I’ve noticed a steady decline in comments after I removed my CommentLuv (free) plugin a few months back.

I’ve had this website online now for almost two years in its current form (WordPress) and I’ve done my fair share of tweaking parts of the site. I install new plugins fairly regularly and remove ones that aren’t working for me. When something really sticks out to me as being useful and worthwhile I even write about it from time to time. A few weeks ago, I did a review of free WordPress Comment Plugins on my Bloggablestuff.com site, with the plugin LiveFyre receiving the best rating at the time due to social integration. I still maintain that LiveFyre is a great plugin, but I don’t think it’s the best – and I’ll tell you why AND which plugin I do think is the best (and why).

Back in November, I saw a post on TheJackB’s site about his use of CommentLuv Premium and why he thought it was the plugin to use. The more I thought about comment plugins and the goals of this site, along with my review of the other main-stream plugins available, the more I decided to reconsider my plugin of choice and the one I had installed on my own sites.

Let’s not mince words, shall we? The life-blood of blogs is their content and the life-blood of that content often is the discussion that surrounds it. Those discussions most often take place in the form of comments on the posts, but also in social media conversations on Twitter, Facebook and the like. Sure, WordPress comes with baseline comment functionality that is pretty decent, all things considered. But a good comment plugin can take the functionality a step further – both for the person leaving the comment as well as the host site. Therefore, below are two lists of why I use CommentLuv Premium – one list for you and one for me.

Why I use CommentLuv Premium – For You, the Commenter

#1 – You get a link to your recent blog posts when you leave a comment. Blog commenting usually serves multiple purposes, one of which is a discussion platform as I mentioned above but another (some would argue is equally important) is the ability to build backlinks from the host site to your own. In a purist’s world, comments are left for the conversation value but I know anything I can do to encourage comments and discussion only improves my site. WordPress basic functionality allows the commenter to link to their site as well, but CommentLuv takes it a step further and allows you to choose which post you’d like to link to. Blogging really is a circle and I have no problem with those that leave comments having a link back to their site. That’s actually how I found some of my favorite sites is through their comment links on other sites. So in addition to serving a discussion function comments also provide a (huge) SEO benefit.

#2 – Your links are do-follow links. There are two basic types of links – “do-follow” and “no-follow” and they have very distinctive differences. First, to define the terms, do-follow and no-follow are snippets of code inside the link that are intended to be used by search engines. They tell a search engine if the link should be followed by the engine or skipped. If you want the search engine crawler to follow, you’re giving the destination site a larger ‘vote of confidence’ by including a do-follow link. If you leave 10 comments on my site, your links become “do-follow” links, which provide you with even more SEO benefit (and encourage more comments on my site).

#3 – Choose from your last 10 blog posts as links. Baseline WP functionality allows you to type in the address for the link on a comment. CommentLuv allows commenters and Memoirs of a Single Dad registered users to choose from a list (automatically pulled from their site) of the last 10 posts. After you’ve made at least 10 comments on my site, you’ll have the ability to choose from your last 10 posts. Until then, your last post will display as the link in your comment automagically.

#4 – Add your Twitter Username to comments (= more Twitter followers for YOU). Have something witty to say? Then leave a comment. If someone sees your comment and recognizes the wit they may just follow you on Twitter as well. All commenters have the ability to leave their Twitter handles (as an active link) for each comment they leave. You’d be surprised how much this can increase your followers – especially if you’re a prolific commenter!

#5 – Get Noticed with the ComLuv Search Engine. CommentLuv actually has its own search engine where you can locate other blogs and sites that have the plugin (free or premium) installed. Find new sites and build even more backlinks to increase your own visibility.

Why I use CommentLuv Premium – For Me, the Site Owner

#1 – I get more comments! - I’ve noticed a steady decline in comments after I removed my CommentLuv (free) plugin a few months back. Since I’ve upgraded to CommentLuv Premium, comments are back up and I’m thankful that more people are engaging.

#2 – I get to choose from my last 10 posts on every CommentLuv enabled site. Because I purchased the premium plugin, all sites allow me to choose from my last 10 posts to display as my link. I don’t have to qualify by registering or by leaving the requisite number of comments on a site. I always get to choose which post I want to link.

#3 – I’m an affiliate. This isn’t a huge benefit, but I’ll still put it anyway. Anytime someone uses my affiliate link to purchase the plugin, I get an affiliate commission for the sale. That’s not really motivation enough for me to plug anything if I don’t believe in it. But I genuinely feel the CommentLuv plugin is the best (especially for traffic generation and encouraging discussion), so I recommend it whether I get paid or not.

Click here to learn more about CommentLuv Premium

#4 – Complete Control. Muhahahaha. Oh wait, sorry. Did I do that out loud? I admit I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to my site. I like to tweak this and adjust that. When it comes to comments, most site owners have less control because someone (or SOMETHING) else is leaving content (comments) on your site. CommentLuv Premium gives the site owner more control with the following features:

Integrated TwitterLink - Twitterlink allows your users to leave their twitter name along with their comment and have it displayed in the place you specify on every comment that they have made. They only need to add it once and all comments will show it.

Integrated G.A.S.P - Bot spam is a growing problem for blogs. There are automated bots whose job it is to completely blanket blogs with irrelevant automatically generated comment spam. GASP is an integrated plugin of CommentLuv Premium which will help to eliminate 99% of comments that spambots create.

It works without the need of complicated captcha form additions and instead uses a simple checkbox which is generated in a way that almost all bots cannot see so when a spambot tries to submit a comment, the checkbox is not checked and the comment doesn’t go through.

It also has optional heuristics which help to prevent human generated spam too.

Trackback Validation - Prevent trackback spam with the integrated validation routines which check to see if the trackback was sent from a valid IP or that the trackback post contains your permalink or site url. You can enter words or phrases that are always considered spam and you get to choose exactly what happens to the trackback if it is suspicious.

Keyword Name - Many marketers like to use keywords in their names when they comment. There are plugins that allow this but just about all of them do not have the control that a smart blogger requires like only allowing keywords if the reader has had a certain amount of comments or limiting the amount of keywords a user can use.

CommentLuv works for me and my site and I recommend it to anyone that will listen. The goals for your site may be different than mine, but if you want to increase traffic, engagement while lessening your own personal need to audit comments I highly recommend this plugin!

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About Daniel Ruyter

Daniel Ruyter has written 439 posts in this blog.

Single dad, founder & editor of four sites and newly-published author of Memoirs of a Dating Dad. Daniel lives in Florida with his two sons and fiancée, JenB.

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