Blog commenting is an excellent source of inbound links, can drive relevant traffic to your site, help build your social network and more! Reading and commenting on blogs is also a great way to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest trends in your industry, as well as provide inspiration for your own content marketing, you just need to keep in mind that things like blog management services will be a must when starting you ow blog. Here are eight blog commenting best practice tips to help make sure you're getting the most value for your blog commenting efforts.
1. Actually Read The Post
This may sound like Well, duh! advice, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't actually read the whole post. They assume they understand the concept/point of the post from the headline and write their response based on that assumption. Remember, blog commenting is about trying to build your brand and authority, so leaving a comment that completely misses the whole point of the post is actually going to hurt your authority, not help it. You want to make sure you come across as intelligent and well informed.
2. Aim For 3 Sentence Minimum
A general rule of thumb I give to all my SEO consulting clients, writing a blog comment that is at least three sentences long shows the blog owner that you took the time to read the post and actually have something to add to the conversation. Good article is nice, but what value does that give the blogger? They want to engage their readers and have a dialogue within the comments section, so be sure to actually say something of value with your comment!
3. Use A Real Name As Often As Possible
Some blog owners will let you get away with the company name as the comments author, but its better to err on the side of caution and just use a real persons name to begin with. When choosing who will be the author of your blog comments, make sure its someone that will probably be with the company for a long time. Blog commenting builds the authority of the author while simultaneously enhancing your sites link portfolio. The person who is the face behind your company's blog comments might be able leverage their personal brand and authority for a different company later on. You'll still have the links, but you wont have the name recognition that employee earned.
4. Link To Internal Pages And Social Profiles
Most of the time, blog comments will be used to create more links to the homepage of your site; don't limit yourself to just one page! You should also link to high-level internal pages (since each of those can rank in the search engines and become a potential landing page for visitors), as well as your social networking profiles. Blogs are inherently social in nature, and linking to your social profiles is a great way to help grow your social network and find new fans/followers.
5. Don't Drop Links In The Comment
Unless you are linking to an outside source to help back up your stance, avoid dropping links in the comment field, especially ones to your own site. This looks and reads spammy to the blog owner and chances are they will blacklist you from their blog. A blog comment is not an advertising platform for your brand!
6. Search For Related Blogs That Your Target Audience Might Be Reading
You don't just have to stick to blogs that are directly about your industry. For instance, as an SEO professional I also read/comment on blogs about social media, content marketing, online advertising and more. All of these related industries are things my target audience is reading about online, and I want to get my brand in front of them in as many places as possible. As long as its a relevant and related blog (and you feel comfortable joining the conversation), don't be afraid to leave a comment!
7. Know Who Is Commenting On What Blog
I usually recommend that only one person be responsible for blog commenting as part of a websites SEO strategy. This will help keep the messaging and tone consistent across blogs, plus it eliminates the risk of you and coworker commenting on the same blog. While this isn't the end of the world, it might make the blogger think you are trying to scam their blog for a few extra links and it might get you both banned. Having one person in charge of blog commenting also means that you'll never accidentally disagree with a coworker about something on the same post since you're the only one doing the commenting.
8. Identify Core Blogs And Comment Daily
Just about every industry has a set of must read blogs that attract thousands of visitors each day. Put these blogs on your commenting list and strive to leave a comment every day. Not only are these blogs great, trusted link sources, they are also a good way to help keep you up-to-date with the latest industry trends. This can help inspire your own content marketing, since you know what is hot in your industry. These core blog are probably where the big players in your industry publish content, and its important to start getting your own brand out there.
If you liked this you might enjoy How to Comment to Get Attention
Hey Nick, hate it when nobody reads our actual post. We have commentluv enabled and I think it almost attracts it at times. Problem is in my niche, i cant seem to find as many bloggers to comment on blogs so I end up reading alot of SEO and IM related posts. Any tips there? Thanks for your post though.
Nick, I’m ignoring tip #1 as I’m here to learn not just comment for ranking. I recently started blog commenting and do it about 2x weekly. I’ve made mistake #5 – wish I’d seen these excellent tips!
Can you please explain “How To” do add other links when commenting on blogs. For example my site name was pre-filled when I came to “interact” with your post. I tried changing it to a specific page but I get the meesage “a feed could not be found at http….” Other than putting a link in this space, what can I do. Thank you
Some sound advice here but I’d like to add something. I have very mixewd feelings about blog commenting as a method for building links.
First, I do read a lot of blogs and try to leave a comment whenever appropriate. There are just so many benefits with it. First of all it’s becasue I want to show some appreciation to the blogger as writing is a lot of hard work and a comment is at least to some level a reward – you know that you engaged at least one person with your post. Of course, it’s good for me that I get a link as well and I try to reward my readers with links as well.
However, even though you cover it a bit with the length of the comment (bullet 2) and using the real name (bullet 3) I feel that I want to point out that bloggers want Real comments. I would feel very uncomfortable commenting in a blog I don’t read for this reason. I believe I do recognize a “link comment” when it shows up in my own blogs and that always gives me a bad feeling. Every comment makes me happy and all of a sudden it turns out to be just SEO.
To summarize: I love real comments and I’m prepared to share some of my link equity to those. Bullet 2 and 3 are extra important, real name and a proper comment makes the whole difference.
This is a great list of best practices as far as comments are concerned. Comments, in my opinion, can be a fantastic way of generating backlinks, as well as adding different perspectives and opinions to the post, keeping the conversation going. Comments also add value to the post. However those 2/3-worded ‘great stuff’ or ‘thanks for this’ comments are annoying.
Good post Nick. It’s so obvious when people have stopped by, read the title of the post and just made a quick fire comment in order to obtain backlinks. The thing is, when you actually read through the post, 9 times out of 10 you either learn something new or gain a fresh perspective on the topic.
I try to frequent my favourite blogs on a regular basis and get involved in ongoing discussions rather than leave just one quick comment on tons of blogs.
Blog commenting is a very powerful strategy & a lot of people underestimate it. It’s a pretty simple strategy that shows interaction & support with those in your target market & it helps build relationships with others.
This is definitely bookmarked & will be shared with my followers!!!
I guess your tips are really useful if you are commenting for SEO purposes, but if you aren’t, they are just a set a rules on how to make your comment really look like a comment.
That is why I moderate all comments on my website, not just to fix grammar mistakes, but also to only allow interesting and relevant comments. Anyone can spot a comment for SEO purposes from a mile away, they are just shallow, always complementing and never adding anything useful.
Although comments are a nice way to receive backlinks and get other bloggers interested in your site, they only do so if the comment in meaningful and not sporadic.
“Blog commenting is an excellent source of inbound links…”
I really want to agree with you Nick. However, perhaps you should have added “…if done properly”. Trouble is, many responders are often spammers, sometimes with strange names such as, for example, “mortgage loans”, “credit cards” etc. You get the drift.
Yes, a lot of blogs do carefully check before approving comments. Many more don’t, unfortunately, which can lead some (many) into temptation, not to mention a Google penalty (penguin et al).
In a sense, deliberately pointing a link – any link – to your own website could be viewed as infringing Google’s TOS, don’t you think? Often it’s an attempt to manipulate the serps, nothing more. Yet you see it all the time, with highly optimized articles prime examples, often written by professional SEO companies. The articles/info may be interesting, but they’ve been written for only one purpose.
Now I am extremely wary of adding any link, unless the link text is purely my real name, nothing else.
Even then, it seems, there’s no guarantee some kind of penalty won’t result. Paranoid? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes.
Maybe the concept of links should be abandoned altogether? After all, it’s as easy to simply copy and paste a URL straight into the address bar of a browser and hit the ‘enter’ button, which I do often.
Very handy post Nick , Blog comments are an important element of my link building strategy, ‘nice post’ drive-by comments don’t add any value to the blog
this segues nicely with a comment etiquette post on hellbound bloggers recently
Great tips Nick. Also, if it’s a wordpress blog, using Comment Luv plugin would be good. Btw, would like to know your thoughts on this, as your’s is a wordpress blog and you’re not using it?
fruitful tips for blog commenting….hope to get more strategies in blog commenting.
some of the blog commenting tips are:
1.Format Your Comments
2.Make a REALLY long comment
3.Reply To The First Commenter
4.Start a Thread
5.Choose To Be Notified Of Replies
6.Ping Your Comments
7.Use Blogger’s Name
Hey Nick, it was good to read this post which is a great guide of blog commenting. Appreciate all these tips.
Blog commenting is very useful in brand building but one should focus on the topic while commenting. If you’re trying to create value and good discussion which could produce better results in the same topic, that’s worth. It will create trust and build your brand itself.