Comments can be good for your travel website.
But they can also be the source of headaches.
When your visitors leave comments on your site they’re giving you insight into the way they think. They might give you ideas for improving your business. They’re also adding content to the site that could be found via search engines or social media.
But having comments on your site opens you up to spam. That can bring down the quality of your site or it can drive you nuts as you work to moderate all the comments coming in.
Should you have comments on your travel website?
Let’s answer that question with a few key points.
Comments Add Value For Travel Websites
For travel sites, comments are an asset. They can bring a few headaches, but you can avoid those. But we’ll get into that later in the post.
First, it’s important to realize that comments add a lot to your travel website. Multiple studies have found that online comments and reviews can lead to increased revenue.
When people come to your site they’re expecting to see what you think about your travel business. But they know that you’re going to have positive things to say.
What your visitors want to see is what others have to say. They’ll look throughout your website including your blog comments for information.
Let’s say you’re a restaurant. You write a post about a favorite menu item. Then you have 10 customers that leave comments under the post sharing their stories and feelings about the item. Most will probably say they love. A couple might say it’s not their favorite, which is okay.
Chances are that your visitors will read your post, but they’ll love reading the comments. In fact, those comments and real insight from other customers could be the reason a new visitor decides to come in and try the featured item.
Comments might not help all businesses to convince people to buy, but they’re very important for travel businesses. Your commenters could be your best salespeople.
And the comments people leave also add to the content that can be discovered via search engines. You’ve heard about SEO. The more content you have on your site the more sites like Google can crawl and the more likely you are to rank for various terms.
Now, a comment probably won’t help you rank for a popular, general term, but it can help you get longtail search traffic.
For example, a person might search for the keyword “best grilled cheeseburger in Austin Texas”. Google might bring up a comment on your blog post where a customer said that yours was the “best grilled cheeseburger in Austin!”
Add all those longtail keywords up and you’re getting some serious traffic.
Are comments good? Yes.
Native Comments On Your Site’s System
There are a few ways you can add comments to your website and blog. The first is through your website’s own commenting system. This is often call “native comments”.
For example, WordPress has its own commenting systems built-in. However, spammers and hackers know that WordPress is popular so they have created programs to try to get spam comments published on your blog.
To avoid the headache that these spam comments bring you’ll want to use a spam filter service like Askimet.
Facebook Comments
Facebook Comments have been popular in recent years. The idea behind it was that people are familiar with Facebook. They’re comfortable leaving a comment with a Facebook-related service.
Your programmer will install Facebook Comments on your site. The default is that anytime someone leaves a comment on your blog post that the comment will also appear on their feed for their followers and friends to see.
There is some extra work involved to make sure you get SEO benefit from Facebook Comments.
Disqus Comments
Disqus is a huge web community that is also a commenting platform. You can install it on your blog and make it look like its part of the website.
Many people have joined Disqus and they trust it. They aren’t afraid to leave their information with Disqus so they can login and leave comments on multiple sites.
Disqus also works hard to keep spam out of its system making it easier for you to manage the comments on your website and blog.
Conclusion
Comments can be great for your travel website. They can help you get more content on the site, which is great for SEO and it can even help you sell more.
Add comments to your travel site today and start reaping the rewards. The engagement can lead to sales from the visitors you’re getting now and they can help bring new visitors to your site.
Do you have something to add to the conversation?
We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
