It’s time for another riveting installment of Google Webmaster Help Videos featuring the always friendly and rarely illuminating Matt Cutts. In this weeks episode of the popular Google series for webmasters and SEOs, Matt Answers the following question:
Should I correct the grammar on comments to my WordPress blog? Should I not approve comments with poor grammar? Will approving comments with grammar issues affect my page’s quality ratings?
This may seem like a silly question on the face of it, even Matt chuckles a little, but we have been told over and over again that grammar and spelling (and in general sounding like you understand the English language) are important parts of quality content. So it’s natural to be worried about the comments on your page, especially if you painstakingly ensure your own content is consistent and soundly edited.
According to Matt Cutts though, the comments on your blog’s posts will not bring down your ranking. So long as your own content is in good shape, you should be safe and sound. Of course, you should work to filter the comments on your blog, because if you let a lot of spam through, you could be flagged for that reason.
Best practice is to vet every comment that is left on your blog. Filter out all of the comments that are left by bots or other scammers, and approve all of the comments that have something genuinely interesting to say. If this proves to be too much for you, you can contact us here at Wikimotive and we’ll show you how to put a better captcha system on your blog to filter out most of the spam. Of course, if you’d rather not deal with the problem at all, you can always turn comments off completely. You’ll limit engagement, but sometimes it’s a better and safer bet in the long run.