CommentLuv is a plugin for WordPress that promises to increase comments and social engagement on your website. There is a free version and an ehanced premium version which starts from $67. If you read blogs regularly, you will probably have seen it before. The free version of the plugin has been downloaded around 677,000 times and I have seen many people using the premium version too.
The plugin aims to reward commenters by automatically placing a link to their latest blog post directly after their comment. This encourages more people to leave a comment on your blog. The premium version has additional features such as letting commenters who tweet your post link to any blog post they like.
I have no intentions of installing CommentLuv on any of my blogs. There are many reasons why most top blogs are not using CommentLuv. Today, I would like to explain my own reasons for not implementing the plugin on my websites.
1. Quality is More Important Than Quantity
CommentLuv has proved that it can help you attract more commenters, however it does not attract good commenters. Many of the people who leave comments will not even read your article. They will simply scan it quickly and then leave a comment that does not look too spammy.
This means that a high percentage of comments on CommentLuv are irrelevant. Many commenters publish a generic comment that can be left on any blog. Is this the type of comment you want for your blog?
It is much better to have 5 good comments than 25 poor ones. I value comments highly though the quality of comments should always take precedence over quantity.
2. It Can Hurt Discussions
Sometimes the discussion that arises from a blog post is better than the blog post itself. If most comments are from people who are leaving short and/or irrelevant comments, good commenters may be scared away.
Imagine the flow of a discussion in the comment area:
- Good Comment
- Great Comment
- Good Comment
- Good Comment
Good comments left by readers can encourage others to leave a comment too. Bad comments do the opposite. Now imagine a discussion that was littered with bad comments:
- Bad Comment
- Great Comment
- Bad Comment
- Irrelevant Comment
You can see how a pattern of poor comments could hurt a good discussion developing. If one of your readers scans through comments and sees lots of poorly written irrelevant comments, they may be discouraged from leaving a comment of their own.
3. CommentLuv Commenters Do Not Care About You or Your Website
I realise that there are people out there who do leave good comments on CommentLuv enabled websites. Unfortunately, a very high percentage of commenters are only leaving comment in the hope of getting some SEO juice and a little traffic. Search for “CommentLuv Enabled Blogs” online and you will find many bloggers sharing lists of what blogs are using CommentLuv. If you check out the comment area on those posts, you will find people sharing their strategy of getting free traffic through CommentLuv.
Two of my favourite blogging blogs, FamousBloggers and BasicBlogTips, use CommentLuv. I published an article on Basic Blog Tips entitled “Recognize the Value of Your Blog and Your Self Worth“. The article focused on the fact that you can be passionate about blogging and make money through it. A lot of the people who replied to my article left good comments however there were a lot of comments from people who left a comment who clearly did not read my article. Their comments said that they agreed with me and that we should not try and earn money through blogging; which was the complete opposite of what I said in the article. This made it clear that those people simply scanned the article quickly and then left an irrelevant comment.
These type of people aren’t interested in what you are saying and are only looking for a link back to their blog. Once they have published a quick comment on your blog and linked back to their own blog, they will leave. Why do you want to attract people like that? Why do you want to reward them with a link?
On a side note, you will find that most of the websites that share CommentLuv lists do not link to the websites on the list as they are worried about losing SEO juice and traffic. I don’t know where to begin with how wrong that is! ;)
Overview
CommentLuv users generally tend to be inexperienced. If you are a blog owner, I would discourage you from installing CommentLuv as it attracts poor quality comments to your blog.
I would also discourage you from trying to promote your blog by spending time searching for CommentLuv blogs to leave a comment. All search engines place an emphasis on the quality of the website that is linking to you. A natural link from an authority blog is worth more to yfour SEO rankings than 100 links in the comment area. It is one of the worst ways you can spend your time marketing a website.
I am not trying to discourage you from leaving comments on blogs. Far from it. However, you should leave a comment in the hope of someone clicking your website link. Take the time to write a good comment and the owner of the blog, and other commenters, will want to find out more about you.
Good luck,
Kevin