Blog commenting - It works! Here's what I've learned...

[bhuff85]

I have to be honest - I never really used blog commenting as a link building tactic. I recently started working on an older website that I'm really trying to build up in a tough niche market, and while look at some of my competitors backlinks using Yahoo's Site Explorer tool, I noticed quite a few of them were getting TONS of backlinks from blogs.

So, I visited those same blogs and actually READ the posts and contributed valuable, meaningful comments. A few days later, I see myself on the top commentators list for that blog and have generated over 400+ links back to my site. I keep finding new blogs daily, all with dofollow comments and the "top commentator" plugin. The thing is, while doing this, I have discovered some unique blogs and have started reading them regularly in addition to adding my comments. So, it's a win-win - I keep returning to read posts and offer valuable feedback, they get a return reader and I get some links back to my site.

Since I've noticed that dofollow blogs and the "top commentator" plugin increase readership, I've even added these to my new blog that I've recently started to help increase readership.

Now, you can't just start blasting blogs with comments that are meaningless. That will get you nowhere and often ruin any reputation that you could've built with that site. Here are a few tips I picked up that have helped me gain solid links and be looked upon as a valued contributor to discussions:

- Never use a blatant keyword as your name. I usually input my name and then the keyword I'm targeting (i.e. Dave @ Legit Home Jobs). Doing this gets my keyword in there, but comes across as less spammy and more authoritive.

- ALWAYS POST MEANINGFUL COMMENTS! Take the time to READ the blog post. Offer something more than "hey, that was a great post!" or "thank you for the tips". I usually will try to add some value to the post, give additional tips, or if I disagree with the post, I will explain my reasons why. I also sometimes will reply to others who have a question or will elaborate more on their responses.

- Never post multiple comments and leave, especially on a new blog that you've never posted at before. Comments are timestamped and blog owners can easily see you comment dropping, never to return. I always start with a well rounded comment on a post that I can give the most feedback on. If it's approved, I'll return and post more each day. Plus, on most blogs, once you have a good comment approved, Wordpress has a setting that will automatically approve any commenters who've had a previous comment approved.

- Look for blogs with the "top commentator" plugin. On some blogs, this list will refresh daily, once a week, once a month, once a year or whenever the blog owner decides it's time for a change. Either way, it's a great way to get a lot of backlinks, as this widget is usually on every page of that blog.

I hope you all can use these tips the next time you try to work on blog commenting. Not a bad way to get a lot of link love with minimal work. I can say this is now in my overall link building plan for every site I have.

[noble]

Some great tips there!

And yea top commenter is an awesome plugin for the backlink builder. Try to find blogs not commented on much and 3-4 comments will get you that spot for a sitewide link for months and months if not forever.

[Trieu]

Thanks for the tip. I should start reading more blogs

[Loren Woirhaye]

This top commentor plugin - how does one go about looking
for blogs with it?

I'm an advocate of quality commenting, btw, I've just never
heard of the plugin and I'd like to know more.

[sportsfan54]

how do you find good blogs to comment on for good backlinks?

[Harrison Ortega]

Great idea about the top commentators.
Keep in mind that the Yahoo site explorer result shows all the nofollow blogs too. Make sure you check if the blog it is really dofollow before commenting on it.

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by sportsfan54

how do you find good blogs to comment on for good backlinks?

I mentioned my main way of doing it in my original post. Re-read it when you have the chance.

Originally Posted by Harrison Ortega

Great idea about the top commentators.
Keep in mind that the Yahoo site explorer result shows all the nofollow blogs too. Make sure you check if the blog it is really dofollow before commenting on it.

Yep - I went through and did some research to see whether or not they were dofollow, and all of the blogs I posted on thus far have been. There are a few that are not dofollow, but I posted on them anyway, because while dofollow links are the best, a quality link is still a quality link and can bring in traffic.

[rednimer]

hmm, cool. Wasn't aware of the top commenter plugin.

I was looking around the other day at wordpress commenting (top google results) and wound some pretty cool stuff to do with wordpress commenting on your own blog

[www111]

I've been commenting on the blog of virtually every guru that's sending me emails and I seem to be getting some traffic.

[hometutor]

One thing I learned. Don't post the same comment all the time. You want these to be spidered and it could end up making you look like a spammer or an idiot when they do all get spidered

Rick

[Sheryl Polomka]

One problem I found with blog commenting is if the have 'recent comments' in the sidebar then you can gain a couple hundred backlinks very quickly as all of their indexed pages will give you a backlink. But as soon as another five or so people comment and your link drops of the 'recent comments' list then all those backlinks will disappear.

I don't know how this affects your site in Google if you have backlinks appearing then disappearing. Some sites can be difficult to keep up that spot in the most recent columns list unless you are commenting once or twice a day.

[LiamP]

What I most like about blog commenting are the 'extras' you mentioned. That it can be enjoyable reading the posts and contributing to the conversation, and that you can learn a lot too.

[michael_dans]

What I don't like about blog commenting is the number of increasing spam posts per minute. This cannot be prevented as I have also tried to stop it but failed. Is there any way to stop this?

[untouchable_newbness]

Originally Posted by Sheryl Polomka

One problem I found with blog commenting is if the have 'recent comments' in the sidebar then you can gain a couple hundred backlinks very quickly as all of their indexed pages will give you a backlink. But as soon as another five or so people comment and your link drops of the 'recent comments' list then all those backlinks will disappear.

I don't know how this affects your site in Google if you have backlinks appearing then disappearing. Some sites can be difficult to keep up that spot in the most recent columns list unless you are commenting once or twice a day.

I think part of this would depend on how often the google spiders are crawling/indexing those pages. Plus I don't know about you but my backlinks take a while to show up (I know they're there just not "visible"). I'm no SEO expert but I think it is in the nature of blogs for the comments and the resulting backlinks to be constantly shifting so I doubt google would frown on these 100s of backlinks disappearing over night.

As far as posting on top commentor blogs, I think it is a decent enough short term strategy for link building. This is of course assuming that the links are do follow and are not the only element of your backlinking strategy. I think these types of backlinks would be useful for someone who wants to build a microniche site and get it up the SERPS as fast as possible and then sell that site off. Just my two cents.

[thebitbotdotcom]

Blog commenting as an SEO tactic can indeed be very beneficial. You are correct in what you said. You have to read the article and make an insightful comment. Use your actual name as your name. Add value to the page and you will receive link love in return.

If you do not follow these rules you usually get blacklisted.

I blacklist spammers daily because once you remove the no-follow attribute, spammers come out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Many are automated. All get their IP's blacklisted.

About 800 out of every 1000 comments get rejected. Many are sadly pathetic. Real ones are prized. All get responded to.

Learning something from reading the article is an added benefit...

[TheMarketingGuy]

Originally Posted by bhuff85

I usually input my name and then the keyword I'm targeting (i.e. Dave @ Legit Home Jobs).

I really like this tip. It's one of those small details that can really make a difference.

Nice post, sir.

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

Blog commenting as an SEO tactic can indeed be very beneficial. You are correct in what you said. You have to read the article and make an insightful comment. Use your actual name as your name. Add value to the page and you will receive link love in return.

If you do not follow these rules you usually get blacklisted.

I blacklist spammers daily because once you remove the no-follow attribute, spammers come out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Many are automated. All get their IP's blacklisted.

About 800 out of every 1000 comments get rejected. Many are sadly pathetic. Real ones are prized. All get responded to.

Learning something from reading the article is an added benefit...

Exactly. Unfortunately, most people get too excited when they start finding blogs and see the backlinking benefits starting to take shape, so they hit blogs up with tons of comments. Even if they are good comments, you need to find a balance.

If people would just slow down, take some time to read the post and make a legitimate, thoughtful comment, they would realize how easy it really is.

[GameVoid]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

I blacklist spammers daily because once you remove the no-follow attribute, spammers come out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Many are automated. All get their IP's blacklisted.

One of my blogs get about 5 spam comments a day. It got annoying deleting them every day, so I stopped deleting them. I now just change the commenter's URL to point to one of the other sites I own.

[Amenda Jessera]

That is a good news dude, Is there anyway to findout the blogs with top commenter plugin?

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by Amenda Jessera

That is a good news dude, Is there anyway to findout the blogs with top commenter plugin?

No real "easy" way to do it (at least with my method of going about it). I don't just target ANY blog with the plugin, but narrow it down to only those blogs that are in the niches that I'm involved in. Makes more sense that way, too, as I'm not only getting relevant links, but will also pull in traffic from relevant sources.

[JohnMcCabe]

First off, a tip of the hat to bhuff85 for showing that results can come from doing things the right way.

Finding blogs you can make valuable additions to via your comments is like finding a well - you can drop the bucket over and over again without jeopardizing the source.

As for finding sites using a given plug-in, most of them leave a footprint of some sort. If you can find a single page that uses that plug-in, you can usually figure out the footprint. They'll either have some standard bit of text ('powered by' with a link is a classic) or a bit of code that exists for all of them.

You can figure out the latter by doing a "view source" for the page and looking at the section displaying the output from the plugin.

To find others using the same plugin, search for your keywords plus the footprint text in quotes. For example, if you were looking for Wordpress blogs exclusively and your niche is acne cures, you'd search for 'acne cures +"powered by Wordpress"'...

[IMStudentforlife]

Also ensuring the blog you are about to comment on, is not too old maybe a year to a few months old. And allows DoFollow, you can find this by looking at the Page Source (CTRL + U) and then performing a search for DoFollow in Find. This is about the most low-key way to find if the blog is DoFollow or not.

How to find them, go through Google... there's nothing black hat about using Google to find DoFollow links(after all it was Google that created this..).

The other plug-ins I'm testing at the moment is Commentluv and Disque seems to be great too.

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

First off, a tip of the hat to bhuff85 for showing that results can come from doing things the right way.

Finding blogs you can make valuable additions to via your comments is like finding a well - you can drop the bucket over and over again without jeopardizing the source.

As for finding sites using a given plug-in, most of them leave a footprint of some sort. If you can find a single page that uses that plug-in, you can usually figure out the footprint. They'll either have some standard bit of text ('powered by' with a link is a classic) or a bit of code that exists for all of them.

You can figure out the latter by doing a "view source" for the page and looking at the section displaying the output from the plugin.

To find others using the same plugin, search for your keywords plus the footprint text in quotes. For example, if you were looking for Wordpress blogs exclusively and your niche is acne cures, you'd search for 'acne cures +"powered by Wordpress"'...

John - Thanks for adding those tips! That's a similar way I go about finding good, solid blogs. Plus, like I mentioned above, I usually now come back to those blogs to read up on their latest posts.

Originally Posted by IMStudentforlife

Also ensuring the blog you are about to comment on, is not too old maybe a year to a few months old. And allows DoFollow, you can find this by looking at the Page Source (CTRL + U) and then performing a search for DoFollow in Find. This is about the most low-key way to find if the blog is DoFollow or not.

How to find them, go through Google... there's nothing black hat about using Google to find DoFollow links(after all it was Google that created this..).

The other plug-ins I'm testing at the moment is Commentluv and Disque seems to be great too.

That's a solid tip for checking whether or not a site is dofollow. I had a few other methods that involved some more work, but I'll definitely try this one out next time I find a new blog.

[IMStudentforlife]

Originally Posted by bhuff85

That's a solid tip for checking whether or not a site is dofollow. I had a few other methods that involved some more work, but I'll definitely try this one out next time I find a new blog.

Its a good thing to know really, since both Facebook and Twitter have both bowed to Google and stopped DoFollow linking. They claim its a effort to stop spam.. (Ok I'll go along with that, for awhile..)

Its odd thou on the Yahoo Site explorer it still shows up so maybe you do get a link but not a DoFollow therefore no Link Juice...

Who knows it seems like Google changes the game every 4 nano seconds rather than every quarter like it once was...

[Megan Elizabeth]

These are great tips! Be careful not to post the same things over and over, doing so will hinder your sites backlink performance, not to mention make one look incompetent! Very good help for those who have never considered blogging!!

Megan Elizabeth

[johnben1444]

One thing i love about blog commenting is, you can get all the links the blog you comment on has. This will enable you to quickly build your link in the most preferred way without the search engine raising an eye brow.

[REHughes]

Originally Posted by Amenda Jessera

That is a good news dude, Is there anyway to findout the blogs with top commenter plugin?

Amenda, try this. I think it will work

put this command into the google search engine:

EXAMPLE:

site: cooking blogs + "top commentator"

Type it exactly as you see it, replacing "COOKING" with your keyword, and this should give you search results of blogs you can post to.

Also, as an added benefit, you can run SEO Quake or another program that gives PAGE RANK to determine which ones actually will give you the best results from Google.

Hope this helps, and I think I am right!

[raviv]

Thanks bhuff85 for sharing the benefits of blog commenting. A very thought provoking post that has generated good comments right through from the WF community.

My 2 cents worth in response to some questions/observations by everyone

You may already be familiar with these. If not, I hope it is useful.

@bhuff85 - An easy way of finding nofollow links is to use a Firefox plugin (this is browser specific) called Quirk Search Status. Once installed, it is found on the bottom right of the FF browser. Right click on it and select Highlight nofollow links. This is easy for those who are not very good at reading code using View > Source

@Harrison Ortega - It is true that backlinks matter and it is a benefit to get backlinks from high PR sites/pages. Not all links created are equal. Even if it is a nofollow link, as long as the blog resides on a good clean domain with a healthy PR, that itself is a great benefit as a backlink to your site can inherit other powerful characteristics of the blog site such as domain authority, the trust the domain enjoys etc. Though search engines may not consider link juice from a nofollowed link, they will still consider the other attributes mentioned above with respect to that domain on which the blog resides.

@Sheryl - You have raised a valid point. Sitewide links used to be very powerful as in the case of getting 100 links from one site because of the link being part of the global site template. Over the years, the search engines have modified their approach and they consider only the most valid relevant link and ignore the rest. You can look at it this way - getting 5 links from 5 powerful unique domains is more powerful than 100 links from 1 domain

@michael_dans You can try the Akismet plugin if you have a WP site. It still gives you a chance to release valid comments.

@REHughes - great tip on using Google to search for blogs with top commenter.

Cheers
Raviv

[jlxsolutions]

Only problem is to many Abuse this
My blog spam filters are filled whit it lol.
One day i got so much spam it exceeded the Memory limit on the host O_O
I had to wipe the DB lol never seen such mega spam in my life must ahve been thousands of automated comments....
the 400+spam emails i get is nothing in comparison

[pupkevicius@aol.com]

bunk bed "Enter YourName@YourKeywords in the Name field to take advantage." - Google Search

use the link above to get a list of related blogs where you can leave a comment with your link using any anchor text you like by use of KeywordLuv plugin.

Just replace "bunk bed" (which is at the beggining of the search query) with a keyword relevant to your site. I find that brand names work quite well.

Just make sure in the name field you put your "name @ KEYWORD"

the keyword you enter will be used as the anchor text for the url you give.

[BonganiS]

Thanks for the tips. They are a good reminder to me. I have been using this method for backlinks among other reasons. But recently I have not been using it. I will have to do it again. You have added some new insights to me.

[Luke McCormack]

Just goes to prove that giving value and over delivering produces results in all arenas of IM traffic building.

Well done

Nigel

[Rukshan]

Dofollow Blog Commenting is a nice way to improve SERP within a very short time. I use following phrase to find dofollow blogs.
site:"powered by drupal"
site:add comment

Use many combinations and get more backlinks.

Thanks
Rukshan

[johnotin]

true it does work, but one should do research on blogging before they attempt at doing , so as not to make to many mistakes

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by raviv

Thanks bhuff85 for sharing the benefits of blog commenting. A very thought provoking post that has generated good comments right through from the WF community.

My 2 cents worth in response to some questions/observations by everyone

You may already be familiar with these. If not, I hope it is useful.

@bhuff85 - An easy way of finding nofollow links is to use a Firefox plugin (this is browser specific) called Quirk Search Status. Once installed, it is found on the bottom right of the FF browser. Right click on it and select Highlight nofollow links. This is easy for those who are not very good at reading code using View > Source

@Harrison Ortega - It is true that backlinks matter and it is a benefit to get backlinks from high PR sites/pages. Not all links created are equal. Even if it is a nofollow link, as long as the blog resides on a good clean domain with a healthy PR, that itself is a great benefit as a backlink to your site can inherit other powerful characteristics of the blog site such as domain authority, the trust the domain enjoys etc. Though search engines may not consider link juice from a nofollowed link, they will still consider the other attributes mentioned above with respect to that domain on which the blog resides.

@Sheryl - You have raised a valid point. Sitewide links used to be very powerful as in the case of getting 100 links from one site because of the link being part of the global site template. Over the years, the search engines have modified their approach and they consider only the most valid relevant link and ignore the rest. You can look at it this way - getting 5 links from 5 powerful unique domains is more powerful than 100 links from 1 domain

@michael_dans You can try the Akismet plugin if you have a WP site. It still gives you a chance to release valid comments.

@REHughes - great tip on using Google to search for blogs with top commenter.

Cheers
Raviv

Great sstuff here Raviv. I'm well versed in code, so the view > source method that was mentioned above works good, but I'm always up for finding more tools to save some more time. I'll definitely look into this.

I just rechecked some of my stats on Site Explorer and my one particular site I've promoted the past week using blog commenting went from 400 links overall to 2,400+. Like I said, even though I may not get all of that link juice, it still looks good for my site overall.

Now I'm just waiting for Google to crawl my site again so I can get more of these pages indexed. I've submitted an updated sitemap, created a manual RSS feed and placed that on Feedburner and update it with each piece of content I add, but yet Google STILL has yet to crawl my site (last time was 8/24). Anyone have any suggestions on getting a static site crawled faster?

[raviv]

Hi bhuff85,
You have done well with the sitemaps and RSS feed using Feedburner. To get the most accurate # of backlinks to your site, you would be best off logging into your Google Webmasters account and verifying the site (if you have not done it already).

Google will show you accurately the number of backlinks you have to your site. You as the site owner are privy to this info and no one else can see it. All other backlink tools including Yahoo site explorer do have a tendency to inflate the backlink count and thus skew it.

If you have an RSS feed to your static site, then submit it to feedagg.com and you can bet big G will be knocking on your doors at short notice

Best
Raviv

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by raviv

Hi bhuff85,
You have done well with the sitemaps and RSS feed using Feedburner. To get the most accurate # of backlinks to your site, you would be best off logging into your Google Webmasters account and verifying the site (if you have not done it already).

Google will show you accurately the number of backlinks you have to your site. You as the site owner are privy to this info and no one else can see it. All other backlink tools including Yahoo site explorer do have a tendency to inflate the backlink count and thus skew it.

If you have an RSS feed to your static site, then submit it to feedagg.com and you can bet big G will be knocking on your doors at short notice

Best
Raviv

Good deal. I've actually submitted to quite a few RSS sites (feedagg.com included), yet I still have yet to have Google come by my site since 8/24. Oh well - patience wins in the long run, right?

On another note, I did just login to my webmaster tools on Google and just realized I'm now ranked 16th for the keyword I'm targeting (60,500 searches a month and 675,000,000 - yes, 675 MILLION results). I was NOWHERE before I started using blog comments as a backlink building technique, even more proof that it DOES work

[Dennis Gaskill]

Originally Posted by IMStudentforlife

Also ensuring the blog you are about to comment on, is not too old maybe a year to a few months old. And allows DoFollow, you can find this by looking at the Page Source (CTRL + U) and then performing a search for DoFollow in Find. This is about the most low-key way to find if the blog is DoFollow or not.

As far as I'm aware there is no such thing as a DoFollow tag, so you'd get no where searching for it. There is a "nofollow" attribute, which is what you'd need to search for. If you don't find it, it's do follow by default. Searching for "dofollow" will yield nothing every time ... or did I miss a memo somewhere along the way?

At any rate, I use the Swoosty plugin for Firefox. It has an option to have "no follow" links highlighted, so when you're blog commenting you know at a glance if the links are do follow or not, no need to search for anything. That's easier and less time consuming. Swoosty has a lot of other nice features too.

Originally Posted by Megan Elizabeth

These are great tips! Be careful not to post the same things over and over, doing so will hinder your sites backlink performance, not to mention make one look incompetent! Very good help for those who have never considered blogging!!

Megan Elizabeth

Megan, that's true. If you follow the OP's advice and only post meaningful comments then the comments would never be the same because they would always be relevant to each specific blog post.

[plifter]

good tip I just used the Yahoo's Site Explorer tool to find blogs to comment on links should show tommorrow. I would like to find blogs that have dofollow though so I know I am getting links for sure will reasearch tommorrow. good tip

[Bharat2010]

Thanks for the tips . Thats why I Look always for blog Traffic. I am getting 200+ Visitors per day from Blogs Only.

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

As far as I'm aware there is no such thing as a DoFollow tag, so you'd get no where searching for it. There is a "nofollow" attribute, which is what you'd need to search for. If you don't find it, it's do follow by default. Searching for "dofollow" will yield nothing every time ... or did I miss a memo somewhere along the way?

Dennis, you are technically correct. I have seen some supposed SEO experts advocate adding a 'dofollow' tag, even though it has null meaning.

You might find some following bad advice, but looking for the absence of the 'nofollow' tag is more productive...

Originally Posted by pradiprg

Thanks for this valuable inforation. However, would you please further share the names of the blogs which provided with desired backlinks etc.

You are kidding, right?

[Lauryn]

Great info! :-)

Slightly offtopic question on do follow vs no follow:

Doesn't "no follow" mean that the SE won't juice up your pagerank through the site your link is on, but allow your links to stay relevant in terms of linkbuilding purposes? Or is it absolutely essential to only perform linkbuilding on dofollow blogs? From the way I understood it, dofollow/nofollow only referred to the spiders applying the original sites "cosignment" of the content within the site the link leads to.

Thus, my hypothesis is that as long as you leave a quality response, and the blog owners see this, your links will be allowed and with time you'll still have great backlinks whether the blogs use dofollow or not.

[Michael Ellis]

Finally a blog commenting tip that doesn't involve SPAM. Thank you!

[conversionspro]

Originally Posted by bhuff85

- ALWAYS POST MEANINGFUL COMMENTS!

Great post

I think this is so important - can build relationships with blog owners as well, which could be profitable for partnerships in the future.

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by pradiprg

Thanks for this valuable inforation. However, would you please further share the names of the blogs which provided with desired backlinks etc.

Without sounding harsh, you've got to go out and do the work. I did a lot of legwork to find high quality blogs to comment and participate on daily. Plus, the blogs I comment on may not even be relevant to your niche.

Just follow the methods I listed in my original post and I'm sure you'll have no problems finding quality blogs to comment on. It's really not that hard to find them once you start digging in.

You can feel free to checkout my blog below (first link in my sig). I've made it a dofollow blog with the top commentator plugin. I also use the CommentLuv plugin for people to link back to a related blogpost on their own blog as well. BUT - even though this is a new blog, I highly monitor ALL comments. Irrelevant comments are stuck on a blacklist.

[IMStudentforlife]

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

As far as I'm aware there is no such thing as a DoFollow tag, so you'd get no where searching for it. There is a "nofollow" attribute, which is what you'd need to search for. If you don't find it, it's do follow by default. Searching for "dofollow" will yield nothing every time ... or did I miss a memo somewhere along the way?

At any rate, I use the Swoosty plugin for Firefox. It has an option to have "no follow" links highlighted, so when you're blog commenting you know at a glance if the links are do follow or not, no need to search for anything. That's easier and less time consuming. Swoosty had a lot of other nice features too.

That is the other way, but some are still stuck on IE (Internet Exploder) and won't go to FireFox so I didn't suggest that. And with the recent update to Wordpress (since that's the most common website template) it may have been taken off.

I have programs that tell me what is DoFollow and what isn't, I do find thou that even the NoFollows get listed though.. So really not sure what to believe these days and I'm sure Google doesn't either.

Also I find that getting better links from higher Page Rank like PR 5 or 4 even will help you having a few hundred, but I find tons of websites have like a 1,000 links from a single PR0 which helps a bit but it would take years to perform.

[discrat]

Originally Posted by bhuff85

I have to be honest - I never really used blog commenting as a link building tactic. I recently started working on an older website that I'm really trying to build up in a tough niche market, and while look at some of my competitors backlinks using Yahoo's Site Explorer tool, I noticed quite a few of them were getting TONS of backlinks from blogs.

So, I visited those same blogs and actually READ the posts and contributed valuable, meaningful comments. A few days later, I see myself on the top commentators list for that blog and have generated over 400+ links back to my site. I keep finding new blogs daily, all with dofollow comments and the "top commentator" plugin. The thing is, while doing this, I have discovered some unique blogs and have started reading them regularly in addition to adding my comments. So, it's a win-win - I keep returning to read posts and offer valuable feedback, they get a return reader and I get some links back to my site.

Since I've noticed that dofollow blogs and the "top commentator" plugin increase readership, I've even added these to my new blog that I've recently started to help increase readership.

Now, you can't just start blasting blogs with comments that are meaningless. That will get you nowhere and often ruin any reputation that you could've built with that site. Here are a few tips I picked up that have helped me gain solid links and be looked upon as a valued contributor to discussions:

- Never use a blatant keyword as your name. I usually input my name and then the keyword I'm targeting (i.e. Dave @ Legit Home Jobs). Doing this gets my keyword in there, but comes across as less spammy and more authoritive.

- ALWAYS POST MEANINGFUL COMMENTS! Take the time to READ the blog post. Offer something more than "hey, that was a great post!" or "thank you for the tips". I usually will try to add some value to the post, give additional tips, or if I disagree with the post, I will explain my reasons why. I also sometimes will reply to others who have a question or will elaborate more on their responses.

- Never post multiple comments and leave, especially on a new blog that you've never posted at before. Comments are timestamped and blog owners can easily see you comment dropping, never to return. I always start with a well rounded comment on a post that I can give the most feedback on. If it's approved, I'll return and post more each day. Plus, on most blogs, once you have a good comment approved, Wordpress has a setting that will automatically approve any commenters who've had a previous comment approved.

- Look for blogs with the "top commentator" plugin. On some blogs, this list will refresh daily, once a week, once a month, once a year or whenever the blog owner decides it's time for a change. Either way, it's a great way to get a lot of backlinks, as this widget is usually on every page of that blog.

I hope you all can use these tips the next time you try to work on blog commenting. Not a bad way to get a lot of link love with minimal work. I can say this is now in my overall link building plan for every site I have.

Good stuff, bhuff. I am getting away from the automatic commenting. It just ends up hurting everyone in the long run. The fact is there aint no shortcuts for the most part in IM.

And what you present in this Post is something that helps not just the IMer but the internet in general. That is well thought out comments that contribute toward the topic at hand. It takes time but is so worth it.

I like it !!

[duia]

It really works. However, when more and more people find it helpful to create backlinks, then those DoFollow blogs will be filled with spam comments.

[dominodivine]

I have been using blog commenting for a while, it works well for both backlinking and traffic generation if you are giving valuable content.

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by duia

It really works. However, when more and more people find it helpful to create backlinks, then those DoFollow blogs will be filled with spam comments.

I see what you're saying, but I think that commenting will stick around despite all of that. With the different tools that are out there, it's becoming easier to weed out blatant spammers and blacklist them before they have a chance to wreck any havoc. In my eyes, blogs really can't survive much without the user interaction. It plays a huge part, especially if you've been following a certain blog or person for so long and they take the time out to reply to one of your comments. Plus, it rewards those who use it the right way.