Spam and Flame

I'm really not sure what effect comments will have on a certain blog. I’m just assuming that, other than showing your pages' popularity to others, it also has to have some sort of effect on your keyword density for the page. That, in turn, partially affects your keyword rankings for that page.

I’m sure some people have had posts where people get angry with you for one thing or another. Maybe a debate, maybe not. While you may not want to keep these posts, you really have to differentiate between comments that disagree and the comments that flame (which is what you DON'T want). There are also a few things to keep in mind when editing comments.

WordPress blogs hosted at WordPress make it so that you can edit comments. Not only can you edit the name, URL, and email, but you can also edit the comment itself. Now you can take out that second link people try to include in their comments, or you can edit out personal notes from friends that you don’t want others to see. The same goes for Blogger. Although you cannot edit the comment, you might as well delete it if it's private or unwanted.

Remember: when editing a comment you should always check for three things. The first should be the name. If you’ve seen the name around your blog before, you may just want to delete the comment. If you edit a repeat commenter's comment, you might end up with a not so friendly response and lose a reader. After you’ve looked at the name, go to the URL. Change this to one of your other blogs. Free backlink for you. Third, if the email address appears fake, chances are the person doesn’t want to be known. You can edit these comments as well because chances are they won’t be back. Using these techniques to your advantage can help your blog overall; it'll look cleaner and more friendly.

-Aud