Comment on SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin by Mark.

WordPress Blog SEO Comments As long as we are still on the topic of super comments, forums and community, which I think there is a lot of buzz post Panda, I guess I have another two pence to add.

OK here goes, I saw your http://www.animal-forum.co.uk/ – besides being a nice website I got an idea.

One idea for people who want to create a forum without the hassles of forum including the disincentive of registration is your super comments. This we all know as we have talked about this.

However, here is the new idea: would there be any value in creating a CSS option template page/post that would have a forum look. That is you could take your above Animal forum and simply default it to a wide forum look? Or do something to help people who land on comment pages stay and explore the site.

The idea is when people land on the website it looks like a real forum and they think of it more like a community and forum which they return back to.

I think almost anything can be done with CSS and post/page templates in WP. I mean it could almost look like a forum yet still be a blog with highly SEOed pages and comments. People could not know and Google does not care, they just care if people keep coming back to your site.

You could almost set up only a score of well thought out post and if you have people (like me) keep coming back and commenting the website will develop a life of its own with twenty or so pages.

On one of my sites which runs your theme has over 10,000 comments (Like Erik above). People actually refer to it as a forum, not a blog. I am getting a very sizable amount of traffic from the long-tails generated from people’s comments. I think your Stallion theme with Super comments partially saved me post Panda. When Panda hit I plugged in super comments and I subsequently was my long tail search increase because of the comment pages.

An issue is some comment landing pages have a low bounce rate some of the comments a high bounce rate. To make the bounce rate lower on comment landing pages, maybe this is as much a design navigation issue as a much as a content of the comment issue. That is even if the comment is not the best, people might explore the site more if the comment looked like a forum layout or lead them to another central part of the website easier?

Maybe the wide forum look is a bad idea. Maybe there is a look no one has thought of that would increase time on site and click though? Maybe it is more about navigation. Having an ‘Ask me a question’ button to encourage people to post comments?

I saw one guy have an ‘ask me a question’ button and it seemed to look pretty good. Once you press it leads to a post a comment area.

Maybe try instead of ‘comment title’ something like ‘what will your comment be about’ – I do not know.

So this again is another vote to continue to tinker with the community aspect of Stallion. It never hurts when people keep returning to your site and hanging out there.

A little history, I have tried bbPress and BuddyPress for about a year now on a couple of my domains, and always run into some problem. Whether it be spam (this is a huge problem) or some quirk.

I set up every spam filters but somehow robots understood these to be social networks and forums and moderation is an issue.

Nothing against bbPress and BuddyPress as they are developing. Many people run websites on them successfully, but alas, I have to yield to your point you have made about forums, it is a huge time investment to develop websites based on these plugins. And I mean not just set them up, but to get people to sign up and use them and fight spam or borderline spam comments.

My perspective on this is:
WordPress’ forte are blogs and websites. I do not know if it is forums’ and social communities. Just like Microsoft does well (arguably) with OS but not search engines. Google does well with Search but not social networking etc. It is hard to be all things to all people.

Therefore, maybe the best way use WordPress as a blog and make enhancements like super comments and other ideas as mentioned above, within the context and framework of their blogging model but with alterations in style and function, rather than giving it a new role.

Flowing from that trend of thought, I like your approach of leveraging ideas. WP has a huge repository of extensions. Some are good ideas, but almost all are not built with SEO in mind. Ex nihilo nihil fit – or nothing comes from nothing – A good way to brainstorm is to examine ideas which are already tried or partially developed and if they make sense extend or develop them further.

Taking inspiration from other ideas (as well as just thinking originally alone of course or brainstorming) makes sense. I have said the only reason I do not have a million dollars in the bank in cash is simple ignorance. If I had perfect information I could make a million in a few months. :)