For past couple of months I have been working on a new WordPress SEO plugin, trying to continue the long tradition of my SEO plugins like SEO Friendly Images and SEO Smart Links.
The plugin works around the idea of putting blog comments on "steroids", and basically using them to super charge your blog's SEO. And with the recently announced change in Google's way of treating nofollow links and the intrigue it brought up, the whole concept just got a new kick.
And the actual idea is quite simple. Bear with me.
Concept behind SEO Super Comments
For each user comment we will create a new dynamic page on the blog, holding the actual comment information. This page will not actually exist in WordPress database, but we will create it dynamically using a WordPress plugin.
What we instantly get in this way is big jump in site's index visible to search engines. This is possible because blog comments are crawl-able, index-able and most importantly rank-able content. Also meaning you will start to get search engine traffic for the context of the comment.
The old author link in the comments will now lead to the newly generated page. Author's URL will still be displayed (and we can do-follow it now as it will be only one external link on the page).
The concept relies around optimizing the target page using title and H1 tag using the context of the comment. So basically we will take the excerpt of the comment and use it to create the page title and H1 tag and in the body we will old the content of the comment (plus some more goodies, read on).
Since now all comments normally drain page rank even when nofollowed (bad for your site) the whole idea of using them to generate links back to your site instead and get free indexable content along the way, looks just much more appealing.
To spice things up, the dynamic comment page concept additionally features:
- List of author's other comments on the post are presented (good value for the visitor, more content)
- List of author's other comments on the blog (even more content, chance to interlink to your other posts, more value to the visitor)
- Author url links are do-followed (option, but why not?)
- Extra few clicks generated will increase your pageviews, lower the bounce rate and increase any CPM advertsing revenue
- I have also created a mod for hugely popular XML sitemaps plugin to include all the new dynamic comment pages into your sitemap, so that the search engines can index the pages more quickly.
Preliminary results of the SEO Super Comments concept testing
In best tradition of 'eating one's own dog food' I have decided to test the concept and the plugin on my own site.
Two days ago I installed the plugin (no other changes are necessary to the blog, everything is automatic).
There were couple of things that I noticed:
- Google seems to have liked it very much. It 'swallowed' around 1,500 comment pages in the first day (gulp!)
- Search engine traffic to the new pages started coming the very first day as the graph below shows (I created a segment in Google Analytics to filter out traffic to comment pages; learn how to do that here)
Google Analytics Segment for Super Comments pages
The gain in index size for the site is massive. Although my site has only 290 posts, I do have over 6,000 comments which all are indexable separately now as pages.
The user experience is enhanced because I am able to see other comments by the same user across the topic or the entire site by clicking their name. Here is an example.
All users can get dofollow links back to their site as well as there is now only one external link on the page (this is of course at the discretion of webmaster).
The best of all, this new traffic is primarily for long tail phrases.
The users of search engines are getting more savvy and increasingly using long tail searches (I've seen a Google's chart showing 45% of all search is long tail currently).
The comment pages immediately started ranking on page 1 of search results for a huge number of phrases as the landing keywords from my test illustrate below.
SEO Super Comments is great source of long tail traffic
For a better illustration of benefits of long tail search you can quickly refer to the graph below.
Conclusion
If your site has a lot of comments, think of them about one big resource capable of generating free search traffic. This is what SEO Super Comments concept is about. Oh, and it deals with the recently announced nofollow behavior quite well.
I hope to tweak and finish the plugin in next few days, incorporating few more ideas I have. I acknowledge that usability can still be improved, remember this is just an SEO concept.
See also:
- SEO Super Comments
- SEO Super Comments WordPress plugin released
- Mind your comments, someone may be watching
Posted in: SEO
TAGS:basic seo concept, blog comments seo, can start seo, comment seo, concept search engine optimization, google seo concept, gragh shows, graph shows, long tail, new seo, new seo concept, seo commenting list, seo super comments disqus, wordpress nofollow comments, wordpress seo, wordpress seo concept
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53 Comments
Hi,
Thanks for this good plugin. It sounds really good, but apparently, it doesn't work with W3 Total Cache. I've got this error :
W3 Total Cache Error: Minify error: Unterminated String: 'Good works , i have translated to chinese
On a comment page, when I click on a comment.
Do you have an idea how to solve that, I really want to use this plugin.
Thanks
Baptitste
Finally, I solved the problem. Apparently it comes from an other plugin incompatible with SEO Super Comments.
Does it work with WP 3.0?
Thanks
How about try it? :)
Yes, it works well :)
I had no problem on my installation and it's currently running, I hope, for a long time.
Baptiste
I really like the idea and I am itching to get rid of Disqus. Will it work with version 3? It seems like its been a while since SEO Super Comments was updated.
d install it as soon as it is available. WOW! This is killer.
I can't wait for it to be released and install it as soon as it is available.
WOW! This is killer.
I can't wait for it to be released and install it as soon as it is available.
Today google pointed one of the comment as duplicate title as well as duplicate meta description.
As I continue learning, I will continue trying! I know with enough studying, I'll get it! Thank you for sharing this knowledge!
You all might want to try this solution: http://www.novkovic.net/seo-super-comments-modified-files-for-the-google-xml-sitemaps-plugin-version-32/.
Need help!!
I have been placing links for over a six month now and am still ranking very low,,
I just came upon this and was wondering if and how this would affect server resources considering that all pages are served dynamically. I might have missed it but what was the reason for generating the pages dynamically? Will caching plugins cache the pages?
Aoo Vladimir.. i have question
How to avoid duplicate all meta tag ( title, description, and keyword) on seo super comment permalink with original post permalink !! I mean like this
ori post permalink : http://xxxxxx.com/archives/517
seo super comment permalink : http://xxxxxx.com/archives/517?cid=38
Cuz its seem have the same meta attribute, and can really terrible on Google search !!
only this, thank be4 !!
Love the SEO Super Comment and have already installed it on one of my blogs. Very simple! My question is with the Title tag in the comment page it generates. Wouldn't it be better from an SEO standpoint to make the title one of the blog posts "tags"? Making the title out of the first line of the comment doesn't seem to give much SEO benefit or make a lot of sense. Alot of the titles in the pages it generated for my site were like "hi great blog, I have a question" or something like that.
Hw do you get the XML Sitemap Plugin tp show the new comment pages?
I'll try translate to spanish but i don't locate text "Response to", "Says", ... for translate.
Can you help me ??
Hi Vladimir,
This plugin sounds like a great idea but for some reason I am either setting it up wrong, I don't understand what it actually does or it just won't work on my site.
I am assuming that the author of the comment gets his own page when they have multiple comments on your site. I am just not seeing this happen, when I click on the comment authors name I get sent straight to their site and not a new page on my site, am I misunderstanding something?
I have set up for the plugin by checking the show comment authors url's everything else is as default?
Am I missing something or would it be a plugin or theme conflict I am experiencing?
Your response is very much appreciated.
great plugin :)
i have added it to my list of must have seo plugins for wordpress
http://www.gupshupblog.com/2009/07/must-have-wordpress-seo-plugins/
@Michael:
Vladimir, isn't it intended to leave out the comments from sitemap.xls to avoid duplicate content?
@Ian:
It has worked with all comments for me.
Does it work with already existing comments - or just new ones which are posted after installing the plugin?
Same for me..... Sitemap.xml aint showing the &cid's
I have the same question as @Kingsley about the XML Sitemap. Mine isn't showing the comment pages either
Hw do you get the XML Sitemap Plugin tp show the new comment pages?
I rebuilt the sitemap plugin and it doesn;t show any of the new pages.
Thanks
Very interesting setup. I'd be interested to see what visitor behavior is like when comments pages are a bit more welcoming and contextual.
Yes, and i´m testing it right now
Vladimir:
This is an absolutely original and creative concept.
If you hadn't prepared all that SEO site analysis and reporting you would still have done well ... but you went the extra mile to validate your hypothesis ... your work is amazing to say the least.
FYI, I just disabled the Disqus commetning system. One of my primary reasons for waiting before I disabled it is that commenting systems like Disqus and Intense Debate make the comments indexable by giving all the commenters a mini-profile page.
However, what you've done has taken away the need for all that. Your idea is better because the indexable dynamic page stays on my site instead of as a profile page on Disqus or IntenseDebate.
I wonder why there are only 2 good ratings for your SEO Friendly Plugin on your WordPress Plugin Page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-super-comments/
May i ask everyone who uses this Plugin to take a moment and vote for Vladimir ... it is the least we can do!
Do you know if this Plugin will conflict with other external comment Plugins like:
Disqus, Backtype, IntenseDebate, etc?
I love the concept though. Excellent.