This post contains affiliate links.
Recently I visited a promoted article for a peer blogger I respect and enjoy reading their work often. I was however very disappointed not because it was a bad article, the article was fantastic and presented a lot of good information.
I was disappointed because commenting and conversations were disabled on the article, I was unable to add my feedback and share in the conversation especially when I had experience and information I could add that could benefit the article and other readers visiting.
This lack of 2 way conversation defeats the purposes of what blogging is about, blogging is designed to be a communication 2 way street. Social Media goes hand in hand with blogging now and being able to interact, accept feedback and allow opinions encourages engagement.
The only main reasons that are valid to prevent commenting on a blog post are:
Article Topic Not Valid
If the article is a contest or an article about a topic that has been irrelevant for a long time, or no longer contains valid information then it makes sense to negate further conversations on the article. I don’t follow this rule myself, I never close commenting on articles, but I can see where it makes sense.
Spamming for PageRank Links
This is common with bloggers using WordPress commenting, especially with CommentLuv and/or other DoFollow comment enhancing systems. Your posts as they age start to establish PageRank, so you will start seeing spammers target and leave comments on your articles that have established PageRank. This doesn’t mean commenting should be disabled per say, only that you need to tighten up your spam rules and or commenting system to weed out the spam further or further cut down on the ratio.
Not Interested in Conversations
This may be a simple vent article or article where you just want to get something out but have 0 interest in anybody taking part, I can see this on rant blogs and other "my share only" type of blogs.
Again, I can see some valid reasons why one would disable comments on a blog, by default WordPress disables comments after 14 days but I think this just kills conversation and ultimately weakens your article’s ability to keep engagement for longer periods of time.
What other reasons do you have for not allowing comments on a blog post or article?
-Justin Germino
WPX Support
Latest posts by WPX Support (see all)
- What Posts and Videos Will Get Popular is Still a Mystery - December 16, 2016
- Poem: Weeping Priest - October 30, 2016
- Reflecting on 8 Years of Dragon Blogger - September 29, 2016