timeless, you will only get people trying to abuse the Pagerank benefit that a post gains with age. But to close comments after 14 days? I think that articles are often found for the first time within 2-3 weeks on a site, I know some articles I tweet on twitter are seen for the first time weeks later by some people.
From an SEO standpoint you get higher SERP listings when you have recent activity on a post, so a post that is very active and with recent comments has a better chance of ranking higher. By closing comments you prevent any of that interaction and updates and can hurt the SEO value of your post significantly.
I wrote several blog posts about leaving comments on blogs and even why bloggers should have a comment disclosure policy on their blogs to help give them guidelines when deleting, modifying or flagging a comment as spam.
Comments are not only the life blood of blogs, but they are one of the main things that incite others to visit and share their views. The interaction is what separates a blog from a newspaper and I don’t think readers should have their right to share their views or contribute their insights into the article taken away from them.
How many bloggers have comment close policies? Do you close your comments after a set interval or leave them open indefinitely? Share your view!
-Dragon Blogger
