Blogging is not just about writing great articles. A blog needs so much in order for it to become successful, that you can easily become overwhelmed. That’s where tools and WordPress plug-ins come in. And one of my personal favorites is CommentLuv. I use it on my blog and can’t imagine not having it. As I want to reward my readers and commentators, I find CommentLuv is one of the the best way to do it. Whilst I’ve written a review about this great plugin in the past, it’s a little dated and we all know how much can change in technology in such a short time period.

What is CommentLuv?

CommentLuv is a WordPress plugin that helps bloggers reward their readers by linking to their latest blog post each time they post a comment. This in itself is a great tool.

So what’s so great about it?

Rewarding your readers whenever they comment by linking to their latest blog post can have some amazing benefits:

More comments. Since every time a blogger comments on one of your posts they get a link back to their own blog, they will be much more inclined to comment regularly.

Better SEO. More comments and more replies to comments mean more engagement. And more engagement means better SEO – your rankings will improve on Google, which will make it easier for other potential readers to find you.

More traffic. More comments, more engagement and better SEO all result in more traffic to your blog. People will come because they want to leave comments, others will stay on your blog and read the comments (I always read the comments and can often learn as much from people commenting as the post itself)

Returning readers and avid commentators. Your readers will want to come back to your blog regularly (obviously it goes without saying that all this is dependent on the quality and value of your content) and keep commenting on your posts, they often want the backlinks and can feel that they are being rewarded every time they comment.

Viral posts. A great article that offers lots of value simply isn’t enough nowadays. There’s too much noise on the Internet, so if you want to have a viral post, you will need to work harder to do it. However, CommentLuv can really help in that department. With more comments, more engagement and better SEO, the chances of your post going viral will rapidly increase.

Take a look at what the “edit comments” page looks like to see what a comment could look like if you used CommentLuv:

As you can see, every commentator’s link to their latest blog post is at the end of their comment, followed by a heart symbol.

CommentLuv Premium

CommentLuv Premium does cost, but it also offers some incredible extra features that will really help your blog. I have personally been using it for a while, and I’m always happy when they add a new feature. It got to the point where this initially simple plugin now has 8 plugins of its own. My favorite are:

G.A.S.P. No one wants spam on their blog. A few extra comments don’t compensate the fact that spam makes you and your blog look bad. That’s where G.A.S.P comes in – this advanced anti spambot plugin has “added advanced heuristics to help prevent human generated spam from ever getting near your blog.”

TwitterLink. TwitterLink is another great way that benefits you as well as compensates your readers, by displaying their Twitter names in their comments. This feature will not only help increase their followers, but also yours.

KeywordName. This amazing feature will help you get even more comments by rewarding your most avid commenters. After posting a certain amount of comments or registering to your website, you can allow your readers to include keywords in their names whenever they comment.

ReplyMe. With this plugin, whenever one of your readers receives a reply to one of their comments, they will get an email notifying them. Also, whenever you have guest authors on your blog and someone comments on their posts, they will get an automatic email notifying them of the comment.  I personally love this new feature and am finding it’s really increasing my engagement off of my blog as people are responding to my emails as well.

How does it work?

You can install this plugin directly from CommentLuv or from WordPress, where you can also watch a video of how CommentLuv works to understand it better. There are different prices, depending on whether you want to use it on one, two or multiple blogs.

Installation. When you purchase CommentLuv you will have to download a zip file which you will then have to extract and drop its contents in the wp-content/plugins/directory of your WordPress installation.

You can then activate it from the Plugins page or by visiting the plugins page in your dashboard, then clicking ‘add new’ and search for ‘commentluv’.

After installing the plugin, go to the WordPress admin menu panel >> Settings >> CommentLuv. Take a look at the following screenshot of the CommentLuv settings page:

The first step is to enable CommentLuv by clicking on “Yes” in the first panel.

Afterwards, in “Appearance”, you can choose either between the 3 badges, showing no badge at all or using your own or specified text.

In the “Messages” panel you can choose:

-       the text that will be displayed in the comment

-       the messages for unregistered users

In the operational settings, you can choose who to give 10 last posts to choose from when they comment.

Don’t forget to click “Save Settings” when you are done. If after this point you realize you want to change something, you will have to click on “Reset” to reset all settings.

Final thoughts…

Overall, I absolutely love CommentLuv. Every blogger wants more traffic to their website, more comments on their posts and a way to reward their readers and keep them happy. I updated to Premium almost instantly after I started using it, and I definitely don’t regret it. It’s really made the blogging experience better for me and for Socialable’s readers! I have to say I believe it is one of the better WordPress plugins for bloggers, and I highly recommend it to any blogger that is serious about blogging and creating an engaged blog.

What do you think of CommentLuv? Have you used it or are you planning to in the future? Do you have any other ways of rewarding your readers? Please leave your comments (and you will be able to link back to your latest blog post, of course).