We’ve all heard that commenting on other people’s blogs is a good way to bring traffic to your website. But did you know that there is a certain technique to doing it? While the wrong technique could do nothing but waste your time, the proper technique could generate hundreds of visits from only a single comment! So what exactly is the proper technique to blog commenting for traffic?
1. Add Value In Your Comment
First and foremost, your comment should add some sort of value to the post. It should add additional information, it should offer useful feedback on the post, and it should be very relevant to the post’s subject. This is your chance to demonstrate your expertise. You should be commenting on blogs on your niche, so if you could add additional information that the blog owner left out in his post, people will realize your expertise. So what happens as a result? They visit your website, and check out what you have to offer.
2. Use Your Real Name
As a Webmaster, I will almost never approve a comment if someone leaves a comment as “Make Money Online” or, “Computers and Technology”. Why? It appears as if the commenter cares nothing about what was actually written, and is just leaving a comment to ge ta link to their website under those keywords (which doesn’t work anyway, since most blog comments are nofollow). It also makes it hard for both the other commenters and myself to interact with you. After all, how weird would it be to say, “Why, hello there Make Money Online, how are you doing today?”. Yeah. It sounds weird. Don’t do it.
3. Use A Gravatar
Take it one step further and set up a Gravatar for your email address. Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) is a website in which you upload a picture assigned for your email address, and whenever you use a website that has Gravatar enabled (almost every WordPress Blog) your Gravatar picture will appear instead of the default one. It’s a lot easier to connect with a face than it is to connect with a blank picture, is it not?
4. Comment For Humans, Not For Robots
As I said earlier, almost no blog comments are dofollow. This means that you will not gain link juice for commenting on other blogs, therefore you should focus on commenting for humans rather than for robots. Don’t put keywords in the name field – it doesn’t help you, and it makes you look like a complete spammer.
5. Make Networking The Priority
These days, people don’t consume blogs like they used to.
While getting traffic from comments themselves is still certainly a viable strategy, the real value in my opinion comes from the networking capabilities.
Bloggers are hit relentlessly from cold outreach emails, from other marketers begging for something. These spammers send emails in mass, and most of them aren’t tailored at all to the individual people they’re sending them to.
By actually taking the time to connect with other bloggers in a meaningful way, you stand out from the crowd.
This makes it far easier to get something much more valuable than visitors from the comment alone.
For example, a guest posting opportunity on their site (with a real, dofollow backlink included) or simply a new friend you can bounce ideas off of.
6. Only Bother To Comment On Blogs Related To Yours
As I mentioned earlier, it’s only worth the time to comment on other blogs in your niche if you’re doing it for the purpose of getting traffic. Why? If you owned a blog about computers and was trying to advertise through comments on a blog about football, you’d get almost no visitors. Why? Chances are, most people interested in football blogs are not interested in your website about computers. However, if you comment on other computer blogs, it’s almost guaranteed that the audience there would be interested in your blog.
If you own multiple blogs, leave the most relevant one in the URL field. If you only own one, it is still beneficial to leave the link to it, even if the blog you’re commenting on is in an unrelated niche. The occasional odd visitor you’ll get is better than nothing, right?
Well friends, those are my top 6 tips. Follow them closely, and you’ll notice a dramatic increase in the amount of visits you get to your website through blog comments. You’ll thank me later.
Adding a real name is really important before posting any comment on a blog.. It adds your more credibility and proves that u are genuine…..
Ansh(Quote)
providing value to the article is very essential part of blog commenting. You can do this by extending some related information about the article or asking some valid questions about the article from the author. It also helps in building a healthy relation among you and the author.
yogesh pant(Quote)
Hi James,
I will now break your Rule # 5: Only Bother To Comment On Blogs Related To Yours. But then, I’m that kinda dude…
Your rules are, of course, savvy and do make good business sense. I’d add that I like commenting on blogs that have some sort of plugin like ‘commentluv’, and dislike commenting on blogs that use WP’s comment management service & blogs using ‘disqus’.
Edward
Edward Thorpe(Quote)
Hey Edward, good to see you again!
I’m the same way, honestly. I’m not quite sure why more people do not use Commentluv, especially those working in niches that tend to attract other bloggers.
These days I’m using blog commenting as a network tool more than a traffic source (although it still is a very good traffic source) so I don’t mind commenting on blogs with Disqus – but I’d still prefer they use Commentluv if it was my choice!
Talk to you soon!
James McAllister(Quote)
Great tips and advice. I’ve used blog comments to drive traffic to my site in the past but it’s only been a small amount and the traffic was a trickle. I can see the effect of scaling this up over the long run.
Also, quick question. Do links in blog comments get counted as backlinks? Or is that what you meant in ip 4 that they are do not follow?
Cameron(Quote)
Hi Cameron!
Yeah, blog commenting is more of a long-term strategy but over the course of time the comments can add up to a lot of visits per day. Not to mention, the networking effect it has with other bloggers helps get you mentioned on other sites if you can keep it up consistently.
Most comments are nofollow, so while they are technically backlinks, they do not pass pagerank over to your site and do not boost your rankings as a result. There are some blogs that give dofollow links in comments, but even those aren’t very helpful for SEO because Google doesn’t value those links very highly.
We’ll talk a bit more about SEO and networking (which ties into blog commenting a bit) later in the course, for now blog commenting should be done with human clicks in mind and not for search engine rankings. 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to comment!
James McAllister(Quote)
Great post, also I like the way you write. It’s straightforward and gets to the point, which is much needed in Internet Marketing.
Blog commenting/blog hopping is an old technique but still works to this day. Instead of commenting ‘great post’ or ‘good stuff’ adding value really does help, which you mentioned in your post. Blog hopping can be seen as time consuming but if you aim to comment on 10-20 blogs a day, not only do you learn new information, you can also use it as a networking tool. Its good for the long term.
Anyway, I wish more people start using commentluv. It’s pretty great 😀
Rahima(Quote)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, not only does blog hopping generate links back to your blog, Google also notices it as well as the readers of high ranking blogs. So I recommend only commenting on active blogs in your niche, and posts that actually interest you.
P.s I found you from the Warrior Forum.
Rahima(Quote)
James great post. And you’re right, especially from a branding standpoint, using your real name and a gravatar gives whatever your comment is some legitimacy.
Dan Norman(Quote)
Hi James,
You make some strong points here for creating a viable commenting strategy. However, #5 I have to disagree a little with because I sometimes comment on blogs not related to mine, mostly because I love the way its written, or the great ideas within. It can pay off. For example, just recently, I got someone signing up to a course of mine who had read a comment I left on a blog not related to mine, or my course. Why? She was struggling to grow her blog – and that’s what I teach, how to get traffic and grow your blog.
As a caveat, I am interested also in the topics of the blogs in other niches from mine. Your best clients usually come from people who have a problem you can solve, especially because you’ve been through the problem too. It doesn’t really matter what niche they’re in, or what niche you’re in – It’s what you can do for them that counts.
Just proves how a good commenting strategy can really pay off, right?
– Tom
Tom Southern(Quote)
I have just started out on my journey to 10k in 12 months and think your advice here are very useful for my blog followers. I will take this into my advertising methods learning.
I have been using these methods before however, I stoped some time ago when people did not really wanted comments on their blog posts.
If they have restarted to allow comments nothing is better than that. I love reading other peoples blogs for inspiration and keeping myself updated.
Great post and very relevant information regarding blog comments.
Thanks
Erlend Solvberg
Erlend Solvberg(Quote)
Hey Erlend, happy to hear that!
Honestly I really don’t understand people who don’t allow comments on their posts. I get that moderating them can take a little time, but turning them off is the equivalent of slamming the door in someone’s face after you’re done talking to them. It certainly doesn’t work very well for building connection!
Best of luck on your journey to 10k and hope to talk with you again soon!
James McAllister(Quote)
Please can you give a sample on how to make a good blog comment? Because some of my comments are not getting approve quick
Precious Idehen(Quote)
Hey Precious,
The most important thing is that you actually read the article and craft something unique, relevant, and valuable. Share something specific that resonated with you from the post, share your own additional ideas, and try to form a connection with the author.
When I moderate comments, I follow a simple rule – if the comment looks like it could have been copied and pasted to an entirely different article (and still make sense) then I don’t publish it.
Regarding slow approval times, you’ll also want to make sure you’re commenting on websites that are still active. Bonus points if they have recent comments too!
James McAllister(Quote)
Hi James,
I checked this post word by word. And I did find some interesting ideas. Thanks for sharing buddy!
However, I would also like to add a bit more
Avoid commenting on blogs if you are doing something unique on your own blog.
For example, if you found many underserved low competitive keywords in your niche and you are already getting decent traffic targeting those on your blog. Then it would be wise to keep yourself a bit undeground. Ofcourse, you would lose networking opportunities but you can keep your keywords protected.
Who knows, getting more under the spotlight, especiaaly when you are a new kid in the ring (a new blog) might make you an easy target for other bloggers. (Afterall not all of your competitors are with good intention)
However, once you are able to position yourself as a considerable authority in your niche (at least a teenage kid) then you can gradually start using this technique and see how it goes.
This is my plan moving forward. I have been blogging since 2020 but never utilized commenting as a strategy. (Since this is very least popular or maybe underrated technique these days) But after reading this post, it really seems like good technique that can be leveraged if we are smart enough. And after reading this post it seems like blog commenting still has some value if done right.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Prit
Prit Centrago(Quote)
Hey Prit!
You do bring up a good point, it is kind of dependent on the strategy that you take with blogging. I know a lot of people don’t really care about networking at all and if that’s the case, the traffic gains from blog commenting perhaps aren’t worth it anyway. In the past I believe they were, but now I find commenting as a networking tool to be far more powerful. Some of my best links have come from people who I first interacted with through a comment on their blog.
The risk of having competitors copy keywords though is always worrying – especially these days, when tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can show you the exact pages on someone’s site that are pulling the most traffic. I try to never rely 100% on Google for that reason – it’s too risky, and I’ve seen sites lose 2/3rds of their traffic in a matter of months after being targeted by a larger site!
James McAllister(Quote)