When it comes to allowing comments on your site content, this is normally a great way to engage with your audience as well as receive feedback about how your content is being perceived. This type of content can also help significantly boost your SEO. Why is it Harmful? Whilst you may think that comment spam is mostly harmful. It can have several knock-on effects that can seriously damage your site. Comment Spam is normally low in quality and so this can reduce the overall tone of your site. This, in turn, could drive users and other visitors away from your site. The spam can cause higher than usual traffic which is confusing for content evaluators when trying to decide what is working and what isn’t. Sometimes spam can just be outright harmful to your business or your customers and so is best avoided. Consider Turning it Off Whilst, as we said, there are many good things about comments, if they are doing more harm than good, then consider just turning them off. Or only enable them on selected pieces of content.  Turn On Moderation This allows all comments to be reviewed by a moderator before them appearing on your site. This means that your moderators will only let through the comments that you want to see appearing on the site. This can greatly help your users particularly when it comes to discussing controversial or trending topics as it can keep the discussion focused. The downside to this is that as you experience higher levels of traffic then your moderators are going to be kept more and more busy reviewing content before it appears. Consider Implementing a reCAPTCHA This is a free to implement CAPTCHA type system. If you have ever had to type in some hard to read codes or pick the traffic lights in a number of pictures you have seen something like this. You can sign up for access to the latest version of this free system that helps deter spammers from posting. It will even provide you with a score that tells you the level of suspicion that the software sees of the user. You can then adjust your settings to only lets scores of a certain amount through.  Use ‘nofollow’ Tags in Comments Though you can outright ban links in comments, if you still want to use them, then you can implement the ‘nofollow’ standard in your HTML. This will tell Google to ignore any links in your comments when it comes to determining PageRank or relevancy. Though it won’t stop Spam comments from being made, it does stop the spammers from getting any benefits from spamming links which is likely to deter them from spamming in the first place. Final Thoughts When it comes to comment sections, they can be a real minefield. With some nuggets of gold in it. A thriving commenting community will boost your site but will attract more spammers. Fortunately our Liverpool SEO Agency, has given you some tools that you can use to help you.

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