Hey there! Welcome back to the next chapter of ‘Ultimate Guide to Link Building’.
In the first session on Ultimate Guide to Fundaments of Link Building we discussed different terms related to Link Building, what is Link Building, its benefits and a list of the Best Practices for Link Building.
List of Practices for Efficient Link Building:
3. Blog Commenting
4. Link Building through Social Engagement/ Off Page Optimisation
• Dofollow Forum Participation
• Directory Submission
• Resource Page Backlinks
• Writing and Posting Testimonials
• Content Promotion
• Brand Monitoring - Mentions and References to your Brand-Link Claim
5. Link Building through Creating Different Types of Contents/ On Page Optimisation
• Ego Bait Content Creation
• Posting Infographics
• Newsjacking
• Free Product Creation
6. Link Building Through Different Link Profile Analysis
• Competitor’s Backlink Profile Analysis
• Brand’s Backlink Profile Analysis
7. Link Building Through Broken Links
In the last session we discussed ‘Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting’ (refer to point number 2 in the list above) for Link Building and SEO benefits. We discussed what you can do on other websites to get valuable backlinks. It specifically focused on Guest Posting also known as Guest Blogging. We discussed, ‘what is Guest Posting and its benefits?’, ‘how is it important for building links?’, ‘how to do a good guest post and important points to keep in mind while creating a guest post’.
Today, we are discussing the third practice mentioned in the list referred earlier that is ‘Blog Commenting’. It is also a strategy that is implemented on web pages other than your own webpage. Blog commenting includes social engagement. It needs to be done properly as it affects your social reputation.
So, let’s explore the practice of ‘commenting on blogs and posts’ further.
Chapter 4
Ultimate Guide to Blog Commenting
Getting socially engaged in your industry is a sure way for building a good image for yourself and your brand. Blog commenting is a great tool for social engagement and building links. Leaving relevant comments on blogs and posts on the webpages of a third party is a good way to earn backlinks. And, it also helps bring more traffic to your business website. It is like getting engaged with a new set of audience from your industry who have the potential to increase your website traffic immensely.
To further understand this, let’s discuss the below mentioned pointers. I hope these points would answer all the questions related to ‘Blog or Post Commenting’.
a) What is Blog Commenting
b) Benefits of Leaving Comments on Blogs or Posts
c) How to Post Comments on Blogs - Effective Strategies
d) Things to Avoid while Posting Comments on Blogs
a) What is Blog Commenting
Blog Commenting simply means actively participating by posting insightful and valuable comments on the posts or blogs of other websites in your industry.
It is a community level engagement. When you post a good and relevant comment on a relevant blog of some other website, you engage and build a relation with not only with the webmaster, but also with the visitors of that page.
Leaving relevant and value-adding comments on the blogs is a great content marketing strategy.
You can post comments either in the form of an appreciation, a question, a topic of discussion, as a disagreement, as a fan follower, etc. Depending upon what you want to convey, there are many types of comments. It is always advisable to post constructive and relevant comments only.
Below are the types of comment which are generally observed on a webpage:
Spams : You must have often observed comments with a lot of links full of keywords. Also, there are irrelevant comments that do not have any relevancy with the topic. Often these are auto-generated system spams. They have no credibility.
Self-Promotional Comments : There are many comments posted in an attempt to increase rank and channel a few readers to their webpage. The commenters are attention seekers. These comments have irrelevant links, mostly backlink to the commenter’s website. Generally, the real name is not used while posting. The commenters also try to say something controversial in order to get some attention and may not have even read the blog. These comments are irrelevant and add no value.
Generic Comments : Generic Comments are those that are mostly posted by the genuine people but they do not add value to the blog. They have words like “Great post”, “Well explained”, “Thank you for this post”. There’s nothing harm in posting such comments. Just that they are not serving any purpose.
Value-Adding, Anonymous Comments : These are quite relevant comments. Have a lots of insightful talks in them. But, the problem here is that the commenters do not use their name. May be because they simple do not want to take any credit by choice and want to just help build a topic constructively. Or, maybe it is because they are somewhere sceptical about their comment harming their social reputation in terms of SEO. They don’t want to appear as a spammer leaving a link back to their webpage. Which is a wrong notion. Constructive comments with relevant links are always welcomed and are not harmful for the commenters.
Value-Adding, Profile Building Comments : The right kind of comments to leave on any blog. These comments add value to the blog, talk constructively and are engaging. The commenters have actually read through the blog and have insightful thoughts about the topic to put forward. Only relevant and value-adding links are used in the comments. They also have an avatar with the commenter’s name. And, while commenting, the commenter is also building his profile positively. They have an increased potential of getting clicks on their links and increasing their traffic.
It is always advisable to leave value-adding and profile building comments. Not only they would help the Blog, its author and the visitors, it will also help you in creating a better social reputation for yourself and your brand.
One can comment on both ‘Dofollow’ and ‘Nofollow’ webpages. But, it’s preferable to comment on webpages that allow ‘Dofollow links’ in the comment section. Commenting on ‘Nofollow’ webpages is helpful in only increasing your brand visibility. And, it fetches less traffic than the dofollow webpages.
b) Benefits of Leaving Comments on Blogs or Posts
The visitors of a website who go through the content, most of them also read the comment section. They also write comments leaving their thoughts, questions, ideas, etc. related to the post. You have the opportunity of getting noticed and getting engaged with them, if you post a relevant and insightful comment.
Authors also appreciate of valuable comments. They have a comment section in their blog for the visitors to comment on and engage with the post content. Author’s intent is to create a platform for engagement of the people from the industry.
In general, it is beneficial to leave one or two comments daily on the blogs relevant to your industry. That way you won’t over-do it and your links will not appear as spams. It a highly beneficial way for link building.
Your comment has the potential for further create a ‘chain of comments’ in the form of discussions or answers.
There are important benefits of leaving comments on blogs or posts in your industry.
Below I am listing 10 benefits of blog commenting:
1. Expert Positioning
Showcasing your knowledge, skills and expertise on relevant and related topics, helps you in attaining an expert position in the industry. It helps in increasing your credibility.
2. Personal Profile and Reputation Building
As you share and demonstrate your experiences and expert knowledge with the audience, you earn a good reputation in the industry. It is good for your personal profile. It gets you a recognition as a known face of your field.
3. Building Brand Authority and Increased Brand Awareness
Leaving valuable inputs as comments on blogs widens the reach of your brand to connect to your target audience. It brings exposure to your brand and increases brand visibility. People pay attention to relevant and informative comments. It helps in making your brand an authoritative source for the visitors.
4. Building Social Relation with Other Bloggers
Leaving good comments that initiate a good conversation or a series of comments in the form of discussions or question-answers help in knowing other bloggers. The author also appreciates and participate in such conversations. It helps in building a good relation with the author as well as the other bloggers. Relevant blog comments are a great way for social interaction and engagement in your industry.
5. Link Building
Posting comments regularly on different blogs of relevant websites in your industry will fetch a good link building result. You may be able to build a good number of backlinks by using comments as a regular and consistent practice. Just don’t over-do it.
6. Brings Huge Influx of Targeted Traffic
Engagement of other bloggers on your comments on blogs relevant to your industry increases the chances of the other bloggers checking out your profile. If your comments are insightful, visitors would definitely click on the links to your website in the comments, which will drive more targeted traffic to your website.
7. Generate increased leads and conversions
Increased targeted traffic of visitors to your website has an increased potential to convert them into leads and conversions. And, posting good comments help in creating credibility among the online visitors which fastens the conversion process.
8. Keeping updated
The comments and the conversations are a window to a lot of latest news and information. It helps in keeping you updated with the things happening in your industry.
9. Getting ideas through Social Engagement Getting engaged in the comments and conversation help in building a lot of fresh ideas and topics. You’ll be able to get an idea about what is a new topic, or what is the gap or question the readers have. It will help in getting ideas for creating contents.
10. Guest Blogging Opportunities Posting insightful and useful comments may welcome you to great guest posting opportunities by the blog visitors. When you showcase your expertise on a subject, you may either be asked by someone to write for them. Or you may request other bloggers to write for them.
Some people do say that posting comments on blogs may harm their rank and reputation as it is against the Google Webmaster’s Guidelines. But, Google does not consider genuine comments with natural and relevant links as spams.
Matt Cutt from Google also said, “I leave topically relevant comments on topically relevant sites all the time. So somebody posts an SEO conspiracy theory and I’m like, “No, that’s not right,” I’ll show up and a leave a comment that says, “Here is the pointer that shows this is not correct,” or, “Here’s the official word,” or something like that. And I’ll just leave a comment with my name, and often even point to my blog rather than Google’s webmaster blog, because I’m just representing myself. So lots of people do that all the time and it is completely fine.”
You can read about the entire article in this link here.
c) How to Post Comments on Blogs - Effective Strategies
Building links through comments is based on the very concept of ‘People Engagement and Interaction’. It is critical to note that, your comments must convey something important and useful for the readers and the author. There is no point in posting a comment just to leave a link there. It destroys the very concept of ‘people engagement’ and does not help in link building. It also brings down your authority and reputation.
Visitors who read the entire webpage content and reach the comment section to read the comments as well, are the curious ones. They are looking for more information on the topic. Most of them simply ignore the links if it is not present along with some relevant and important data.
Relevant and insightful comments make good impression on the readers and engage them in your words. And, this creates high tendency for the visitors to click on the link provided in your comment.
Five easy steps to Post a Comment on a Blog
1. Select to comment on High Quality websites relevant to your industry. The website should have high traffic and high domain authority.
2. Always choose to comment on blogs and articles with the audience similar to your target audience.
3. Read the blog properly, make notes of interesting information mentioned. Read about the topic of the blog on other sites and gain possibly more information related to the topic.
4. Leave a good comment on the blog.
• Start by acknowledging the blogger by name.
• Mention a few appreciative and/or useful information you gained from the blog.
• Add your insightful input to the blog; any additional information that you may provide on the topic.
• Leave a link to your post which is relevant and related to the topic and adds value to the post for the author and the blog visitors.
• You may start a discussion or ask a question here, if necessary. You may also answer a question which was asked by the author in the blog or by an online visitor of that blog.
5. Keep your comment short and non-spammy. Be sweet and polite by words.
Effective Strategies to Follow for Blog Commenting
1. Be among the first few commenters of the blog. It mostly has higher visibility and gets more attention.
2. Support the author’s post by sharing your experiences, examples and references.
3. Post comments that have the ability to engage people in a better way. Make your comment induce a chain of comments, like by asking a question or starting a discussion. Ask a good and interesting question that may help in building the blog.
4. The author might have missed out a point. You may politely mention the point in your comment and suggest the author for the same.
5. At times you may disagree in your comment to a point made by the author. Add the reason for your disagreement constructively.
6. Add links that are going to compliment the post, are relevant and add value. You may add links to your website. You may also add links to relevant posts which are on other websites.
7. Add images and screenshot in your comment either to support your point or the author’s point.
8. Write with a positive personality attitude, let it reflect in your comment. Show your authority by adding your expertise. Add a positive humour in your comment. All these help in getting the required attention.
9. Comment using simple and readable words, fonts and format. Create lists to make it more readable. Use a length for the comment that stands out in the pool of comments.
10. Only post relevant and important comments that adds value and is useful for the website and its visitors.
11. Keep the content of the comment crisp and clear. State important things using just the required words. Obviously, if required and if it adds value, you can always post lengthy comments.
12. Also, your comments must make good impression on the readers and make them curious about you and your brand. Only then they will click on your backlinks provided there.
13. If you are using anchor text for your backlink, use relevant keywords as anchor texts. It further builds trust. Also, ensure that the link takes the visitors on a relevant page.
14. Use ‘your real name’ in your comments. It eliminates the chance of making your comment appear as a spam.
15. Include an avatars or ‘Gravatar’ in your comments. It is an image that represents you online, a picture that appears next to your name every time you post or comment on any website. It helps in your brand recognition and makes your comment appear authentic. It also helps identify your comments by making them stand out among all the comments.
16. Share the blog you posted a comment on. You may even write blogs on your website about those blog posts and mention a link to them. This help in getting more traffic, which are beneficial for both, the blog author and you.
These are some basis steps and to keep in mind while commenting to get maximum benefits to build links.
d) Things to avoid while posting comments
• Don’t ever include irrelevant data in your content. It will create negative impact on your image. Keep the comments related to the post only.
• Avoid getting involved in comments which may lead to arguments and major disagreements.
• Don’t make your comment appear as a spam by just leaving a link to your webpage. Always say something insightful and relevant in your comments before adding the link.
• Avoid using negative feedbacks. You may displease the host website author, or some visitors. Try using positive words to state your point in case you have to disagree with the content. Support it with proper valid reasons.
• Don’t forget to follow your comment. Reply whenever you are mentioned, or your comment has further comments on it. Promote and facilitate healthy discussions in the comment section.
There are many other technical concepts like the right process of adding a gravatar, or tools helpful for tracking comment statistics. To help you with these, I am leaving a link here to a great post by Neil Patel that talks about what mistakes to avoid while blog commenting.
Social engagement is crucial for brand development. If you post your comments smartly, keeping the interest of the readers in mind, it will lead to engagement and involvement. It’s a definite way to get visibility, traffic and backlinks from a new set of visitors.
I tried to make this session broken down into simple steps so that it is easy to implement. Hope you were able to understand the concept of Blog comments and how it helps in getting backlinks through social engagement.
There are other ways to create social engagement for a newer audience too. We will explore others in our coming sessions.
See you soon in the next post where we are going to discuss yet another interesting strategy for building good links.
Until then, Good Bye and take good care!
Cheers!