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Four Reasons To Put A URL In When Commenting On Blogs

36 Comments

I’ve noticed that sometimes people don’t put urls (web addresses) in when they make comments. Almost everyone has either a website or a blog somewhere that they could link to, so it would seem like the natural thing to do. It’s not a required field, though, so many people don’t even think about it. So, I figured it was time to give people some reasons why it’s a good idea, and I’m going with four.


by Beth Kanter

1. You get a backlink to your blog. If you know SEO you get this concept. If you don’t, the idea of a backlink to your blog is that sites such as Google try to determine how much of an authority your site is online, and one of the criteria is how many backlinks you have going to your site. The more the merrier, as long as they’re somewhat related to what you do, but even if they’re not backlinks can only help. And supposedly they help more when you’re getting a link from another site and not having to link back; that part doesn’t matter to me, just take the link. By the way, this is why there’s so much comment spam, because these weasels are hoping to find those blogs that don’t monitor their comment spam so their sites can grow in prominence; and you thought it was so you’d buy Viagra from them. lol

2. People might click on your link and check out your site or blog. If people like your comment, sometimes they feel compelled to check you out. And none of us are on the internet so we can hide from others, right?

3. If you blog, CommentLuv will be your friend. If you put a link in and you have a blog, you’ll notice that on blogs that have that little heart on them that you see below, it will pop up your latest blog post. That’s from a site called CommentLuv, and it’s there to help people get their content noticed while they’re participating on another blog. Go to their site and register, and suddenly you have the ability to pick from your last 10 blog posts to decide which one you want to highlight. This works great if you comment more than once on someone else’s blog, or if there’s a specific older post you want to highlight.

4. It verifies you’re not a troll. Spam is one thing; trolls are another. Trolls are people who post without any real identifying information. If your blog doesn’t require an email address,then people can post anonymously, and that means they don’t always have to show the proper respect your blog deserves. They can go after you or other people and don’t care whose feelings are hurt. When I was dealing with trolls on one particular post earlier this year regarding Akismet a bunch of them came to the blog and posted these really long and threatening messages, which of course I could care less about. None of them left a url, and all the email addresses were fake. They just wanted to rant, and they wanted to hide. I just deleted them all, which was easy for me to do. If you have the appearance of having something to hide, people don’t always trust the comment. I at least give the benefit of the doubt, but not everyone will.

And there you are. Any questions, comments, please share.

Plantronics CS50 Wireless Office Earset

36 thoughts on “Four Reasons To Put A URL In When Commenting On Blogs”

  1. CommentLuv does the job of putting in a URL nicely, but if a reader is recommending something they want me to check out that isn’t on their blog, I don’t mind a URL left in the comment and I often will follow them to see what the reader is talking about. However, most spam plugins will look at URL’s (especially more than 1) in a comment and auto spam the comment.

    1. That’s why I don’t like having a link in the comment, Justin, although you’re right, I don’t overly mind as long as the person isn’t trying to “double” me, if you know what I mean.

  2. Hi Mitch
    Another good practical post. This is one I do understand lol
    If I get any new comments on my blog they have to be moderated. I always check the site to make sure it isn’t spam. Getting better at recognising it too.
    Patricia Perth Australia

    1. Good that you’re recognizing it better these days, Pat; I was worried about you. lol As for the other, I try to help train Akismet so I don’t have to moderate comments. Doesn’t work perfectly, but it works pretty well.

  4. Sue, this is a test, and I just put your blog address in and it’s working just fine, as you can see. So, I’m not sure what you’re doing differently than I just did.

  5. I must be a TRUE blonde or maybe I’m just OLD! I set CommentLuv up and it was working beautifully, but then they changed it and try as I might, I just couldn’t get it to work! Now, Mitch, this might be something you can help me out with when we meet this week?????? 🙂

    1. We can take a shot at it Althea, but you might have to do what I had to do, that being going back to the CommentLuv site and doing an update. Andy talked me through it; he’s very good to work with.

  6. well by placing links with name and in comments will surely help you get back links. but the problem remain same until and unless your comment is approved.

  7. Blog commenting is one of the most powerful SEO strategies. It is not only useful for link building, but for receiving nice amount of traffic.

  8. I cannot imagine not having my name linked to one of my sites or blogs.

    I will sometimes put a link to another one of my blogs in a post if it is relevant to what is being discussed.

  9. Its ironic that there are still people who will comment and not leave a URL. Does not make sense to me. After all the information that is out there regarding SPAM, you would think that nobody will no longer use this practice. Obviously, and as you said, they might not have a blog, but it is difficult today to not have any online presence at all, so at the very least they can use that URL. Go figure

    1. Same here, DiTesco. It just makes you think about it, and why people don’t do certain things that just seem to make sense.

  10. I never comments without a URL due to the four points you mentioned. The last point is very important, in fact. There are the same people putting a different name (but without URL) when they want to criticize you lol.

  12. I don’t know why someone with a blog wouldn’t put in their URL. This is a great tip. Maybe those new to blogging don’t realize how building community can actually help their blog out. In particular, commentluv is a great reason to leave your URL. I love this plugin. It’s a really good way to connect your blog to the community.

      2. And Andy’s latest plugin Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin reduces the trolls and spammers to basically zero. It adds a simple little tick box under the comment posting area to confirm if you are not a spammer. Works extremely well 😉

  13. Thanks for the great reminder, Mitch. I hope through this post a lot of people will realize the importance of taking the time to input their website URL even if it is not really required. I, myself, have enjoyed the fruits of always making it a point to place my website URL for every comment I post. Have a great one 🙂

  14. You must have comment love set up because it doesn’t work for me and I never set it up. Do I have to set it up for my link to show up?

  16. Great post as usual Mitch. Yes you are right about what you have said. And even the commenter don’t have any blog or websites of his/her own, I think he/she can put her/his twitter or FB link at the website field right? Just for the sake of identity?

    For Sue T:

    You dont’t have to setup your link for commentluv to work out, just tick the checkbox under the “add comment” button and your good to go. =)

    I dunno buddy why you ain’t using commentluv function at your comments.

    1. I don’t think Sue understands the CommentLuv thing; I’ll get her using it one of these days. I might have to pull out my post from ’08 so she can read it. lol

  17. I agree with Ron. Before I had a blog up and running, I would put in my Twitter page url. Now, no longer need to give them any more back links 🙂

  18. Thanks for sharing this. I would leave my site on some sites and others I wouldn’t. I guess I felt that I would annoying by putting my site up everytime. I’m definitely putting my site on everybodies site. Lol.

  19. I’m with you on this, but one thing to be aware of is that some people who have a blog and not a stand-alone website, think that they can only put a website address and not a blog address.

    So… stuff about URLs and gravatars in your recent posts… good!
    🙂

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