Handling Comments Attempt #2
I noticed that despite having all the cool meta tags I put on my site, the SEO (search engine optimization/discoverability through Google-like searches) for my blog is still kind of terrible.
While I don't feel too bad about myself because I also occupy the 3rd, 6th, and 9th position, I obviously aspire to be 1st, and I definitely want my blog to be above "my" LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, I don't believe this is a technical issue - it's a popularity issue.
Popularity issues is completely understandable. Most people don't read blogs as far as I know and how would one even find my blog? I'm not popular on any other platform and no one is talking about the blog.
There is actually pretty good data to support the previous paragraph's statement:
I failed to get a screenshot before wasting my "free lookups", but the only sites linking to this site are mine/sites I've posted on and Hayden Shuker's blog. External links from other (also highly & reputably linked) sites are pretty much the most important thing for SEO.
So, when it comes to the question of how I should implement comments, I consider this and a few other things. Firstly, I should acknowledge the most intuitive implementation based on what other popular sites do would be to either add an account-like system to my site (note: this situation is nearly equivalent to my old solution of loading comments from my Mastodon server, https://cdt.social) so users can create comments directly. This solution has many issues that make me not want to do it:
- I would have to do a lot of work to get such a complex system working (including creating a whole new API server for the blog)
- I would have to curate comments to make sure they're not breaking any laws or something (too much work)
- I would be the source of trust of what comments are genuine (could be accused of over-curating or falsifying)
- It wouldn't help SEO since all comments are site-only
- Commenter's accounts would have little external significance (Is "Joe Biden" on Clayton Hickey's blog really the president?)
The second most intuitive solution (to me) is to simply not have comments. "It's not my responsibility to serve your every desire." Though, I would be lying because it's actually my desire. On other platforms, like 𝕏, one of my favorite things to do when reading something mildly interesting is to read what other people/bots are saying about it.
So, what I want from a comment system:
- Promotes people talking about posts on other platforms (linking to them for juicy SEO)
- I would be able to easily find them
- I wouldn't have to do much work
From this, I devised another plan without thinking too much: just show posts mentioning the specific blog post other platforms already aggregated (like 𝕏, Google, and Reddit). Unfortunately, those platforms have disabled embedding with iframes, so I can't display the posts directly on the blog. However, it probably suffices to link out instead because one cannot read a blog post and comments simultaneously anyway.
Unfortunately, it looks pretty ugly in my opinion. Fortunately, the whole site looks kinda ugly in my opinion, so it doesn't really change anything. It's a problem for another day.
Title: Handling Comments Attempt #2
Authors: Clayton Lopez Hickey
Published: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:11:30 EDT
MLA citation:
Hickey, C. L. (2024, April 26). Handling Comments Attempt #2. Clayton Hickey. https://claytonhickey.me/blog/handling-comments-attempt-2/.