Let’s start by acknowledging that this is a controversial topic. If you are a social media purist or a blogger who genuinely believes your material is so spectacular that nobody should ever drop a blog comment except to react to the profundity of your writing, then please close your eyes while you read the rest of this post.
There is a legitimate role for blog commenting in SEO, and this should not be confused with blog comment spam. We all hate spam. But we each person defines spam differently. Hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll know how to use blog commenting for SEO benefits without being a spammer.
SEO Benefits Of Blog Comments
There are a number of SEO benefits from blog commenting.
The most obvious is that the search engines read the links in your comment (normally your anme is hyperlinked to your website) and you build your link popularity directly from the comments. However, most blogs are NoFollow, which at least in theory means that they carry no link value. But there are also a fair number of DoFollow blogs, and some give you a hyperlink both in your name and at the end of the comment to your most recent blog post.
All other things being equal, you might as well search for DoFollow blogs with the CommentLuv plugin; if you spend your time making intelligent comments, you might as well get link value for it. That being said, I never hesitate to leave comments at a blog whether it is DoFollow or not. Link value is something, but it’s not everything….and I’m not so sure the search engines totally ignore NoFollow links, either.
Another SEO benefit from blog comments is that every time you leave a comment, the blog owner takes notice of you. This is especially true for repeat visitors, so it is worth returning to the same blogs over and over. The other bloggers will undoubtedly visit your website. If there is anything of value on your website (remember that content is king) they will link to you in a post or they will invite you as a guest blogger (usually with a link back) or you can offer to be a guest blogger (with a link back). Yes, linking is in fact about building relationships.
It’s not just the blogger who will read your comments and follow the links to your website; other commenters will, as will other readers (another reason it is crucial to leave comments of value). For this reason there are two types of blogs you want to seek out:
- Blogs on the topic of your own website.
- Blogs that your target market read (even if the topic is not totally related to your website).
- Blogs on topics of interest to you.
What’s that? Those are three types of blogs? Well, so they are. I never was good with numbers.
Yes, you should also frequent blogs that interest you, even if they are totally off-topic. I suspect I might be the only SEO consultant making this recommendation, but I think it is worth noting that if you are a hiker, you will have more intelligent comments to offer on a hiking blog – and you will enjoy doing it, so it will be less like work and more like fun. And whether the links are all keyword relevant, they still count and you’ll enjoy it a lot more than trolling for blogs only on your professional topic. So there!
Intelligent SEO
Have you noticed a common thread to all the advice above. Comment intelligently. As long as you are adding to the discussion, the blogger will appreciate your contribution. If you just write “Nice post”, expect to be deleted from any worthwhile blog. If somebody leaves a comment that could just as easily be left on any other of my posts, I mark it spam (see image below for the types of comments I wipe off with a little pesticide every morning).
But that’s just me.
Remember how I said that spam has different meanings to different people? Some bloggers will consider it spam if you drop a keyword into your name. While I do accept comments that come from “SEO Ottawa”, for example, I prefer ones that come from “David Leonhardt SEO” or just “David Leonhardt”. The contribution has to be better for me to approve a comment that doesn’t have a real name in it.
But that’s just me.
Never mind me. Before commenting, take a look at what other comments have been approved and make sure you conform to the convention of the blog (just as you would look around how other people act at a wine and cheese or a church basement gathering). Then make sure you exceed what you see, as a new contributor, both in quality of your comment and in avoiding a spammy signature link that might get your comment deleted if the blogger is having a grumpy day.
It is also worth returning to posts you have commented on. If someone has responded to your comment, it might be worth your while to respond back. The blog owner will love you for it, because you are creating interaction on her blog. Plus, any comment worth debating or discussing attracts more attention.
It’s worthwhile dropping a really relevant and useful link in your comment, if it provides truly useful information to better appreciate the blog post. Otherwise, I recommend against it. Gratuitous link-dropping is considered spamming pretty much anywhere.
If your site is adult-oriented or fits into one of the other red-flag categories, don’t even bother commenting (with a link) on most blogs. The blogger will not appreciate it and your comment will be deleted. You’ll need to find really related blogs that will accept your links.
But David, why shouldn’t I spam? What about a robot that auto-posts comments to save time (and having to use my brain cells)? Well, there is no denying that you can build some links that way. There are some lazy blog owners who don’t moderate their comments and let them publish automatically. There are four reasons why this really is not worth your while:
- Pretty much any non-moderated blog offers only NoFollow links
- Pretty much any non-moderated blog is considered low-quality and low-trust by the search engines
- Some non-moderated blogs do get cleaned out every now and then, and the spammers get reported
- The search engines might even be able to detect a pattern, and if most of your links come from sites known to link to spam websites, your website could be flagged as untrustworthy – guilt by association.
If I was to sum up everything here, it come down to this; when you are on somebody else’s blog, you have a wonderful opportunity to build relationships. In the online world, relationships means links, and SEO is all about building the right kind of links (well, not quite “all” about).
But just like in the real world, when you are on someone else’s space, pay very careful attention to what is accepted and what is not. The real definition of a spammer is somebody who does something that is not accepted. Period.
Commenting on blog posts in a manner accepted by the blog owner can be an effective means of attracting good quality links to your website and help with your overall SEO efforts.
David Leonhardt is president of The Happy Guy Marketing, a creative website marketing company that focuses on SEO and viral marketing to make websites better known among their target markets. David can be found on his SEO consultant website and other blog posts of his can be found on his SEO and marketing blog.
This is the way that I normally do my commenting as well. I’ve always looked at commenting as not just as way to build links but also as a way to get direct traffic. And I especially like to find blogs that post their recent comments on the sidebar. I’ll visit those blogs more frequently for the chance to get a site wide link.
i find posting on my industries related blogs frustrating, i try to add interesting information without keyword spam (even though i am trying to get a link)
What ive noticed is none of not even the large retailers have many comments on their blogs, its almost as if the blogs are only an extension of their sites and posting just isnt allowed.
I REALLY wanted to simply put Nice Post….probably not the only one to think of it of course.
I’ve always looked at it like this – a link to your site (assuming it’s not a link farm or porn) is better than no link to your site. Do or No Follow. Of course I agree with you – Do is better than No but I still believe people have a tendency to devalue NoFollow too much. There is much more to a link than page rank juice.
I must say that I really enjoyed the information and thoughts you gave here. Comments should be well crafted, interesting, and helpful. This, in turn, will help you to become more recognized – and not considered a spam user on a blog.
Great thoughts.
Thank you,
Christian
Take advantage of your staff : Your company has a staff of experts on hand. As part of their daily ritual, you should have them comment on a minimum of 3 blog posts per day. Once in the morning, once after lunch, and once before leaving. This method splits up the commenting so they are not overwhelmed and this does not interfere with their daily routine.
I know on my blog, I got massive amounts of spam, and Askimet helped dramatically. I believe that even if you get links pointing to your website simply with your name, you will gain noticeable value – even though the anchor text isn’t relevant – this is because you are building the trust between your website and the search engines… It’s so funny, because the people that constantly spam blogs waste so much time that they could be spending obtaining valuable links that will be approved instead of trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Unless there’s anything offensive in the comment, it really doesn’t bother me. At least people are visiting the blog and hopefully the content will keep them entertained enough to come back for a repeat visit?
Hey David!
A fellow Ottawa SEOer 🙂 Fantastic post – I agree that I tend to visit websites of people who comment frequently in my industry – IF they appear to have something relevant to say 🙂
Myself I am going to check out this commentLuv plugin you mentioned and see what that’s all about!
Well, using blog commenting is effective for link purpose if it’s dofollow, but also useful for traffic to come more visitor if it’s nofollow. People who leave comment too in that same post, will see your comment. So better to use an interactive name or leaving a good and constructive comment so that people like that one.
Thank you for this post, as someone who is still very much a student of SEO – this is useful information. As a business owner, I generally use the “Name” link to link to the index page of my company website. So, while this qualifies as link-building – am I correct in assuming that it doesn’t exactly help SEO efforts in terms of ranking for the keywords that my site itself targets for?
At this point, it seems I have more links pointing to my website anchored with my first and last name rather than the description of my business/services. Does that hurt me in the eyes of the search engines – as in making them believe the subject of my site is “me” rather than our products/industry?
So what you’re saying is that you’ll accept my comment, right? 😛
Hehe, anyways, I always try to make useful (I try….) comments. Regarding auto comment posters, they say nothing comes easy in life, so don’t expect results with those tools
-Bill
We can still be noticed for commenting on the nofollow blogs, it is worth for the relationship. But dofollow blogs allow back links that will increase traffic.
I’ve always looked at commenting as not just as way to build links but also as a way to get direct traffic. Don’t forget, if a person follows your link, and then adds your website to their website/blog. Then it is just as effective as it it were a followed link originally!
I have just started blogging and this this article has enlighted me on the difference between NO-Follow and Follow blogs.
My question is, how can you know which blog is a non-follow or follow blog? I will be glad to learn more!
Thank you
Its hard not to spam at Blog commenting though. Google requires you to do so much SEO and link building before it makes a differents.
We can’t be members at 1 million blogs each right?
So David, can it safely be said that auto generated and auto posted comments are virtually useless for site and blog owners? I would never use an auto tool to post my comments because I personally find them irritating but lots of other bloggers still resort to this kind of stuff. They must be wasting there time then
@David We don’t know. The search engines tell us they won’t follow the link, which theoretically means they won’t index it. various people have set up experiments to test this, and the results have not been consistent. I actually published a speculative post on this very topic.
The nofollow attribute is created by Google, and they respect it to the letter, Yahoo is much less considerate about it, and MSN tends to bypass it.
Some colleagues and myself have done a couple of tests regarding this issue, if we can call it one.
In the end, I don’t really care much if the site I comment on is dofollow or not. There’s a lot more value to gain from contributing intelligently than just a potential backlink.
Personally I automatically delete any comments that use a purely keyword title. Business names are better but I still don’t like them.
I like to be really strict about what comments I allow because that way the really good comments get more benefit. If you accept poorly thought out comments it seems less fair on the people who have put in a lot of effort.
.-= alex johnson recently posted: set up ebay business =-.
Isn’t using this tool a way of generating traffic as well. If someone was to follow a link on a blog, they may decide to add your link to their site or their blog. You are then gaining traffic as well as a link. Spam is annoying but going to happen and in the end the people who do spam end up wasting more time then what they gain.