We are bloggers and most of us has been blogging for some time, written lots of post that generate thousands of comments and build up a great archive of posts. The big question here is Should we close commenting on our old post? This taught came about after looking at some analytics report where i have noticed that some of my old post are getting lost of attention and traffic. The money is in your archive, remember that post I wrote earlier now we can combine the two i never closed comments on any of my post am i doing the right thing? I would like to think so and this is just my instinct kicking in here.
Why We write new Post?
We all know why we write new articles keeping our blog update is one but when we compile a new post we do so because we have something to share with our audience and the wider web so we can generate revenue. When we create new post we expect to get comments from our readers and this is what shows proof of social interaction. Still no sure if you should close comments after your post has been active for a certain amount of time. Is this a good idea? should we keep them open? I never close my old post i leave them.
How optimized are Your Old Post?
This is another factor to take into consideration. We all know that Search Engines like Google changes their algorithm very often, that means sometimes your old post might just benefit from this change, what might seems like a post that was not optimise then might be benefiting from the change hence that is why this post suddenly start to catch the eye of new readers. Just take a look at the latest Google Panda/Farmer update.Have you ever taught about it?
Lets face it we need visitors new ones are sign that your blog is reaching a wider audience especially if those are from “Organic Search” then you know that you are getting something right. I am asking for your honest opinion here, tell me if you believe that we should close commenting on our blog post after a period of time or leave them open? I am not no expert in this matter! However from what i have notice over the past weeks it is in my best interest to keep this old post alive so that when they are picked up by search Engines and feature in Users search result pages you can continue to benefit form these visitors.
Share your taught your input is very important here!! i would love to hear your views.
I’d suggest that old posts should have the comments still open. This is for the very reason that you mention above, the organic search aspect. Visitors to old posts usually come through the route of organic search and may have some valuable contribution. I did a 400 word article on solar flares and had few visitors for months. Then ‘solar flares’ hit the news headlines 6 months later and this attracted new visitors to my site, through organic search.
Thanks Russell i strongly believe in the idea of keeping them open for that same scenarion you just mentioned there are always a time when those post sitting in your archive suddenly started to hit the headlines and you can benefit from them. Thanks for your comment much appreciated.
Well, I do not close most of my old contents because I think many times the old post can get found out later on by some other sites or bloggers and then shared. The readers who then come to our blogs then may want to comment on those post. But then again, there are some posts which I have mistakenly written (specially when I had just started blogging and I had not been able to recognize my niche), I did not want those posts to be displayed as the most popular posts and so on so I decided to close comments on those. But generally for all posts, no it should be open
First let me take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and add your voice to my debate. As you have mentioned we should not deny our visitors the opportunity to comment on the post of there choice. Thanks for your comment.
No, you shouldn’t close commenting because you will get a loss of traffic from pages that appear to have no movement for google. Search engines think that the content may be outdated or replaced by newer up to date content because you do not get any new comments.
Good i am glad we are all on the same page here it is good to keep them opened as we can generate revenue from them and we should not deny our visitors the opportunity.
Andreas makes a really good point. Keeping comments open allows new users to create new content for that page even long after it’s been posted. That can make it appear to Google as though your adding new content to that page anytime someone comments. I say keep the comments open. It might be a pain to moderate all the spam on older posts, but it can’t hurt to let people discuss older topics. You never know when and old post will be relevant again!
I would not disagree with you for a minute as you have rightly mentioned keeping them open would surely help to create new content and make them relevant again. Thanks for your input.
Why should we?? To me, it doesn’t make sense at all. While we know that it is all for our readers first and then when we prohibit them from commenting, what good it does for your site or blog ? It is absolutely foolish to disable commenting on our posts, no matter how old the post is. As a blogger, we always hope to see some good feedback, good or bad…shouldn’t really matter. What matters here, people are there to read and leave their thoughts. These feedback and thoughts are most likely to let you know you where you stand with your readers, how much impact your writings make, why have you been criticized, etc….these and perhaps more does add to you learning experience which in turn helps you grow into a more matured and successful blogger. Also, yes…traffic from search engines can come anytime and everytime and on the basis of my experience, I have seen some very good visits on my older posts…So, disabling comments older posts….I cannot!
Well said Aswani it would not be right to closed them we should leave them open as they can still attract new visitors to our blog especially if your blog is in the same Niche as the readers who comes to our blog.
I think its better that we leave the comments section open as there are many guys who seek help in a particular post and you should help them
Hi bishwajeet it has been a while glad to have you back hope you are enjoying the cricket i do support you argument i strongly believe that it is in our best interest to leave them open.
I don’t close comments on my old blog posts as i always like to know about my readers feedback and ofcourse traffic from search engines can’t be ignored on old posts.
Though i don’t get much comments lol but still feedback from readers is appreciated.
It does not matter the amount of comments the whole idea is to keep these post open and left them for the search engine to do the rest. Thanks for your support Shabnam i will always support your blog.
Hi Gary,
In my opinion, I think that it’s best to leave the comments section open, even if the post is very old. This also gives the blog owner or author a kind of reminder that the old posts they wrote are still being read by visitors.
I also agree with what Russell said. I guess that’s more or less considered as “seasonal trends” on topics.
I believe that closing comments after a while can really help to deal with spammers. However, as you’ve stated the downside to that is turning off readers and losing popularity with the search engines. I was receiving lots of spam and decided to turn comments after a certain period of time.
I don’t get that many comments, but I would never want to hinder someone from voicing their opinion. I think that I will turn my comments back on, because I have implemented some plug-ins that have helped to get a handle on the spam.
Hi Gary,
I think a discussion can be started at any point in time. We never know when the knowledge that we have put in the posts become useful to everyone . So I do not think that we should close comments on any topic unless they have become spammy.
But I am a novice blogger and I am still learning 😉
Thanks for the discussion
Ashvini
I will not support the idea of closing comments on old posts. New Comments actually give a lively and fresh look to your old posts too. Only few Bloggers are doing this with their posts.
I wouldn’t close comments on older posts for the simple reason that people love to stay and read older material, and they’ll leave if they can no longer participate in the discussion.
I do, however, moderate my older posts so I don’t get spammers trying to sneak in their backlinks on posts I might not notice right away. This sometimes means I get people posting repeat comments because they don’t know my comments are moderated, but that’s my fault. I need to put up a comment policy on my blog.
Delena
Nope. Never close comments in my blog. What I do is that all comments that are posted after a certain amount of time, they are moderated, unless you have been already approved. Comments on older post makes it “live” and sometimes it can be a reminder to “optimize” an old content that you might have forgotten. This is particularly true when you have lots of post.
Well I don’t think you should close comments on older posts.. because the simply fact that people love to read old content as much as they love to read new and fresh content.. (of course the content is “valid” for many years – unless you are a news website/blog or something like that)
I can’t find a good reason for doing it. how does it hurt you if you allow commenting, even after a year or so. some blog posts are timeless, so they might be worth reading and interesting to be commented now and over 2 years maybe.. so why not to give your visitors the option to express themselves?
I think it will be better if we don’t closed comments on old post because there are post that are really worth receiving such compliments and opinions of the visitors. Just like gold, comments are like treasures of a post.
I think stopping comments is not too good because people like to read each others comments and post comments. they took more interest if they are communicating. thanks
i think you should not close the comments on old posts,because it may be new for the visitors.and the new visitors read the all the new and old posts.
I’d suggest that old posts should have the comments still open. This is for the very reason that you mention above, the organic search aspect. Visitors to old posts usually come through the route of organic search and may have some valuable contribution. I did a 400 word article on solar flares and had few visitors for months. Then ‘solar flares’ hit the news headlines 6 months later and this attracted new visitors to my site, through organic search.
I firmly believe that we have to leave comment section open for the benefit of our new readers who would like to contribute additional information about the topic you’ve discussed.
I think that it would be a good idea to close the older comments. But if this is done are you missing out on great comments? Maybe…
No do not do this, very bad idea as what about the comments you might miss.
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IS THAT WE HAVE TO ADD THE COMMENT SECTION EVERY ONE IS FREE TO COMMENT….WE SHOULD LEAVE COMMENT SECTION OPEN..