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How To Get More Traffic Using Other People’s Blogs

How To Get More Traffic Using Other People’s Blogs

If you are looking for a way to get more links to your website or blog, as well as gain exposure with potential clients, one thing you can start very easily is commenting on other people’s blog posts. There are a few things you should consider when undertaking this sort of campaign, though.

By leaving useful, intelligent comments on blogs which are of interest to your target market, you gain exposure with the readers of that blog, as well as generating backlinks to your own website or blog. Though this can be a somewhat time-intensive marketing technique, there are several advantages:

  • There is no financial cost to doing it
  • You can decide how much or how little you want to do it
  • It is easy to do and requires nothing to be set up on your own end except your blog or website
  • If you enjoy reading relevant blogs, it can be fun

Step 1: Some Simple Preparation

Before you embark on your blog commenting, you might want to give a bit of thought to your strategy. What website URL do you want to promote? If you have a website, especially with an email list sign-up on the first page, use that. If you only have a blog, that is another possibility for your URL.

Next, consider how you want your name to appear on your comments. It can be a good idea to include keywords in your name, since those will become part of the text of the clickable link to your website. However, to avoid looking like a spammer and to build personal credibility, you should use your actual name as well. I prefer a combination of your name with a title that uniquely captures your business. For example, “Jane Doe, Certified Abundance Coach” or “John Doe, Instructor of Yoga for Men.”

Another thing you might want to do is set up a separate email account or forwarding address to use for your blog comments. I haven’t noticed getting much spam using my own “blog commenting” email address (since the email address is not publicly visible on most blogs), but you might want to be safe.

Finally, I suggest you set up a free account at Gravatar to hold a nice profile picture that will be displayed on most blogs you comment on. (Associate it with whatever email addresses you plan to use when posting comments.)

Step 2: Find Relevant Blogs

Select several blogs which you would like to visit regularly to read and comment on. Ideal blogs would be those which would appeal to your target customers (as readers) and have a decent amount of traffic themselves. If there are a lot of thoughtful comments on the posts, it’s a good bet that readership is strong. An easy way to find the top blogs is to do a search on some popular blog directory sites.

Digg - Go to http://digg.com/search and type in a keyword phrase that relates to your target market. When the results show up, click “Most Dugg” to sort by the number of “Diggs” that posts have gotten – which means the number of people who have “voted” the post as useful in the Digg service. Check out the top results for relevancy and consider adding them to your list of blogs-to-follow.

Technorati – Go to http://technorati.com/search and follow a similar procedure as outlined for Digg. You can also check out the blogs listed in the Technorati Top 100 and browse for blogs in their full directory.

You can also locate blogs with a Google search, or based on what others are linking to.

Step 3: Browse and Read

Browse the blog for interesting posts which you can comment on. Especially look for topics which are directly related to your professional specialties. For the best exposure, keep to the most recent posts on each blog, since archive posts which might be deeper in the blog might not be read as frequently, or to posts which have some recent comments, which would indicate that it is still a topic of current interest and it’s likely that people are finding the post from searches.

Step 4: Leave a Great Comment

There are two reasons you should be sure to leave only useful and relevant comments. First, you want the people who read the comment to be impressed with your knowledge and helpfulness. Secondly, you don’t want to be considered a comment spammer.

Tips for non-spammy comments:

  • Respond directly to the topic of the post. If the post is about whether Pilates is useful for weight loss, don’t talk about running, unless you are making a direct comparison between running and Pilates effectiveness.
  • Add something to the conversation. “This is great!” as a comment is really pretty lame without anything else added. Even worse is the obviously spam “I enjoy reading your blog and will come back often.”
  • Raise questions. Feel free to ask a question about the topic, or just raise additional thoughts about the topic which would add to the conversation. The blog writer or other commentors might respond.
  • Respond to other comments. You can comment on the other comments, not just the blog post itself.
  • You can be contrarian. If you disagree with the conclusions drawn by the post, you can share your opinion, but make sure to back it up with useful facts and ideas.
  • Don’t be rude. No matter how much you disagree, don’t insult the blog writer or other commentors. That is likely to get your comment deleted or at least give everyone a bad impression of you.
  • Avoid blatant self-promotion. This isn’t the time for a sales pitch. If you have a blog post, article, or other resource which relates directly to the post, you can share a link, but keep it low-key.
  • Fill in your personal information correctly. Most blogs allow you to fill in your name, email, and a website URL in addition to the comment itself. See Step 1 (above) for tips.

Web Action Steps

  • Follow the steps outlined above to get started commenting.
  • Systematize your commenting by scheduling a time each week to read your chosen blogs
  • Use an RSS Reader to make your blog reading more efficient
  • After several weeks of regular commenting, check your own website statistics to see which blogs are resulting in direct traffic to your site, and which aren’t.

Boosting traffic to your website is easy with blog commenting, but you need to have a professional site to drive that traffic to. If you need a new business website or blog, contact me today.