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I’m sure someone would have noticed it already but I haven’t seen any discussions on this yet.
Okay the reason for this question is a search results page for a recently popular term. Before getting into it, an idea of what exactly am I trying to discuss –
I found that some blogs, which have no or less backlinks, a not-so-good onsite optimization done, and comparatively unpopular traffic profile ranks high for a range of search terms stemming from a single keyword, because they have a post that’s gone very popular with lots of comments on a single story (that’s related to the keyword).
I have seen this phenomenon so far on two blogs with evidence, and have spotted it on many other blogs without one.
Basically, these blogs wouldn’t have written this article targeting any search term what so ever. From hat I’ve seen, they’re all the genuine blogger who rants about things that excite them. And may be because of their post timing, once there is a trend on the related search term, the post takes on a rolling snowball mode, gathering comments for whatever traffic it picks up and becomes a huge success with comments. At one point, it picks up hundreds and thousands of comments that the post body would be only a few paragraphs and the comments stream goes up to pages. And the article ranks almost number one for all the related search terms to the primary keyword.
Let’s try some examples.
Example 1 - I had posted this story about iPhone launch in India and why it could be a disappointment in India (Nofollow link) on my low traffic personal blog. When I wrote the post, there were no articles that took a negative stand to the iPhone India launch. So this post sort of “acted” as a flame bait, and because of the content, it gathered up lot of comments. Not much but it was all in time span of one-two days. The article ranked number one for terms such as “iphone India” during that time.(Different story now)
Example 2 – There is a post on this blog about booking Tata Nano car.(Nofollow link) It does not have the best optimized copy, nor is it a high profile website with awesome traffic, nor does it have a big list of backlinks. But this particular article, for its uniqueness and publishing time, got a lot of attention as people started commenting on it. It was posted in Jan, and the “buzz” about Tata Nano booking started only recently. And because I’ve been tracking the Tata Nano story closely, I’ve seen that this website ranks on the top positions for almost anything related to “Tata Nano Booking”. Which is interesting.
Taking into consideration all the regional influences and the like, there are only a few reasons that I can think of for these blogs to rank high for a particular term with no or less effort.
- Publishing time – These posts were made at a time well in advance, even before people started talking about it. So they might have the time advantage.
- Niche Popularity – These articles made a niche popularity for themselves. If you check the other articles on the blog, you’ll find that none of them are as popular as this one story.
- More comments – They have a high number of comments, all relevant and sticking to the initial topic.
Though it is immature to make any decision based on these examples, I think they are good pointers that tells us that -
- Any young blog can make it to the top of SERPS, provided you are genuine and have a seriously interesting story.
- The crowd and community can create wonders in helping you promote your site.
- Google and the other SE’s have to believe the crowd, even if the site is fairly new or unpopular.
I think that’s fair enough. Looking forward to your thoughts and arguments.
Note: I haven’t dugg to any deeper metrics here. But I guess the point is clear and evident.
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Hi Mani
I truely thank you for the post.Actually user comments wont affect the google search rankings directly but it will effect the traffic and it leads to popular ranking in SERPS.As far as i am concerned if a blogpost has number of comments then it must a popular post and it gets popularised among bloggers or viewers.
Cheers
Sandeep
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nice post
more sites are getting “Social” and might suffer their ranking due to the same.
Comments do add up to the value of the page if related words are present .. but having 100 comments on a blog post might kill the serps
paging the comments might help.
This is from my personal experience
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Mani, I think popular blog posts with lot of comments gets better ranking in Google SERPs because of the user generated content.
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Mani Karthik Replied:
True. More UGC means relevant and good content. Fair enough right !
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I’ve noticed this too.
Example: I ranted a post a while back that was not relevant to my blog topic at all. just a stray rant that was not planned or organized in any way. Well .. The post stirred up some comments, and now ranks top for a surprise keyword and brings a steady flow of traffic in on that post.
I am still trying to figure out which came first the ranking of the keyword –> or the comments.
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Mani Karthik Replied:
Yeah, exactly the same situation I was talking about. I’m not surprised about this, as Google is seen inclining to the social part of things when deciding the serps. The wiki was an example and this is another. There is no reason for google to believe that what the crowd think is “relevant” is not. Even if its algorithms gave a “no”, google may have to still go for the crowds verdict.
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I think commenting increase traffic. for me it less than 1 %.
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i agree with Houston SEO,
http://lifehacker.com/396154/firefox-31-new-features-already-in-the-works
that post has only 4 lines with absolutely no content towards search keyword “Firefox 3.1 features” but still its ranking on first page of google.
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Well, of course, you are right.
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Its really a thought worth inspiring. I have noticed some simple ‘terms’ giving me top search results. I get a lot of visitors for a particular post and occassionally some ‘Thanks’. Though I haven’t got many comments on it. I want to see how I can make use of this info. Thanks Mani once again
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This is a very interesting observation. Surely the comments must regularly contain the keywords in order for this to happen?
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I think encouraging comments on your blogs do help with the SERPS. If people are leaving good quality, well written comments of good length, then they contribute to the article. If Blog Spammers leave comments on blogs that just simply read ‘Great Post, thanks for the adivce’ etc then I think they can have an adverse effect.
As a good rule of thumb, I would recommend deleting smaller, pointless comments from your blog posts, and leaving on the comments that contribute to the article. Discussion, if moderated correctly, can be a good thing.
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its true thank you for the post.Actually user comments wont affect the google search rankings directly….
post it is also the part of ranking …….so its a big benifits for seo……..
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hi mani
I truely thank you for the post.Actually user comments wont affect the google search rankings directly
i think so post make a ranking our website
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Mani, this is true that commenting affects the SERP of the articles. I get traffic from comments
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yes mate comment updates make google to crawl the post again !! higher the re-crawl frequency more good your SERP !!
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Mani,
Reading this post brings to mind the awesome popularity this blog got just before the Obama election. It had perfect timing and it was popular on SU and on Digg – it averaged 350 plus comments per post! That is not even reached by celebrity bloggers like Shoemoney etc etc.
It has 1,716,894 hits since then.
See for yourself – http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/
BTW, Helen is 82 and she lambasted Sarah Palin. See some of the posts – some of the comments go for 1000 more words than the original 500 word post!
Margaret had awesome SU reviews.
Loved her blog during the election time!
Margaret and Helen, didn’t even rank for their name before that and NOW they have site links! Google their name & see.
So I think, what ru postulating is correct to a degree.
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Mani,
It makes sense to me that the following could be true:
lots of comments = greater search engine re-crawl frequency = greater buzz = greater potential to be added to SERP
lots of bad comments = reduced keyword density = lower SERP rank
lots of good comments = greater keyword density = greater SERP rank
To me the question remains: Is it better to facilitate lots of comments in hopes that it may drive buzz even though it drives down keyword density and permits lots of link dropping by commenters?
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Mani Karthik Replied:
Kevin, the first theory holds true (lots of comments = higher crawl frequency) but I’m inclined to believe that comments do not affect the keyword density of the page negatively if not positively. They help in grabbing long tail keyword traffic if they are well indexed but they don’t affect / dilute the keyword density of the main article.
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Hi there,
I have just stumbled across this post and I have to say that it is a little unclear. Do comments affect your ranking by affecting density of keywords?
Is this the same in squidoo as well? I have a lens that ranks 1st, by allowing comments on my lens will this affect my rank on google and if yes will this be negative or positive?
Thank you in advance
Kind Regards
Kazooli
http://www.squidoo.com/is-copy-n-profit-a-scam
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I actually believe that. If you have just 1 good story on your blog – it can become a very big thing. I see now it is true.
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