9 Ways To Get More Comments On Your WordPress Blog Posts

December 14, 2015 By Robin McDonald 15 Comments

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There is a lot of talk these days about getting more traffic to your website. Why aren’t people coming to your site? Are you blogging? If not you should, as this is a great way to bring attention to your site.

Now that your getting traffic and people are commenting on your posts, how do you get more comments? Well, this is what I am going to talk about in this article, how to get more comments on your blog posts.

1-Use Comment Moderation Instead of CAPTCHA

Don’t get me wrong, adding CAPTCHA fields to your blog posts is an excellent way to block spam, but it can also block people from commenting on your post. Why, a lot of people would opt not to fill out the CAPTCHA field.

You know what I’m talking about, how many times have you went to a web site, not necessarily to comment on a blog post, but just to get some information. They want you to set up an account, and to verify that your not a robot, they want you to look at the scriggly looking numbers and letters, that are hard to understand, and type them in a box.

How many times did it take before you got this to work for you, or did you just say the heck with it, give up. I am with you, I’ve done the same thing.

Instead of using CAPTCHA, just enable comment moderation on your site. And just manually approve each comment if you can.

Comment moderation will not only block spam, it will allow you to interact more often with with your audience.

You can do this in WordPress by going to Settings » Discussion and scroll down to before a comment appears section. Just check the box that says Comment must be manually approved.

2-Allow Visitors to Subscribe to Comments

This is a great thing to do, as if someone comments on your blog, they need a way to be notified if someone replies to their comment. Otherwise, they would have to remember to come back to your site to check. What is the chance of this happening? I tell you, very low, as people forget. Or they could bookmark your site to check later. Too much work!

You can give your visitor the opportunity to subscribe to comments on your WordPress posts. This way, they will get notiflied by email as comments are made on the post and any replys to their comments. Guess what? When they see the email, they will most likely come back to the post to read the reply.

You can do this with the plugin, Subscribe to Comments Reloaded. This plugin enables commentors to sign up for e-mail notifications when there are comments on a specific blog post, or any replies that they may get on theirs.

This will greatly increase your page views and number of comments on your site. Your visitors will view this as the discussion on your site being more engaging, and they will want to join in the conversation.

Comments on your blog are vindication that you have reached someone on some level in some wayClick To Tweet

3-Show Newest Comments First

By default, WordPress shows the oldest comment first, with the most recent at the bottom of the comment list.

You can change this in WordPress by going to Settings » Discussion and scroll down to other comments settings section. You need to select newer from the drop down menu.

4-Turn on Comments for Old Posts

Most bloggers turn off comments on older blog posts to reduce comment spam. I believe this is a mistake. You never know, with the search engines, what might cause you post to turn up in front of new visitors to your blog. This could mean an old post.

These new visitors may want to engage with that old post. They most likely will if you have the commenting turned on.

You should already have comment moderation turned on, so you can safely turn on commenting on old posts.

To do this, go to Settings » Discussion and scroll down to other comments settings section. Uncheck the box next to ‘Automatically close comments on articles older than X days’.

5-Showcase Your Top Commentors

You could reward your top commenters by installing a plugin like, Top Commentors Widget.

This is a sidebar widget that shows the top commentors on your site. It also rewards them with a link to their site.

This shows your commentors that you appreciate their time and effort of commenting on your blog post, and it makes them feel as if they are part of your blogging community.

6-Display Recent Comments

This is something I don’t see very often on websites. When vistors are looking at your home page, they have no idea whats happening in your blog comments section. There could be a heated debate going on with a new post and the visitor might want to put their two-cents worth in.

You can provide visitors a chance to look at current discussions by showing recent comments on your site with the recent comments widget.

In WordPress, go to Appearance » Widgets and add Recent Comments widget to a sidebar.

7-Notify Vistors When Their Comment is Approved

If you have comment moderation turned on, when a visitor comments on your blog post, WordPress will tell them that their comment is awaiting moderation. Users will have no idea when you approve or delete their comment.

You can improve your page views, as well as increase visitor engagement, by just notiflying them when the comment has been approved.

You can do this by installing the Comment Approved plugin.

8-Use The CommentLuv Plugin

The CommentLuv plugin is a do-it-all plugin that pretty much adds all of the plugin features I mentioned above, only in one plugin.

Additionally, it places a link to their most recent blog post at the end of their comment.

This is the plugin that I use, along with most of methods in this article, on my site to get more comments on my blog posts.

I really like that it rewards commentors by letting them leave a link to their latest blog post, with the free version, but the premium version lets them choose between the last 10 of their posts.

No only does this plugin encourage more comments by letting them leave their link, but it also promotes being part of a community as well. When you see these links on your blog post, you can click on them and it will take you to their post, which in turn, you can comment on.

If they are using CommentLuv, you will get to use a link to your most recent blog post.

You seeing how this works?

9-Reply to User Comments

This should be a no-brainer, but if you want to get more comments on your blog posts, then you need to be actively engaging with your commentors on your site.

This means you will need to reply to as many comments as possible, and as soon as possible.

Find a method to use to check for all of your unanswered comments and reply to them. It let’s the person know that you appreciate their comment by taking the time to respond to it.

I personally, just login to my WordPress site backend, and check for any new comments. They are all listed in date order, so I just go in and reply to each one individually.

If you have a small blog and you are not getting a lot of comments, then I would recommend that you reply to all of your comments.

This is really a great way to build up relationships with your visitors, and get increased engagment on your blog.

Eventually you will be getting more comments, and then you may need to use a tool like the plugin, DX Unanswered Comments, to help you keep up with your replies.

Why Blog Commenting Is Important

Commenting on other blog posts is very important and here’s why.

You spend a lot of time and effort putting your articles together and you want someone to read and enjoy them. You also want to benefit the reader by giving them something they can use. Hopefully, it will solve a problem they are having.

Let’s face it, people are searching on the web every day for infomation that they can use to solve a problem they are having. When they stumble upon your blog post you want to solve that problem for them.

When they comment on your blog, that is your vindication that you have reached them on some level in some way. Reply to their comment as soon as possible and let them know that you appreciate them stopping by to read your article and answer any questions they may have.

Visit their blog and comment on their articles. Who knows, you may find something helpful to you that you would not have found otherwise, and this reciprocates the relationship building process.

My friend Adrienne Smith, just recently wrote an article on her blog about commenting that I want to share with you. What You Need To Know About Blog Commenting, is an article which goes in depth on why you should be commenting on other peoples blogs.

Her article is like a how-to manual on what blog commenting is, why it’s important, how it works, and how it can be beneficial to you. She even shows you how to write amazing comments.

Her article talks about how she started commenting and the reservations she had. She overcame those reservations, and has become a highly successful blogger by going out of her way to comment on other blogs, and establish a community of blogging friends.

Blog commenting put me on the map but it opened my eyes to so much more --Adrienne SmithClick To Tweet

At the time of this writing, she has over 130 comments on her article, and still counting. She gets more comments on her blog posts, then any I have ever seen. She does this by reaching out to people, commenting on their blogs, and building relationships with them.

So you see, this is a powerful method to get more comments on your blog posts.

What Do I Use?

Currently, I use the free version of CommentLuv, along with the G.A.S.P (Grownmap Anti Spambot Plugin). I don’t moderate the comments currently, as I feel the GASP plugin prevents the spam for me.

I also use, Subscribe To Comments Reloaded, so that if they want, they can get notifications for other comments or replies to comments on the post. Here’s how it looks on my blog:

The first check box, Confirm you are NOT a spammer is what the G.A.S.P plugin puts out there, instead of a CAPTCHA field. What’s easier then checing a box?

The next check box is the CommentLuv section.

The last check box, Notify me of followup comments via e-mail, is the Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin.

If some questionable comments do get through, or I can see that the comment is just geared to getting the link juice, I may delete the comment, or just decide not to give them the Luv (disallowing their link).

Getting More Comments

Getting more comments on your blog posts is important as it shows that people are reading and enjoying your articles and feeling compelled to add something to the conversation.

The 9 ways I described above will definitely help increase more comments on your post, as it will make it easier for your readers to comment, and then encourage them to do so again by giving them a little reward for doing so.

These are just some ways that I suggest for you to help get more comments on your blog posts, but do you have other ways that you are using to increase comments? Are you using any of the ways that I listed above? I would love to hear these responses in the comments below.

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