Having comments or keep them turned off?

[built]

Do you allow comments on your posts?

I feel like it might help user engagement and build a better brand in the long run but I currently have had comments turned off.

 

[Tucky]

I tend to keep them open for comments. Obviously you do get some people just wanting to drop a link but if it's an ok site then I let it fly. Sometimes if it's a spam one I just remove the link. Having comments looks good and allows you to respond to each one, thereby adding more content and maybe some more keywords

 

[built]

I tend to keep them open for comments. Obviously you do get some people just wanting to drop a link but if it's an ok site then I let it fly. Sometimes if it's a spam one I just remove the link. Having comments looks good and allows you to respond to each one, thereby adding more content and maybe some more keywords

Do you use disqus or Facebook comment system?

 

[Tucky]

Just the standard wp system with CleanTalk plugin.

 

[Calamari]

I usually leave comments on and let askimet approve them automatically. Some people really are knowledgeable and contribute a lot of useful stuff, especially if they have something to complain about. People also end up talking to one another and having real conversations.

I don't know about Facebook or disqus for sure, but I'm nearly positive that you won't get the extra content benefit from either of those. Double check the source code to see what shows up.

 

[CCarter]

Google has indexed javascript for a long time:

To Learn how far they've gotten with javascript: We Tested How Googlebot Crawls Javascript And Here’s What We Learned

TL;DR

1. We ran a series of tests that verified Google is able to execute and index JavaScript with a multitude of implementations. We also confirmed Google is able to render the entire page and read the DOM, thereby indexing dynamically generated content.

2. SEO signals in the DOM (page titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, meta robots tags, etc.) are respected. Content dynamically inserted in the DOM is also crawlable and indexable. Furthermore, in certain cases, the DOM signals may even take precedence over contradictory statements in HTML source code. This will need more work, but was the case for several of our tests.​

 

[eliquid]

I think it depends if you want to keep it evergreen or not.

Im actually thinking about taking off the date in the post and the dates in comments for all my posts going forward

 

[Calamari]

Im actually thinking about taking off the date in the post and the dates in comments for all my posts going forward

I have dates off on posts and comments. I don't want people to be discouraged from commenting or replying to a comment because it's a year old.

Comment dates played into freshness factors at one point. The latest comment date would show up in the serps. I haven't noticed one in awhile so I'm not sure if it still does.

 

[FoxHoundMM]

Can google bots figure out the freshness of a blog post or article if the dates and time stamps are off?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Can google bots figure out the freshness of a blog post or article if the dates and time stamps are off?

Yes, it compares the most recent cache date to the present and if something has changed then it recaches with a new time stamp associated with it.