Community engagement is key to success for a blogger or online publisher, and that means comments. Allowing comments on blog posts encourages readers to express their opinions. It also provides an opportunity to increase your authority through conversations with inquiring minds and appreciative fans in your blogging network. Social media makes it easy to share articles, but there’s nothing quite like building a community on your own website or personal blog. 

But with a growing audience comes comment spam. These aren’t words of encouragement from loyal followers or legitimate questions from interested readers. These are the comments that are a little too formal, don’t quite make sense, or are pushing payday loans and cheap prescriptions on your post about baking bread.