I’m a massive believer in blog commenting and what it can do for your website rankings (I always have and probably always will be a massive fan), but they don’t have to be used just for SEO gains.
Commenting on industry related blogs on a daily basis can have a resounding positive effect on not only SEO and link building, but also with online reputation, brand awareness, expert positioning, and the targeted traffic fellow commenters back to your site.
Even if the blogs have a nofollow in operation, you should still submit! (if they have do-follow, it’s a nice little bonus 😉
Why you shouldn’t worry about the nofollow
If you take the time to comment on your favourite industry blogs just twice a day every day, that’s….Well, it’s a hell of a lot of backlinks over the course of a year 🙂
But do these comments all have to be dofollow blogs? No they certainly don’t, as Yahoo counts nofollow links and so does Ask. And the backlinks counted in Yahoo can improve the monetary value of your website, and the price in which you can charge to have ads displayed.Text link ads are a company who use Yahoo backlinks as a determining factor in the value they give certain pages for ad placement.
But back links should not be the sole purpose of any blog commenting campaign, the aim of a blogging campaign should be traffic and brand awareness. Getting your word out there to establish yourself as an expert in the field is extremely rewarding. Not only do you establish you and your company, you also provoke an inquisitive reader into visiting your site, whether it be to purchase, or to contribute in the posts on your very own blog.
The Etiquette when Commenting on Blogs
It is important not to think in terms of SEO when posting comments on blogs. Having blatant anchor text within the name field on a comment submission is a no no for me. If you can help it try and include your real name, or your company name in the name filed, as your comment looks less spammy and the link you have is more likely to get followed by the blogs readers.
Linking to your own site in the body of the comment can get seem spammy, and it’s a red flag for blog owners and blog spam software alike, and can lead to your comments being deleted from several blogs that use a blog spamming software. Only in extreme cases should you point to your own site in blog comments.
Blog owners like to see their posts stimulate interesting worthwhile comments from bloggers, and if they see that your comment is not adding any relevancy or quality to the blog post itself, it’s going to get deleted. So always try read through the posts entirely and look to add a quality comment that adds value to the visitor and the blog owner. This in turn will promote more clickthroughs to your site and provide you with that traffic boost your site so desperately needs.
How to Implement a Successful Blog Commenting Campaign
Blogging can be extremely effective at building back links and building out your brand, that’s already been established. But how do you find the best blogs to comment on and how do you know if they are do-follow or not?
Well, the first step to take here is to go to a reputable blog directory and search for authority blogs in your niche. Technorati is the numero uno when it comes to blog directories, and every blog worth there salt in the world is listed here. Start to go through the categories and visit each of the blogs related to your industry, if they are of high quality, bookmark them and revisit on a regular basis.
If you are adamant that you must have do-follow blogs to submit to, then I suggest you take a look at a great piece of software called fast blog finder. It’s pretty neat in finding quality authority blogs for you, and it also has a nifty little feature were you can filter searches with do or no-follow blogs showing up.
Have anything to share? Then add a comment 🙂
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I couldn’t refrain from commenting. Very well written!
I agree Wes. Back in the old days (2 years ago!) I used to hammer high pagerank non relevant blogs with comments including my anchor text. One of my sites was penalised because of it. Stick to relevant topics and say something useful is my motto now