Seth Godin, unicorn of the online world, doesn’t allow blog comments.
Why?
Blog comments are simply a tool for (mostly) spammers and trolls who are commenting for the wrong reasons. Seth says comments even affect the way he writes…
So he doesn’t accept them.
Should You Accept Blog Comments?
If you start a blog, you may be disciplined enough to write daily, find your voice and gain a following.
Driving traffic to your blog helps generate income through PPC ads and e-commerce monetization opportunities.
But will comments help you with monetization?
Maybe.
However, it’s no longer 2005. Google is basically omniscient.1
Google probably doesn’t value comments as a ranking signal… Unless the comments themselves add value to the post because they are the equivalent of mini blog posts that are not only relevant to the post, but useful to readers.
I can say from personal experience that, IMHO, comments are mostly a waste of time.
If you don’t use Akismet, or a more advanced comments plugin, such as Disqus, you are asking for a world of hurt from comment SPAM and auto-commenting spam bots.
I use Disqus on this blog, but rarely get comments.
In fact, I’ve only received legitimate comments on two of my roughly 300 posts, so far… Disqus makes it easy.
At the end of the day, if you use a tool like Disqus comments could work for you. But if you leave comments enabled without software to kill the spam bots, or if blog comments affect your writing or if managing them becomes a burden, just shut them off.
Life’s too short to battle bots and trolls all day long.