The Five Keys to Blog Commenting
Effective blog commenting is one way to increase your own blog’s readers and search engine ranking. Consider these five basic points that any novice internet marketer can implement when commenting on their favorite blogs.
Icon: Using the right comment icon does matter. Preferably use a memorable, bright and inviting headshot of you that adds a personal touch to your comment itself. Blog readers are drawn to these qualities and will increase your click-through rate. Register with the most commonly used commenting services such as gravatar and disqus. Remain signed in with these services so that they can automatically retrieve your saved picture.
Niche: what’s the value of traffic if it’s not targeted to your subject matter? Targeted traffic is more likely to click through to your blog, stay on your blog longer, and buy what you have to offer. The first two points positively contribute to a higher Alexa score while the third is the bottom line for many full-time bloggers. Identify the two or three niches your blog content encompasses and research the most read relevant blogs.
Order: Most blog comments are listed in chronological order with the first comment shown immediately below the post. This is a golden position to obtain given the potential permanence for high visibility. Subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed will not only keep you abreast of niche-related information for your own blog posts but will give you ample opportunities to routinely comment. Make it a habit to peruse your RSS readers’ latest updates so you can be first in line.
Influencers: Compile a list of the top 10 blogs in your niche. These will contain the majority of avid blog readers who have potential interest in your content. The cliché about “working smart instead of working hard” applies here. By only focusing on the more read blogs you’re seeking to direct some of that traffic to your site. Given identical comments, a highly read blog will contribute more traffic to your site than a seldom read blog for obvious reasons. You can guage a blogs influence or readership by noting the site’s Alexa Score, the RSS subscriber number, or the average daily visitors.
Backlinks: This is a separate point from the previous ones related to networking, however, it bares mentioning given the search engine optimization implications. Search Engines quantify a site’s off-site optimization based on the quantity and quality of its backlinks. A single blog comment counts as one backlink since clicking on it forwards readers to your website. One way to significantly increase the quality is to comment on government and education blogs, ending in .gov and edu, respectively. Search engines place these categories in a high regard than a .com or .net blog.
Secondly, backlinks can be nofollow or dofollow in nature , based on the html code used on the commented blog. Comments containing the nofollow tag (in the code) push no “link juice” to your site and are effectively useless for SEO purposes since Google will not recognize the backlink when ranking your site. You can easily avoid the nofollow blogs by using the Search Status Firefox add-on to highlight a page’s nofollow links or viewing the code (control-[U]) to identify “nofollow” within the current comments.
You now should have a better appreciation for the value of blog commenting as a powerful networking and SEO activity. With the potential to attract hundreds of fresh new visitors to your website each day, blog commenting should play a foundational role in your blog promotion.
Icon: Using the right comment icon does matter. Preferably use a memorable, bright and inviting headshot of you that adds a personal touch to your comment itself. Blog readers are drawn to these qualities and will increase your click-through rate. Register with the most commonly used commenting services such as gravatar and disqus. Remain signed in with these services so that they can automatically retrieve your saved picture.
Niche: what’s the value of traffic if it’s not targeted to your subject matter? Targeted traffic is more likely to click through to your blog, stay on your blog longer, and buy what you have to offer. The first two points positively contribute to a higher Alexa score while the third is the bottom line for many full-time bloggers. Identify the two or three niches your blog content encompasses and research the most read relevant blogs.
Order: Most blog comments are listed in chronological order with the first comment shown immediately below the post. This is a golden position to obtain given the potential permanence for high visibility. Subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed will not only keep you abreast of niche-related information for your own blog posts but will give you ample opportunities to routinely comment. Make it a habit to peruse your RSS readers’ latest updates so you can be first in line.
Influencers: Compile a list of the top 10 blogs in your niche. These will contain the majority of avid blog readers who have potential interest in your content. The cliché about “working smart instead of working hard” applies here. By only focusing on the more read blogs you’re seeking to direct some of that traffic to your site. Given identical comments, a highly read blog will contribute more traffic to your site than a seldom read blog for obvious reasons. You can guage a blogs influence or readership by noting the site’s Alexa Score, the RSS subscriber number, or the average daily visitors.
Backlinks: This is a separate point from the previous ones related to networking, however, it bares mentioning given the search engine optimization implications. Search Engines quantify a site’s off-site optimization based on the quantity and quality of its backlinks. A single blog comment counts as one backlink since clicking on it forwards readers to your website. One way to significantly increase the quality is to comment on government and education blogs, ending in .gov and edu, respectively. Search engines place these categories in a high regard than a .com or .net blog.
Secondly, backlinks can be nofollow or dofollow in nature , based on the html code used on the commented blog. Comments containing the nofollow tag (in the code) push no “link juice” to your site and are effectively useless for SEO purposes since Google will not recognize the backlink when ranking your site. You can easily avoid the nofollow blogs by using the Search Status Firefox add-on to highlight a page’s nofollow links or viewing the code (control-[U]) to identify “nofollow” within the current comments.
You now should have a better appreciation for the value of blog commenting as a powerful networking and SEO activity. With the potential to attract hundreds of fresh new visitors to your website each day, blog commenting should play a foundational role in your blog promotion.
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