When people start to comment on your WordPress blog posts, they become more popular and you may end up with a good debate or discussion. This makes the search engines happy and you may get a little extra love. If you want more comments on your blog posts, here are some ways to get them.

Avoid CAPTCHA and Use Comment Moderation Instead

CAPTCHA is great for blocking spam, but it will also keep some people from commenting. It’s not very user-friendly and it won’t help you get more comments.

Instead of using CAPTCHA, you can enable comment moderation to ensure you don’t end up with spam comments on your site.

Tell Users When they Get a Reply to a Comment

Often, people will comment and never check back for a reply. If you set up your site to send out notifications when somebody replies to a comment, you may get a full discussion. This is a great way to get more comments.

It’s very easy to notify users of replies in WordPress. They will receive an email letting them know there are new replies to their comment. Then, they just click a link and join the discussion they started.

Choose a New and Better WordPress Host

Did you know, comments can take up quite a bit of resources? When a person leaves a comment, it runs a PHP script. If multiple people are commenting, it could slow your site down, which doesn’t help with getting more comments.

Choosing a better hosting company for WordPress will give you the resources you need. With the right hosting company, you won’t have to worry about slow load times and you will get plenty of speed to handle WordPress comments.

Allow Subscriptions to Comments

By allowing users to subscribe to comments, they will be able to get notifications of new comments. If you don’t do this, the user has to bookmark the post and check it later, which rarely happens. Instead, you can allow subscriptions to comments, which will help increase your page views and comments.

Allow Comments on Older Pots

WordPress comes with a default setting to shut off comments after a post becomes so old. This is great for some sites, but if you want more WordPress comments, you need to shut this setting off.

Go to Settings>>Discussion and find the section called “Other Comment Settings.” Here, you will find an option for automatically closing comments on articles older than a specific number of days. Just uncheck the box and you’re all set.

Show your Recent Comments

Showing your recent comments will allow you to get more views on the comments left on your site. This makes it easier for new users to enter into the conversation.

To show the most recent comments, you can go to Appearance>>Widgets and add the “Recent Comments” widget to your sidebar or any widget-ready area.

One of the biggest mistakes WordPress bloggers make is not replying to the comments left on their site. When a real comment is left on a post, you want to reply to it quickly. This helps to get the discussion going and will keep users commenting on your posts.

There are several ways to get more user interaction on your WordPress website. If you want more comments left on your blog posts, use these tips and you will soon have discussions going on in the comments section.