Alternatives To CommentLuv

Out of all the commenting system plugins that are available to you it can be tough picking the one that is best for your blog or website.  You can go to a number of blogs online and they will all provide you with what they feel is the best plugin.  More often than not people will try to tell you, you need CommentLuv.  Don’t get me wrong CommentLuv does have a lot of features.  For years and years I supported CommentLuv, but not anymore.  But, in this article I am going to show you some reasons on why you shouldn’t use their plugin.  I will then provide you with a couple of alternatives.

Not that I have anything against CommentLuv, but there are other alternatives.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

• Do you get a lot of spam comments?
• Do people link to crap sites or just flat out spam in your comment field?  (this could be either their name or just to somewhere they want to build a link to)
• Have you noticed a trend of people that only comment on your post because it’s “CommentLuv enabled”?
• Is your SEO lacking?
• Do you have a lot of OBL (outbound links) on your site? (You can check with majesticseo.com or moz.org)
• Do you want more control?
• Need more features?

CommuntLuv Can Hurt Your SEO

First off, some people are going to spam.  That is just the nature of the internet.  Let’s say you run a highly successful site, at some point in time you’re going to have to deal with spam.  There is no way around it.  I know all to well that some people are just going to comment on my post because they just want a link from my site.   A lot of people don’t realize that this can really be a huge mistake to your site in terms of SEO.  I really believe that CommentLuv enabled blogs actually put a huge bullseye on their site.  I have seen morons doing ebooks, videos, etc. on how to build links with “CommentLuv enabled” sites.  Yeah, I know that is pretty sad!  That is not even really SEO!   Seriously, link building with commenting?

Above shows you how their recent post is automatically embedding on your site.

Why is it costly to your SEO efforts.  Think of it this way; if you run a successful site or blog and you pretty much link to anything, Google really can’t identify what your site is about.  For instance, you run a website on leopard geckos and about 98% of the links that are OBL on your site link to these niches “make money online”, “affiliate marketing”, “celebrity news”, “food blogs”, etc.  Google will cluster your site in terms of SEO with whatever you’re linking to.  This is really counterproductive in terms of SEO.

My simple solution to this problem is to do away with CommentLuv altogether.  Why?  Because, I don’t want to have to monitor my OBL links 3 times a week to ensure that I’m not linking out to dirty sites, broken links, or something that could get me in deep water with Google.  For years, I was all for CommentLuv, but over the last 10 months it’s got incredibly spammy and I just said to hell with it.

Now, I know you could nofollow all the comments on your site.  But, would this really solve the problem of spam?  You write a killer post and have 85 comments congratulating you on a great job well done.  Some of the comments are of very little value too.  Do you really need all that crap on your website?  No.  I guess you could always go in and delete them, but I made the switch over 10 months ago to Disqus.

Disqus

Actually, for years I wasn’t really a fan of it.  Why?  Because I thought I have to create an account just to comment on blogs, just to leave a comment.  Not that I was leaving a comment for the sake of getting a backlink.  It just seemed like a chore.  In fact, that was the last thing on my mind.  If you haven’t figured it out already blog commenting really doesn’t do much in terms of SEO and a lot of ways people do it just leaves a clear footprint which Google will take note of.  Yes, it can even hurt your rankings badly!  People do take it to drastic measures.  I have seen SEO companies in India offering this service.

One thing I do like about Disqus is you can migrate all your comments from CommentLuv, WordPress, etc.  There is a simple feature that you can easily migrate all your comments over.  This will break all the external links in their username which can be a good thing, as discussed in this article.  Here is a screenshot which is easy to export and import comments:

Obviously, you’re going to need to sign up for an account at disqus.com.  Then you can easily login into your Disqus account or even on your site and respond to any comments.  What you’re going to want to do is fill out your profile, by putting in your full name, website, location, and a short bio.  Then upload a avatar picture.  You can then either connect your account to your Facebook, Twitter, or Google +1 account.  Click whether or not you want email notifications,   It’s pretty much a one stop commenting system.

But, here is how users can comment on your blog:

• With Twitter ID
• With Facebook ID
• With OpenID
• Google ID
• With Their Disqus Username

I have been using Disqus for 10 months now and it works great.  Here is a screenshot to show what it looks like:

Livefyre

Livefyre actually has a lot more features than Disqus. For instance, it comes fully integrated with a commenting system.   So those comments that are of actual value will typically get voted to the top while the other meaningless ones or spammy ones will fall to the bottom.  Really an awesome feature!  Livefyre does have some “real-time applications” that you can integrate with it.  Here are the applications you can use:

• LiveComments
• LiveBlog
• LiveChat
• LiveReviews (in beta stage)

Here are a list of all the community comments features:

• SocialSync
• Social Sign In (Livefrye, Twitter, Facebook, Google +1, LinkedIn, and OpenID)
• Friend Tagging
• Comment Sharing
• Comment Liking
• Rich Text Editor
• LinkBack
• Live Listeners
• Comment Notifiers
• Media Embedding
• Comment Editing
• User Profiles 

Here is a look at the admin dashboard features:

• Spam protection
• Community Flagging
• Edit Comments
• Leave Comment Notes
• Multiple Moderators
• Ban & Whitelist Users
• Profanity Lists
• User Activity
• Moderation and Conversation Reports

Here is a screenshot of what LiveFyre looks like:

Facebook/Google +1

Facebook

Obviously, there are a lot of Facebook commenting systems you can use.  Here are some of the top ones:

• Facebook Comments (https://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook-comments-plugin/)
• Ultimate Facebook (https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/ultimate-facebook/)

Make sure you go in install an API with any Facebook plugin.  You might get a couple nasty comments and you want to be able to moderate them.  These are great because your comments are integrated with Facebook which when people comment on your content goes out to their walls which can bring you a lot of traffic.  Provided you’re are creating post that actively engage people.  I have seen these post go viral time and time again.

Google +1

The next big thing is Google +1.  If you’re not using Google +1 you should check it out.  I wasn’t a fan of it in the beginning, but they are winning me over now.   Google is making every effort they can to compete with Facebook.  Here are some of the top ones:

Comments Evolved (https://wordpress.org/plugins/gplus-comments/) (a hybrid of Facebook, Google +1)

All and all, there are other options vs just using CommentLuv.  If you have used the plugin and been let down you might want to check out the alternatives.  Let me know which one works for you and why?