Your thoughts do comments add value

[Lenny]

So, on your review pages or on articles. You put a comment box on the bottem and people submit comments good or bad ones.

Do you think these comments have any seo or content value?

[MJ]

Absolutely if they are active and decent. In addition to adding more relevant free content to the page, you are "updating" your page every time a comment goes live.

[JohnG]

I think it entirely depends on the quality of your traffic but I would imagine people with negative experiences would be MUCH more inclined to write than those with positive ones. I guess that could potentially hurt your sign-ups but I'd say it's definitely worth testing to see how it goes.

[MJ]

Def a good point John, I'm only commenting about seo.

Pretty safe to say I guess if it enhances your users experience it's a good idea to do it.

[Unknown Webmaster]

I allow people to post comment on most of my pages, since it is an easy way for me to know when something has changed and the page are out of date - People call you out on it :-)

I also see it as a way to get in touch with the people who are using my site, and build a reputation as an expert. I think that the people who take the time to leave a comment are often the same kind of people who will post about your site in a forum or on their blog, simply because they are nice people and like helping others.

I don't think it has had much impact on my rankings, but I have gotten a lot of good ideas from reading the comments.

[Goose]

It used to be more value than it is now. Obviously you pick up more long tail from it. But it can cause some leakage if anything parses to a href

[Squizzel]

yes, obv ads value for content.

On landing pages / review pages you probably dont want them though.

[TheGooner]

No - or at least not without very effective spam, porn, and hate scanning to keep them the comments clean and to the point.

And comments are of limited value - a small number of on-topic comments can be valuable ... .. but when it gets beyond a page, and when it starts getting personal or spammy then it detracts from the original page.

YouTube is a good example of a site where you will see comments of both sorts.

[Squizzel]

Go tell a site like TechCrunch that comments are worthless.

Alot of sites rely on comments as linkbait. IE they start fake arguments and watch users pour gasoline on the fire and the posts spread like wildfire.

As long as you can keep comments spam free, they will add value content wise, may also help with SEO to keep the page fresh and relevant or add more points you may have missed in your article.

[Spry]

I think they add a ton to social proof, which can often be important as well as the review/page itself. Agree keep them spam free. For news and updates (and strategy) I like to have comments available.