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The Value of Forum/Blog Comments...?

by LingP
10 replies
Hello,

As some of you may know I run an online English language school. We teach English online. There is also an onsite blog helping people to improve English and inspire them to continue learning in innovative ways.

In order to get more traffic I'm focussing now on blog and forum comments. I notice that on most, if not all, of the ones I've done so far are showing as "nofollow" when I look at the page source. Does this matter? Or am I missing the point that actually what I'm doing, by commenting on specific blogs where potential customers might be, is enough because well... there are potential customers?

Also, when posting comments on blogs for example, you can set it so that the name you post under is the URL. Do you advise that in the body of the comment I actually also crowbar in the URL in html a href tags - is this possible and/or worth it?

Regards
#comments #forum or blog
  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Roy
    I don't think you should be so obsessed with only getting "followed" links. Developing a link from a strong site where your potential customers are will be valuable. Any legitimate link from within your own niche should be helpful.

    Search engines these days are paying attention to social signals like tweets, Facebook shares (both nofollowed) and traffic data (from toolbar & browser usage) so if you're really trying to build your brand online, you shouldn't obsess over whether a specific link is relevant for SEO - you should be thinking about whether a link is good for your brand, because you can be sure this is what Google is trying to reward. And potential customer links are excellent, in my opinion, for many reasons.
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    • Profile picture of the author LingP
      Thank you Warrior Roy for your valuable insights.

      Regards
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  • Profile picture of the author DustonMcGroarty
    I agree with Roy. Your goal when commenting should be to add value to the post, not to get a backlink. You'll get a lot better response if you focus on the reader rather than the search engines.
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  • Profile picture of the author kyle4hire
    Thumbs up for your Roy! Agree!!
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  • Profile picture of the author CyborgX
    Here is nothing to add. Roy has given an insight view of the topics. So do try to follow them. Good luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author karoubalou
    I also agree with Roy. It is good to combine No follow and do follow links.
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  • Profile picture of the author JimDucharme
    Good advice from people here!

    Whether it's email or a blog or FB or Twitter, focus first on adding value with relevant engaging content. It doesn't have to be original content either. Channels such as Twitter lend themselves very well to content curation and that can help you build brand recognition.

    Or to put it another way: Keep it real .

    Regards,
    jim
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  • Profile picture of the author Simmeon
    Natural blog comments sure they are fine as you are providing some sort of value.
    Posting just for backlinks is the wrong approach.
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  • Profile picture of the author ElaineHenderson
    I also agree that you should put effort on the links your are building to be on sites which can bring you customers.

    If you wish to see your site on the first Google results, you should better work on SEO. Also remember to have fresh and up to date content.
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  • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
    I thought I'd chime in a few days late.

    If you're leaving comments or posting on forums purely for traffic, don't worry about nofollow / dofollow, PR, etc. Just focus on finding niche related blogs and forums. And make sure they have enough traffic to make it worth the effort.

    I've found though that forums are better if you're focused just on traffic. While blog commenting is better if you're focused on backlinks, as long as you're leaving good comments on high quality blogs. When you're looking for blogs for backlinks I'd try to focus on DoFollow blogs.
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