Wednesday 15 August 2007

THERE ARE NO MORE EXCUSES FOR NOT COMMENTING

Criz’s Sanctuary

Do you ever realize that you seem to get not many comments for your posts most of the time? What are the reasons people are not commenting? Is it because of plain laziness to blog hop and make a comment or is it because there are no benefits at all for the blog hoppers to gain?

After weeks for researching and commenting in foreign blogs, I came across some interesting findings which I think it will be a waste if I do not share them with my readers. Everyone deserved the right to improve their page rank as well as getting better traffics and backlinks for their sites. Try checking out Dave Lucas's site on increasing blog traffics. Some of you might not even know how to do this without proper guidance. Since I am a Blogger user, I am going to share with you the findings.

Most of the time, you will just use the pre-designed templates provided by Blogger. That is the easiest way out as not many people have the knowledge and experience to come out with a good design. On top of that, there is the HTML language barrier. What you do not know is that all the templates come with a “nofollow attribute”. This is to discourage comment spam. By doing this, you are stopping the search spiders to follow the link and thus stopping the sharing of your “Google Juice” with your fellow bloggers.

What can you do to attract your readers to comment? You share your link juice with them, once they comment in your post. What is the EXTRA BENEFIT that you can give to your readers as a token of appreciation? You give them backlinks. Here are the simple 3 steps that may help you:

Firstly, to discourage comment spam, you need to set the comment moderation in your Blogger account. After logging in your Dashboard, go to CUSTOMIZE, SETTINGS, COMMENT, ENABLE COMMENT MODERATION, YES. Save your template after you are done.

Secondly, you have to do some minor alteration to your HTML in Blogger. Before doing that, save a backup by clicking on DOWNLOAD FULL TEMPLATE. Then, go to CUSTOMIZE, EDIT HTML, tick the EXPAND WIDGET TEMPLATES, search for the following codes:

< dl id='comments-block'>
< b:loop values='data:post.comments'var='comment'>
< dt class='comment-author'expr:id='"comment-" + data:comment.id'>
< a expr:name='"comment-" +data:comment.id'/>
< b:if cond='data:comment.authorUrl'>
< a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl'
rel='nofollow'> < data:comment.author/> < /a>
< b:else/>
< data:comment.author/>
< /b:if>
< data:commentPostedByMsg/>
< /dt>

REMOVE the codes in RED. Save the template.

Criz’s Sanctuary

Lastly, CHOOSE a nice COLOUR WIDGET which is suitable for your blog template from Randy Clay Design to be added prominently to your side bar. This is to ensure that whoever sees this logo will be aware that they will gain an additional backlink from you by commenting. Do encourage your fellow bloggers to do this as this is a WIN-WIN situation for both parties.

For those who are using Wordpress, you can visit this site to gather more information. As for Moveable Type users, try this site.


15 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know what you mean! I'm always trying to get people to comment!

Unknown said...

It's quite simple... I don't comment when I don't feel I have something to say. Sometimes it depends on the mood too... if I'm feeling "interactive" or passive... there are days I comment like mad and then i can go weeks without leaving even one! Sorry for not commenting more often ler... *huggles*

AnDuLu said...

yeah...lazyness plays a big role

AaronWoolala said...

Yeah man. I need to get me a new template. lol~

zewt said...

anyone care to do up a nice template for me? i am a computer idiot ler... :)

SaeWei said...

wee~ thanks Criz.. it's very useful indeed.. will test it.. if i get 20 comments for each post.. pizza hut on me yah.. hahaha ;)

Anonymous said...

Wow that's interesting! I heard about this nofollow thing before. Should give it a try!

Anonymous said...

keke.. sad to see no comments on posts but wad to do. ppl tend to be passive readers.

i seldom comments as i'm very-the-busy and i just read everyone blogs linked and update on wad and how everyone's doing.

savante said...

INteresting idea. But what I usually do is go check out the blogs of people who do comment.

CRIZ LAI said...

dave: thanks. I have linked your traffic improvement to my post

annabel: one of the reasons too... mood... when I moody I commented more.. haha :P

andulu: laziness does not pay, do you know? You get nowhere and you stay stagnant within your comfort zone.

aaron: by when?? haha... hope to see a change in your blog soon :)

zewt: want meh?? your page looked nice already :)

saewei: I am waiting :P

nastasshea: it's free anyway. Do try it out :)

anna: you are excused. I know that working, writing PPP and bloghopping could be real tiring. You have a good example here :P

savante: I do that too but at times fatigue disallowed me to do that.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for d info, I'm think to try too! :P
I comment when I know what to comment! :P

Anggie's Journal said...

Sometime we have no idea what to comments and what to write ... See look see look and get some idea ...to post a comments :) Not only post need some inspiration and idea, even comments need idea also to have it's own "origin" mah ... true ar ?? u thot me this too... MUST ORIGIN either a post or comments.. :) But for our readers to leave comments to our blog is actually important and it's give us GVOORMMMS to write on..
Btw... so long very drop by here .sory yerrr ... *_*

Shemah said...

I just read that when you DO a no follow on technorati buttons, feedburner link, it can help to increase your PR. It was explained how, but I'm just not tech savvy enough to follow what it means. Heheh.

Anyways, I do try to comment on every page I go to. It's easier when the topics bloggers post are relative and interesting to you. :)

Anonymous said...

I'm not someone who comments because I want Pagerank juice by commenting on others' blogs.

Personally, I find it very, very, very hard to comment on posts that are created for sponsored links.

I don't know whether the story in the post is made up or whether it's true.

I don't know if the post content is just blatant advertising or whether it's sincere.

If I am in doubt, I am simply just not inspired to comment. It's as simple as that.

deepa venkitesh said...

saved ur page for chewing words,thanks for info.

Blog Widget by LinkWithin