Effectively Using Blog Commenting to Build Backlinks
Blog Commenting to Build Backlinks
Commenting on blogs has always been used as a way of building backlinks, it can be really effective as long as your commenting correctly. This article is strictly talking whitehat seo, I’m not talking about spamming every blog you can find, or talking about using software to automate the blog commenting process, so don’t expect references to Scrapebox or other SEO automation software. So how can we use Blog Commenting to Build Backlinks to our sites?
The best way to get high quality links from other peoples blogs, is simply to read their blogs. I have hundreds of different blogs in a wide range of different topics in my RSS reader, subscribing to the RSS feed of the blog means I don’t have to visit the blog to check for new content, I’m notified when a new blog post is posted, can read it write a comment and usually get a backlink the same day of the post.
I’ve always used blog commenting as a way of building long lasting backlinks to my websites, I’ve got backlinks which are over 3 years old which I built by commenting on blogs, over the years I know I’ve lost some of the links, but this was due to the blog disappearing, or the post being removed, but this really shouldn’t put you off the manual blog commenting process.
Unlike with comment spam, it’s very unlikely for an Admin of the blog to remove a genuine comment from the post, in fact I’d say 75% of the time the author of the post replies to my comment, some simply approve the comment and never bother replying which I find rude, clearly they read the comment, spending thirty seconds to write a reply isn’t really asking much is it?
Getting Blog Comments Approved
There isn’t any point in wasting time writing a comment if it’s never going to get approved, blogs with auto approve comments get spammed to death, you don’t want to be commenting on blogs which have spammy comments approved, we want to be using blog commenting to build backlinks which are going to benefit our site, not harm it.
The key to getting your comments approved, is to write a decent comment, spend a couple minutes reading the post and create a discussion, I try to end my comment with a question and usually the author will approve the comment and then reply to it, avoid repeating what other people have already commented. I tend to address the author by name, “Great article Luke” for example, again this will help get the comment approved and look genuine.
Use a real name in the “Name” field of the comment form, you’ll find using an anchor text will massively decrease the number of comments which get approved, I never approve comments with an obvious anchor text in the name field. Use a real e-mail address too, I never approve comments which have a fake e-mail address, I’ve setup a seperate e-mail account which I use for blog commenting, often I’ll get sent replies to my comment to the e-mail address.
Finding Niche Relevant Blogs
Finding niche relevant blogs is essential if you want to build quality links, you’ll also find that some comments can generate targeted traffic to your website. The obvious thing to do is use Google and search keywords in your niche, pick out the blogs and get commenting, but there are other ways to find blogs in your niche.
Don’t forget to either add good blogs in your niche to a seperate folder in your bookmarks, or subscribe to their RSS feed. The thing to remember when blog commenting to build backlinks, you can comment on 5 posts on 1 blog, which providing all the comments get approved, you end up with 5 backlinks on 5 pages from 1 domain/site.
Here is a list of websites you can use to find niche related blogs
Google Blog Search Search Engine
Wordpress Tag Search Search Engine
Twitter Tweet Search Search Engine
Stumbleupon Social Bookmarking
Digg Social Bookmarking
Technorati Blog Directory
Best of the Web Blogs Blog Directory
Bloggeries Blog Directory
Blog Catalog Blog Directory
Globe of Blogs Blog Directory
Managing Link Building Campaigns
If you have multiple sites then your going to be wanting to build links to all of them, I always include manual blog commenting in my link building strategy so I know it can be a real pain to keep everything organised. I’ve found the best solution is a spreadsheet to keep track of where your commenting, have a separate sheet for each project/website.
For each comment I make I write down the:
Date comment was posted
URL of the blog post
‘Name’ used for the comment
‘URL’ used for the comment
Notes about the post, maybe high PR, highly niche relevant etc
The best software to use to create documents like spreadsheets is Microsoft Office, I use Excel to manage all of my link building campaigns, it’s fast, reliable and has tons of useful features and functions which you can use on the data you collect.
Written by Alex Brooks
