Gain traffic through blog commenting
This is a guest post by Simon Rogers, a teenager from the UK who runs Teenius.com, a blog about making money online, and BrainBite.com, a blog with inspirational posts.
The global economic crisis is hitting everyone. Even bloggers. Yes, that’s right, everyone is being affected, and everyone is looking for ways to save money. Again, even bloggers. One way of cutting costs is to look for alternative (free) ways to advertise your blog rather than paying for links and advertising space.
So, how can you do this?
Well, the most effective way of free advertising I’ve found is blog commenting. This is where you visit other blogs and leave a comment on their post. You’ll then not only get a link back, but also some exposure for anyone who sees that link.
I’m not going to lie – it’s unlikely that you’ll get masses of traffic from blog commenting, but what you’ll find is that you get quality traffic that converts in to returning visits, sales and consistent commentators.
OK, so, it probably won’t get you as much traffic as social networking and other ways of advertising. Because of this, it’s really important to squeeze blog commenting for every last visit you can get, and this article will discuss different ways of doing that.
So, without further ado…
Gravatars
A gravatar (or globally recognised avatar) is the little picture that will show next to your comment on gravatar-enabled blogs (most). Using a gravatar will make you stand out a bit more, meaning you have a higher chance of someone noticing your comment and, more importantly, clicking your link. You can get a gravatar by visiting http://www.gravatar.com and signing up using the same email as you use to comment.
Quality
It’s extremely important to leave quality comments on the blogs you visit for a variety of reasons, but the main one is that if you can show a comment that shows you know what you’re on about within your niche, people are more likely to visit your blog as they know there’ll be quality information there, too.
Believe it or not, the name you use can make a big difference to how much traffic you get from blog commenting. Firstly, you need to recognise that you should have some sort of “community spirit”, so you should use a name rather than a keyword or something similar. Secondly, you want as much traffic as possible, so you should try using your website name. The format I use and recommend is ‘Name | Website’, so for me it’ll be ‘Simon | Teenius’ the majority of the time!
Plugins
If you’re commenting on a WordPress blog (which you probably will be), you should try and comment on blogs with the ‘Top Commentator’ and ‘CommentLuv’ plugins. These will build extra exposure for you, and will also usually give you an additional link to your website, which is never a bad thing!
Simon | Teenius
Thanks for publishing this James, hope your readers enjoy it! :D
Posted 7-6-2009
Deneil Merritt
Great guest post Simon. You are so right about blog commenting. The traffic does start to flowing when you leaving real comments. It leads to traffic, comments, and subscribers.
Posted 7-6-2009
Mikael @ Retire Rich
Hey Simon, this is very true and actually something that I use every single day. I have a large list of blogs that I follow (this is one of them) and every time one of the blogs I follow writes about something that I am knowledgeable about I try to comment (sometimes I don’t have time to comment on all of them but I at least try…).
Besides the effect of getting traffic you will also make yourself known in the community (hopefully for something positive).
And finally if you comment on do-follow blogs you will also get the added benefit of link juice (and no matter what some might say it really DO work).
/Mikael
Posted 7-6-2009
james
Hi Simon,
No thank you for helping me out.
It has given me a boost and a new light on my blog. I hope the community enjoy the article as much I do.
Posted 7-6-2009
james
Hi Michael.
Firstly I am honoured that you take time to visit and comment on my blog. I am truly grateful.
You do learn a great deal for commenting on other blogs, I wish I had the time really.
But I make the effort as much as possible. My time is currently spent working with clients as the blog is generating work.
I think the do-follow is great for bloggers, as long as they don’t abuse the priviledge.
Pagerank is slowly degrading and doesn’t mean as much now.
But once again thanks for commenting on the blog.
Posted 7-6-2009
james
Hi Deneil,
Thankd for stopping by, you’ve changed your blog greatly. I am pleased you’ve made sound progress and the focusing on the marketing. I like the pop up to sign up for the newsletter.
Does that plugin work well?
Posted 7-6-2009
Simon | Teenius
Thanks for all the comments everyone, I’m glad you enjoyed the post :D
Deniel, yeah, if you just leave one line comments like ‘great post’, you’re unlikely to really get much traffic or benefits in general.
Mikael, I do the same. I find that I’m now friends with the blog owners, especially on the smaller blogs with fewer commentators, so that really helps for networking.
Posted 7-7-2009
james
Hi Simon,
Thanks for writing this post, I am pleased that the readers are making some good points, I agree that blog commenting does seem long winded, but it does attract some decent leads. If done correctly.
Posted 7-7-2009
boo@sell your house
very nice and informative post. you have very nice idea about blogging. thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Posted 7-9-2009
kamal|wedding venues
First thanks for sharing more valuable post and second i wanna to knowing that what is deffrent between keyword and name+keword?.. Please responce my quistion..i am awaiting..
Posted 7-10-2009
james
Hi Kamal,
What it means is that place your name and keywords.
An example: James Web Designer UK.
The reason I ask for names as well is so that people and communicate with others. Plus I don’t want my blog being an easy number to get backlinks.
Thanks
Posted 7-10-2009
freelance animator
I visit your website frequently and its very good , I am not a expert webmaster but i like your blog as its very simple and understandable.. please keep it up , 10/10 marks…
Posted 7-11-2009
james
Hi freelance animatior,
Thanks for the comment, your welcome for the post blog. Just a light reminder please leave your name in the title tag as well.
Thanks
Posted 7-11-2009
freelance animator
thanks james, my name is naved, but which title tag u said to leave the name????
Posted 7-12-2009
james
Hi,
When you comment, where you’ve placed freelance animator add your name in that box as well. This is so people know who you are.
Thanks.
Posted 7-15-2009
bajki dla dzieci
This article is “the truth itself”, I would say. Commenting blogs may give splendid effects, also other factors are important. I found Your post very interesting and helpful (especially for unexperienced bloggers and SEO’s).
Posted 7-15-2009
Nicolas Prudhon
Yes, it seems that we all face this problem at some point, that is having too many blogs we would like to comment on!
Anyway, I’m surprised to see you so active Simon, I’ve seen your guest posts on many different sites already, congratulations!
Posted 7-15-2009
John/jvanwyk.com
James/Simon
Love this post. I would llike to add that when commenting on blogs, check your spelling and grammer. It could lead to a bad impression for tour blog if every other word is spelled wrong in your comments.
I would also like to know how you tell if a wordpress blog has the plug ins that you mention in the post?
Thanks,
John@jvanwyk.com
Posted 7-30-2009
John/jvanwyk.com
See what I mean in the post above I spelled “your” as “tour”. Actually my I-touch changed it. Please fix this for me before approving the post. I believe there is also a wordpress plug in that enables you to fix your posts for a short period of time after submitting your comments. I will check the name and share it with you.
John@jvanwyk.com
Posted 7-30-2009
Odzyskiwanie Danych
I agree that commenting is one way of getting traffic to a site. But I also think that commenting should be something more. I mean that even a bot could write two sentences containing something like “great post, thanks” but commenting the content is something completely different. In my opinion in this case both sides win, because proper comment is making a blog better, and the commenting person (or institution that person represents) get traffic.
Posted 8-14-2009
james
Hi There,
thanks for your input, commenting is a long tail process, but you get an education by reading others information, however, it does take time.
Posted 8-22-2009
Web Development Company
thank you for this informative post. Keep posting……….
Posted 9-18-2009
james
Thanks for visiting atmmultimedia.com. I hope you enjoy more content from the blog.
Many thanks
Posted 9-28-2009
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I am using this post to teach my seniors the fine art of blog commenting. Thanks for the perfect explanation.
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james
Excellent, I am pleased you like the blog post.
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