Have you ever crafted the *perfect* comment on a WordPress blog, only to post and have it displayed like this?
Womp womp womp.
I have been toying with custom comment sections in WordPress lately and have some major improvements rolling out to students of the SEO Course.
But in the meantime, I want to help as many of you as possible look amazing in your comments!
Does anyone even use blog comments anymore?
Fair question. I do realize that most discussion happens on social media, Reddit, or in chat apps like Discord and Whatsapp these days.
However, I think blogs are making a comeback. I keep seeing people on Threads saying they “never died” but that feels a little like something someone would say who wasn’t around for the original blogging craze. Back before Facebook.
Anyway… I think that self publishing is more important than ever, and with the Fediverse, blog comments and social media may be much more seamless in the future (one can hope).
Even if it isn’t “cool”… I like blog comments. And I want to get you guys to like them too!
My goal is to curate a comment section here that is even more active than posts in a Facebook group.
To do that, it needs to be easy to comment, and the comments need to be fun and engaging. People need to feel like they can express themselves and their business with their avatar and website link.
One profile to rule them all
If you want to look great in WordPress comments around the web, the BEST thing you can do is to make sure you’ve set up a Gravatar profile.
Gravatar allows you to manage your profile picture, bio, social links, and more. You can adjust how you show up around the web for each email address that you verify.
Gravatar is free and pretty easy to use. It is also growing in popularity since they’ve put new energy into the project recently.
You will need to set up a WordPress.com account (free), and use an authenticator app to secure your account. But once you’re set up, you won’t need to log in to leave comments on blogs around the web. Just use the email address associated with your gravatar, and WordPress will handle the rest by default.
Is there an SEO benefit to setting up your Gravatar?
There are several possible benefits. It is possible for Google to crawl and index gravatar profiles. Adding your websites and social profiles is a way to help Google associate your name with your official presence online. If you are a contributor or you comment on other blogs, Google may also be able to connect those to your Gravatar.
These are my recommendations to maximize the potential SEO benefit of your Gravatar profile…
Fill out your about me + company info
I recommend using “photographer” or “owner” for your job title, and your business name exactly as you list it on your Google Business Profile as the Company/Organization.
Verify your social profiles
There are a variety of accounts you can verify by connecting them directly to your Gravatar account. These will get displayed prominently on your profile.
Add a link to your websites
When you add your links, you can also add a description and an image (it defaults to a screenshot of your homepage, but you can also upload a custom image). Just toggle the “show images with links” option to access these settings.
Add an official contact email
You can add an email address if you have an official business email that you display publicly. Alternatively, you can link to a page on your site with a contact form.
Add a few of your signature photos
You can upload photos and add alt text to those photos to describe them.
I recommend adding some of the images that you want to be associated with your business. I used this spot to add a few photos that describe me.
Time to give it a test!
Now that you have your shiny new gravatar, give it a test run! Leave a comment below and be sure to use the email address associated with your gravatar profile.
Check out my profile on Gravatar if you want to see an example!
Thanks for the brilliant and easy to follow advice!
As usual, thanks for this, Corey!! Super helpful info!
I forget I have one until you bring it up each time. And the only relevant social I have is Instagram to connect but I keep getting a '400 session invalid' error. I'll try again later.
I also had an issue linking my IG, however once I connected facebook/meta, it then allowed me to add my IG account. Then I think you can go back and delete the FB link.
Thanks! That was pretty easy to setup! And I still read and comment on blogs!
YES! Glad to have you in the commenting club! lol
Always great information here! Thanks Corey!
That was fun!! I got mine set up - hopefully I linked it properly. Thanks for the tip, as always!!
Love a good action-step post, thanks Corey!
Testing, testing... hope I did this right! 😝 Why do I love setting up profiles for random things so much?
Thanks Corey. I had my Gravatar profile set up...from many moons ago so your post helped me refresh it, step-by-step. Much appreciated 🤓.
another try :)
I'm back on WP with a new history blog and have already seen traffic improvements after adding some details to Gravatar. Good advice!