Is there SEO benefit to having comments and reader interaction?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Yasser Mohamed: I have the same dilemma and would love to hear what others think about this.
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  Tim Capper: I have removed the website option from my comment forms.
  
  I do not accept any link drops in any FORM.
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  Ian Dixon: I disagree with that approach +Tim Capper ;and it would mean I was very unlikely to comment.
  I allow the entry of a website as part of the name details but it is set to nofollow.
  Then I have an anti-spam filter in place to filter out the total junk.
  Then anything that gets past that stage is subject to moderation before it appears.
  
  If I post a sensible comment on one of your sites then I am providing you with content to improve that site. The least that you can do in return is to give me a nofollow link from my name in the comment across to my site.
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  W.E. Jonk: Maintaining a blog with comments does require a lot of time. There are a couple of plugins that somewhat prevent/lower spammy comments, like Akismet (WP) [1], or Captcha (can be annoying) [2]. But there are other solutions too like implementing G+ comments. But you still have to moderate the comments. ;
  
  In general accepting comments can be a great feature for your site but it is time consuming.
  
  Although one can make a case that some comment links should be dofollow, Google recommends nofollowing every link in the comments because they are user generated content [3].
  
  One thing to be aware for is that, although links in comments cannot really cause a penalty, especially if they are nofollowed, you can get a manual penalty for keyword stuffing. For example when your site is targetted by payday link spam [4]. Therefore you need to moderate the comments.
  
  http://akismet.com/
  https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/intro?csw=1
  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/81749 ; ;
  http://searchengineland.com/google-hits-mozilla-with-spam-penalty-over-user-generated-content-156611
• 
  Yasser Mohamed: thank you +Tim Capper +W.E. Jonk & +Ian Dixon all very helpful responses and great info for me & +Unique Websites ; to consider.
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  Tim Capper: Hi +Ian Dixon ;
  
  I have hundreds of comments, full length discusions. i just dont allow links.
  
  The persons authorship is displayed if they signed in with G+.
  
  pretty much the same with this community, we all discuss, share info, but we don't link drop.
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  Ian Dixon: Very valid point +W.E. Jonk ;though people need to be careful with Akismet because it is far from free as many claim.
  
  You got a smile from me at the mention of the 'payday loan' spammers. It is perhaps time for +Matt Cutts ;to impose a penalty on Google Adwords for the amount of it that they put out. Come to think of it, he hates article spinning so another manual penalty for Adwords for promoting article spinning software
• 
  Duncan Johnson: @Yasser Mohamed Allowing comments is great for seo but in a way that may have gone unseen.
  
  Your blog is the most powerful social marketing tool you have.
  
  It's the best interaction and engagement you can get online as a blob/business owner.
  
  Yes you should no follow all links. This will discourage people commenting just to get a link. You'll also get better quality comments.
  
  Google will respect your site because it is socially engaging to people.
  
  I am pretty damned sure you will get a massive increase in people adding you to their circles.
  
  ...and that simply means there are more people whose search results you may influence.
  
  +Tim Capper hundreds if comments is phenomenal.
  
  What a community you must be building. ;o)
  
  ...and being verified G+ accounts I'm sure gives them greater credibility. 
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  Yasser Mohamed: Thanks +Duncan Johnson I appreciate your input.
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  Ashish Ahuja: Due to comment spam many people have shut comments at all but I have shifted to disqus (have a wp plugin) and after that no problem of spam
• 
  Duncan Johnson: A pleasure +Yasser Mohamed
  
  Good points +Ashish Ahuja my standard advice to friends, clients and anyone running a Wordpress site is to replace the WP comments with Disqus.
  
  It kills the spam.
  
  Any system that involves social logins radically kills spam. Unfortunately though social spam bots running fake profiles will eventually cause a rise in spam even with systems like Disqus.
  
  Google+ is about as clean as it can get right now because of their Verified status.
  
  If a business or your audience is digitally savvy I would consider just having commenting for those willing to use their G+ 
• 
  W.E. Jonk: Disqus or Facebook comments can be crawled and indexed by Googlebot for the particular web site. However I am sure if Google Search does this for every site or that it something they do for "popular" sites. Therefore I am not sure if the content in the comments are awarded to the web page every time and if other bots can do the same as Googlebot...
  
  http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-indexes-facebook-comments/20295/ ;
  https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/131425949597179904
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  Ashish Ahuja: +W.E. Jonk This confusion is perfect to keep away spammers or we will see disqus also becoming target of spamming
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  W.E. Jonk: Maybe the confusion is good as an anti-spam measure but it is not good for webmasters ;-). Basically one wants to have the discussion on their own site and on one URL (although it does make sense to use pagination when appropriate) and I am not sure if disqus or other commenting platforms will provide that.
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  Ashish Ahuja: disqus is much better for seo for webmasters as it has proper threading, more comments from social media enabled people and more interaction with your website as compared to traditional comments
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  W.E. Jonk: I don't disagree that disqus is better or worse for SEO. However I am not sure if Google assigns the comments to a particular web page every time. On the other hand it seems to improve: ;
  https://plus.google.com/106666163580246454307/posts/eA6JeqNyCbv
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  Unique Websites: Many thanks all for the info; and thanks +Ashish Ahuja ;for the disqus info. If you allow comments, disqus seems the way to go.
  
  Just to rephrase my original question: in SEO terms, is the loss of link juice/page rank (if such a metric is still relevant) from comments worth the "popularity signal" that comments can give?
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  W.E. Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:51:26 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/is_there_seo_benefit_to_having_comments_and_reader_interaction
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  Shane Walker:
  I would highly recommend allowing comments to your site. By allowing comments to your site, you are increasing your user engagement. You are also potentially exposing your site to friends of the people that are commenting on your site. Google also likes user engagement and rewards those sorts of sites accordingly. The more comments you have on your site, the better that your site will be seen as an authority in your particular niche. The only caveat to this is I would manually approve all comments before posting to stop spam comments and I would also no-follow all our bound links. Hope this helps.
  
  Regards
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  Unique Websites: Once again all, many thanks for the info. And thanks to +W.E. Jonk ;for the video link.
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  Duncan Johnson: Hey +Unique Websites ;I think you've had a variety of good advice. ;
  
  * Comments are good for seo... but its an indirect benefit (not the obvious lots of fresh content)
  * Comments increase the engagement with you audience (as mentioned several times lastly by +Shane Walker ;)
  * Comments support the blogging platform as being the most powerful Social Media Marketing tool any business/webmaster/blogger has.
  * NoFollow all comment links ;
  
  To decrease spam comments replace the inbuilt WP Commenting system with a WP plugin or 3rd party that verifies users with their registered social media profiles ;
  
  * Disqus - WP plugin
  * Google+ comments - WP plugin's (there's a few)
  
  Duncan