Organization is Key to Successful Blog Commenting

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

Blog commenting is a great component of offsite SEO and white hat link building (provided it’s done right!) for numerous reasons. First off, leaving quality comments on industry blogs is a great way to build valuable links, both follow and no-follow, to your site. And even if they are no-follow links that doesn’t mean they can’t send visitors your way. I’ve even gotten a lead or two that found my site through a blog comment! Blog commenting is also a great way to drive people to your social profiles and build your social network. Secondly, blog commenting is usually the first step in any blogger outreach program. Leaving insightful comments and engaging in conversations with the blogger and other readers is a great way to build a rapport with that blogger and lay the foundation for a great relationship down the road. But just like any other form of link building, blog commenting can’t be done haphazardly if you want it to work. It takes organization and commitment to really reap the benefits.

Here are 3 ways to help keep your blog commenting organized:

1. Create a master blog commenting list.
What are the top 5-10 industry blogs in your niche? You should be trying to leave one comment on each blog every day (when they have fresh content.) The big, reputable industry blogs usually get the most traffic and search engine love, so a link from one of these sites is going to be a nice addition to your link profile. Keep track of which blog posts you’ve left comments on so you don’t accidentally leave two comments on the same post.

You can also use this master list as a source of inspiration for your own content creation. If you are ever strapped for an idea just pull a link at random and write a response post (with credit back to the original blog) or pull a nugget from that post and expand upon it for your own readers.

2. Assign different lists to different people.
In addition to the top 5-10 industry blogs, chances are there are dozees (if not hundreds) of smaller blogs that you could be commenting on. If you’re lucky enough to have internal help with your blog commenting give each person his or her own list of blogs to work with. This ensures you aren’t doubling up on the same blogs (which could get a little spammy) and you are building links from a wider variety of sources. You could also give each person a short list of random URLs to link to so not everyone is linking to the homepage. Link to your social profiles, company blog or high-level service pages to help spread the love and build the SEO value of the internal pages on your website.

3. Clean up your list every few months.
Don’t waste your time leaving comments on a blog if they never go live. It’s possible that that owner isn’t letting any comments go through or they aren’t even bothering to monitor the blog, or maybe you were flagged as spam (which you should be trying to avoid at all costs!) But if you’ve tried to leave comments on a blog 3-4 times to no avail then remove it from your list and find somewhere else to spend your time.