Facebook popularity is nothing short of spectacular and many webmasters, specifically bloggers have chosen to implement Facebook Comments as either a replacement to standard WordPress comments system or as a side-by-side option. Reason for this implementation is quite simple – viral traffic, as each time a comment done on your website using Facebook Connect option, it appears in commenter timeline and exposes your content to a new, potential visitors.

Up until recently Google simply ignored those comments on your blog that were done using Facebook Connect, Disqus and Intense Debate simply because programming used to implement those systems made it hard for search engines to index them. But no more, it appears that last change in 2011 enabled Google to properly read the comments and index them as part of your content!

Facebook Comments As A Good Option For Your Blog

So what is the big deal with this one you might ask?
Lets just ignore the Viral Traffic option, mentioned above and look at a few other aspects of implementing Facebook Comments on your blog and it’s potential benefits:

• Indexed Content – now that Google can properly read those comments, it can index them and each time new comment is posted – Google sees it as a new content modification, prompting it to keep your pages in its index.
• SEO Implications – if words used within comment correspond to keywords your blog post is optimized for, it increases keyword density on your page, without you having to do any extra work.
• Simplicity of Commenting – majority of the people have Facebook account and giving them ability to comment on your blog without having to provide any additional information but their Facebook Authentication can actually increase number of comments you will get on your blog.

Obviously there are always downsides to every option and before you choose to implement anything you should consider them. In case of this blog – I have tried multiple commenting systems and always seem to come back to original WordPress  commenting system, as it allows me to have a more full control over my blog.
Some of the considerations:

• Page Load speed – implementing any external script on your blog has a good chance of increasing page load speed of your blog and should be part of your testing and configuration.
• Ability to easily administer – every external system comes with different options when it comes to administering, managing and storing comments published on your blog. Be sure to learn all about it before implementing.
• Features provided – not all systems created equal and feature limitations or abundance can be a big consideration when evaluating your options.

Those are just some of the most important considerations I personally pay attention to and obviously you have to weight in your own pros and cons before making any decisions but if you feel that Viral Traffic provided by Facebook Comments is something you want to take advantage of, here is…..

How To Add Facebook Comment to WordPress

I’m not going to talk about Intense Debate and Disquss here but instead provide you with option I have personally used and implemented on couple of my blogs that I felt was appropriate, in fact that image above is from one of them…
I personally like Facebook Comments plugin because it is fairly simple, works very nicely with WordPress blogs and provides you with all the functionality you would expect with Facebook Connect, just configure your options and you are all set to go. Enjoy and don’t forget to share your opinion!