Use Blog Comments To Get Links & Network

I want to talk about blog comments and the reasons you should leave comments on other people’s blogs. You may not be aware of it but this is a great opportunity to increase the exposure of your website/blog.

And it is one that can be done relatively easily, quickly and for free. Unlike using black hat methods, this can have other benefits which have lasting effects for years to come.

Leaving comments has become the domain of the spammer and this has put people off from leaving comments but it shouldn’t. There are many great reasons for leaving proper genuine comments. They give links back to your site, something all sites need. If the site is relevant then the link is better, also your comment can be seen by readers of that site and they can click through to your site, giving you free traffic!

Utilize Different Browsers

A good idea is to use different browsers for blog commenting only. This way you will have a history filled with only the blogs you visited which makes returning to them relatively easily. If you are like me, working on the internet for 8 hours or more a day, you will notch up a lot of page visits each day. From serious work based pages to flicking through YouTube and eBay in your lunch break.

Using a dedicated browser for blog reading and commenting only will become a great resource of blogs that you have visited. Believe me when you start leaving comments, and finding more great blogs to leave comments on, it won’t take long before you will have commented on so many blogs that trying to remember who, where, why and when you left comments will become very difficult.

The reason you want to re visit posts you have commented on is to continue the conversation and make friends, if the author or someone else has replied to your comment with a question then why not answer and keep chatting? We do it all the time on Facebook and Twitter often with little benefit so why not do it on blogs and have traffic coming back to your site?

Keep Track Of Where You Comment

The other idea is have all the blogs you visit regularly in a spread sheet; you can open up the spread sheet and click through to all the sites looking for new posts to comment on. Remember to keep adding to the spread sheet any new blogs you find.

You could bookmark all the sites in your browser but after time I find that they fill up with lots of posts, pages and blogs including useless ‘I will come back to that one day’ stuff that you never do get round to. The book mark list becomes real messy.

Network

If you have commented on a blog owned by a serious blogger there is a big chance that they will reply. This means that you are networking; you could reply back or comment on a few other posts on that blog and start up a conversation with the owner which will lead to the two of you creating a friendship based on familiarity and conversation.

This networking can grow to a point that you could work with the blog owner, swapping guest posts with each other and creating a strong bond with that blog, eventually sharing readers. Now imagine that happening with several blogs. You create a lot of links back to your own blog; you make good friends and working partners as well as having a share of a large number of traffic.

The idea is to comment with genuine points and replies to an article that you have read, even start up a conversation for the writer/blog owner or even other commenters. If you can answer questions by other people, then those people will thank you and want to pop over to your site to see more. You showed an interest in them and helped them; human nature is that they will be curious enough to show interest back.

So not only can you network and create friendships with the blog owners there are the other commenters who are also blog owners. Before long you will have started to create a close knit community of bloggers you can work with. Finding other blogs to write for as part of your guest blogging campaign will be a thing of the past.

The comments section on popular blog posts become meeting grounds for seriously high quality like-minded people that you can connect with. For example, pop over to Pat Flynn’s SmartPassiveIncome site and see the amount of comments he has on this post.

THE Backlinking Strategy That Works    1,893 Comments!

It is the same for Glen Allsopp at ViperChill, this is an incredible post and not only is it full of seriously high grade information it has become a great place for finding good blogs and possible friends. Blogging isn’t like the old style off line business where every company hated the competition and feared spies stealing each other’s ideas. Blogging has become a family where people like to help each other, they like to share with each other and recommend each other’s blogs.

How to Really Build Backlinks and Dominate Google    459 Comments!

There is a code of conduct when posting comments; and you should stick to it. Feel free not to and see what happens, you won’t get you comments published so you lose in the long run. I want to highlight here that too many people do not do it because they think it is spam and that they should because it is genuinely good for you and your site. Don’t do it half-hearted as a link building exercise, not at all. I comment on posts that I have read, or Podcasts I have listened to.

Again take a look at the amount of comments there are on this post over at Yaro Starak’s site.

What Is The REAL Reason People Do NOT Succeed Online?   81 Comments!

Also take note of the style of posts they create, notice the amount of useful content there is and the length of them. These are not your usual poor 500 word re-hashed posts you find on a lot of sites. Maybe this is why they are A) Popular and B) Successful?

Be One Of The First To Comment

It is best to comment on posts that have been newly published if you want to get into a conversation with the owner and fellow commenters, to be notified of new posts that are live sign up to their email lists, RSS feeds, social media accounts or set up a Google Alerts for your favourite blogs. That way you will usually be notified when a new post is live.

What Can Or Should You Comment About?

This is really easy, comment on what you have read or heard with an experience you have had that is similar or if it is something new you have learned and you like it then say so! Tell them and thank them for giving you information that you needed which has helped make your life easier. Not only do these bloggers like your feedback but it motivates them to create more helpful posts which will in turn help you and your online endeavors.

I certainly do not go to video gaming sites and say ‘yes a very informative post my friend, please visit “www.whataloadofcrap.com” to make a million dollars from smiling.’ The gaming site has no interest to me or my site. At least with Pat, Glen’s and Yaro’s sites I not only learn something new it is something I want to learn so I want to leave proper comments.

It is important that you have a picture associated with the email address that you want to use when commenting. This is called a Gravatar, you will see my Gravatar on the image above, you will need to set that up here at http://en.gravatar.com/

We live in the age of the YouTube troll, people arguing and passing negative judgements on each other for no reason, nasty personal insults flying around because of nothing more than individual tastes in music or film, it is barmy; we seem to live in a negative nasty age. Well I say it is time more and more people leave comments saying thank you and highlighting the good bits of blog posts and ideas. It is good for the blogging world; it is good for you and it can be very good for your sites traffic!

If this all sounds like hard work and time consuming consider this, set time a side to do it like an afternoon. Open up your spread sheet, click through to some of the blogs read the post and comment. It really doesn’t take long, you can start right now and more importantly it is free!

Your name will be seen regularly so you will become known, traffic to your site will increase and you will make new friends and contacts. The return you get in the long run is far greater than the effort you put in.

What do you think? Please tell us in the comments section below. PS, I have my special troll rifle ready!