If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ll know what a real pain in the ass comments are. When you setup your WordPress blog, you are prone to all sorts of automated bots and comment spam software.

As soon as you start posting and your content gets picked up by the search engines, the comment spammers will come and blast you with spam.

…And they won’t immediately go into your spam folder, they’ll be nicely laid out for you in your pending comments.

Bottom line… the basic WordPress commenting system is ugly and you need to sort it out. First and foremost, I recommend using Comment Luv premium, I believe they’re not accepting new customers at the moment but when they do I advise you to buy it. It’s the best WordPress commenting plugin that will defeat spammers once and for all.

But, Comment Luv Premium costs a buck or two and we all know the majority of you would rather have something that’s free. So here are 6 excellent WordPress commenting plugins that will help you defeat spammers and boost conversions:

1. Disqus

This little plugin is an entire commenting system. It gets rid of the default WordPress commenting system and replaces it with Disqus. It’s essentially a members based comment system, spammers can’t use it PERIOD. The only problem is disqus doesn’t allow users to leave links to their own blogs.

And… We all know the majority of our readers only comment on our posts to gain links and traffic back to their own blogs. So if you’re a broke newbie who wants to eliminate spam, install Disqus.

Now here are some plugins that will help increase your conversions and prevent spammers from abusing the WordPress commenting system:

2. Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin

This is the first plugin on the list for a reason; it eliminates almost all comment spam. All it does is display a little checkbox after the wp comment submit button that says something along the lines of “check this box to confirm you’re human”.

If visitors don’t check the box, they can’t comment. Excellent little plugin from the guy who brought us Comment Luv. Install it, pay attention to the drop in comment spam and thank me later.

3. Subscribe to Comments Plugin

This is a wonderful plugin and I can’t thank the creators enough. It allows visitors to subscribe to any follow-up comments your posts may receive. It keeps visitors coming back; they love to join in the conversation. If you get just 10 people commenting on one of your posts who all subscribe for these notifications, you may well have a 200 comment conversation explode a few hours later.

Excellent plugin for repeat visitors and community building.

4. Aweber Web Forms Plugin

Another awesome plugin that will actually build your list. Everyone who comments on your blog is likely to join your email list. Using this plugin, you can display a little checkbox next to the submit button that allows users to subscribe to your email list. The plugin was created by Aweber and made for Aweber users. Although I’m sure you can find an alternative if you’re using another autoresponder service.

5. ReplyMe

This plugin is a great little conversion booster and will build you a group of loyal readers. All it does is send an email when someone replies to a comment. If person A left a comment and person B replied to it, person A would get an email telling them so.

It’s very similar to the subscribe to comments plugin, but this one is more personal. It will only email your commenter’s when they get a reply, not every time someone comments on the same post. Whenever someone replies to a comment, the initial commenter always returns back to your blog to reply to the second comment or otherwise engage in your content.

6. Comment Redirect

Again, I have a lot to thank this plugin for. While it’s an extremely simple plugin, it’s immensely powerful. All it does is redirect first time commenter’s to the page of your choice.

The best way to use this plugin is to setup a special “thank you for commenting” page and redirect all first time commenter’s to it. On your thank you page, you can have an opt-in form along with a few links to your other blog posts. (Works like crazy)

In Prosperity,

David Wood

P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions below. Also put your name and email address into the form on the right for more cool blogging tips, tricks and secrets.