The Dos and Don’ts of Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is an incredibly useful link building activity for multiple reasons. First off, it’s a good way to build up the amount of quality, one-way links pointing to your site. Secondly, commenting on industry and related blogs helps establish your company as an expert. Blog commenting is also the first step in building a strong relationship with influential bloggers in your industry, a partnership that can have long lasting benefits. But none of these benefits of blog commenting will come if you don’t go about it in the right way.
Here are a few dos and don’ts of blog commenting:
Do
Use a real name whenever possible. People like to talk to other people, not nameless and faceless corporations. Using a real name also makes it harder to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, which can go a long way in building trust with the blogger and the blog’s readers.
Don’t
Include sales pitches in your blog comments. A blog comment box is not the place to take about your company or products. A blog is a place for discussion, not advertising.
Do
Add value to the conversation. While comments like “great post” or “awesome tips” might make a blogger feel all warm and fuzzy inside (then again, maybe not), they don’t do anything for helping establish you as an expert. If you are going to comment on the blog, then actually comment! Pick a point or two that you found particularly interesting and build upon them.
Don’t
Include anchor text in your comments. Some blogs allow you to include links in the comment fields. Unless you have a really good reason to be linking to another site (like a reference or related story) you shouldn’t be targeting keywords. The link back to your site is going to be attached to whatever name you used to leave the comment. Don’t try to stuff extra in the comment itself.
Do
Shoot for a minimum of three sentences. This shows the blogger that you took the time to actually read the post and put some time and effort into leaving a comment.
Don’t
Comment on unrelated blogs. If you own a tax preparation services site, don’t leave comments on sites about dog grooming or wind-surfing. If those sites do happen to have a blog post about tax preparation, then you can consider leaving a comment on that post and that post only.
If you run afoul of any bloggers by leaving irrelevant, sales-pitchy or spammy comments, you risk being labeled a spammer and banned from that blog from all time. Many blog hosting services automatically filter out comments left by users that have been marked as spam. Even if you wrote a fantastic and interesting comment, the blog owner would never even see it. There is little to no chance of redemption once you anger a blogger.
14 Responses to “The Dos and Don’ts of Blog Commenting”
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I don’t think posting on unrelated blogs is a bad thing. As long as you have something worthwhile to say that’s related to the article, I’d say feel free to leave a post. Just don’t advertise viagra on my blog.
Thanks Robert for reading and sharing your thoughts…
Take Care,
Nick
Hi Nick,
Absolutley right! I think the main conclusion of your post, is that it’s needs to be a valuable comment, something that adds to the conversation instead of just saying, ‘great post, thanks.’
By adding value and by adding to the conversation, you’re putting yourself out there apart from everyone else. So because of that, you don’t need a sales pitch, you just need to show that you’re someone who people might want to get to know if they clicked on your name to go to your website.
I do agree that posting on an unrelated blog isn’t great. However, if they are within your target market, it would work. For example, I comment on blogs to people that I want to reach in someway. And I have actually gotten a lot of business because of that.
They say to me, “I would have never known about you if you hadn’t of left that comment on my blog!”
As long as it’s in your target market, then you should be fine.
Thanks for the tips!
Nick,
I would take your advice one step further and suggest that business owners should never hire someone else to post comments on your behalf. Many SEO firms who are committed to generating high volumes of inbound links entirely neglect the valid principles you’ve shared above.
Many SEO firms also seem not to realize (or care) that REAL PEOPLE read blogs too. Unmoderated, “spammy” blog comments are dramatically reducing the quality of the content on many sites I used to enjoy reading. A personal pet peeve! It’s a relief to see an SEO blogger with such an authentic view on blog commenting.
LOL. So, after commenting on your blog post – which I really like, and found on Linked In, I clicked over to learn more about your company’s services, and discovered that YOU offer link building services. Perhaps you may wish to strike my prior comment – and perhaps I should take a look at what your firm has to offer. If link building can be outsourced in an authentic, high-quality way… I need to know more.
Great post, Nick!
I’m happy to see this coming back around; in the good ole days, it was common sense. Then the spammers & fly-by-nights came out and had some success with commenting for seo, etc.. Blog application developers then had to come up with special plug-ins, services popped up for all sorts of things, and comment moderation became tedious.
And then it exploded into cr@p. In some sense, we’re lucky that the big guys have made it clear that it’s time to change.
It’s just like a conversation in real life. You’re arrive casually late to a party. You get a drink or plate of appetizers and see a small group of people chatting away. You walk over and listen in.
Now…Let’s say they’re talking about how cool the recent commercial for the latest iPod is…Should you pipe in with “Hey! I’m running a 25% off sale on designer shoes! My store is located at…”
Obviously not – it’s ridiculous and you will soon have no new friends at the party.
However, if you said something like “I really thought that commercial was cool too. I never really wanted an iPod before, and that annoying song is so stuck in my head, I’m thinking about buying one. Seriously though, we’re actually trying to figure out a way to use a similar format on a commercial we’re building for a new product we’re launching…”
Relevant – Adds value – And as a bonus, you’ve created a marketing-related cliff-hanger.
And you won’t get kicked out of the party.
Thanks Craig for reading and for sharing your thoughts!
I think you last statement of:
“Relevant – Adds value – And as a bonus, you’ve created a marketing-related cliff-hanger.
And you won’t get kicked out of the party.”
This sums up good quality blog commenting nicely!
Take Care
Nick
As a moderator/admin for a blog, much of my time is spent filtering through and deleting spam comments. There must be fifteen to twenty blog posts every morning from people who obviously did not even read the blog. Incorrect spelling, viagara links, recipe links, diet links and so on. Who hires and pays these people to do a “time waster”?
Hi Margie,
Thanks for reading and your comment.
I agree, who the heck actually hires these time waster companies!
Take Care,
NIck
Hi Nick! I absolutely with you it agree.
Courtesy, consideration and common decency counts here too.
I started posting real and helpful information on an accounting blog on Linkdin and was surprised to have generated 3 good ‘grade B’ clients from it over the past six months. I only blog about our paperless work flow and delegation systems – and how they reduce back office cost in a small business. As they tie into our services and I’m an expert in the area. It was a test, I have invested about 15 hours over six months doing it so now I have to determine if 15 hours is worth 3 clients and then how do I find someone else who can write close to what I would have said. But so far, blog commenting seems to work IF the traffic is the same as the traffic you want back at your site.
In the same vein of not just saying “I agree,” don’t be a jerk and disagree either. It’s one thing to respectfully disagree or expand on an alternative point of view, but far too often I’ve seen comments that seem like they were written to start a fight. Like Thomas Bergel said – courtesey, consideration and common decency.
In the past I’ve been posting comments on related websites without knowing the best way to do it. Make the length of the post at least three sentences is a good suggestion; mine have been too short. I’ve learned to be more creative in my posts and will follow the advise of some of the comments here.
Many thanks.