How To Drive Traffic To Your Blog Through Writing Comments
Posted by Charles on October 14th, 2008
Image by _StaR_DusT_
The strategy of leaving comments on blogs is probably most ill-suited to gaining visitors. Comments contribute to the article which they’re in response to and as a general rule the link to the commenter’s site is a side-issue, one which the vast majority of readers would never click on.
However, having said that it’s still possible to develop a strategy which encourages people to click through to your blog, and when they do these people tend to be high quality visitors, much more likely to view many pages and subscribe to your blog.
Previously we’ve described the three step process to develop an effective blog comment strategy and the process is no different when developing a strategy with the goal of gaining visitors in mind. With the first step decided upon – the goal of driving traffic to your site or blog – the next two are discussed below:
Blog Selection
The aim is to receive a high level of visibility for the comments. Small niche blogs don’t matter. Neither does the DoFollow plugin. All that matter is the popularity of the blog – the more popular the better.
Imagine that your own a blog about becoming a better blogger. Problogger is likely to be a popular blog in your niche which instantly springs to mind. With your first popular blog located you can then begin to build up your list of target blogs. Google Trends is a very useful tool to identify similar blogs within a niche. By entering Problogger.net it instantly brings up similar blogs which its visitors read, including Copyblogger, DailyBlogTips and John Chow.
Try entering these other blogs into Google Trends and before long you’ll have an excellent list of very popular blogs within your niche. With this list in place you’re now ready to execute your strategy.
Writing Comments
Although commenting on popular blogs is recommended it’s no good if your comment is buried half way down the page in amongst all the other hundreds of comments. Even the most loyal and inquisitive readers are unlikely to read it properly, let alone click through to your site.
You need a way to position your comment first. A way of knowing when a new article is posted so you can be the first to comment. The early comments are almost always read by visitors, with interest in the comments quick to tailor off.
Comment Sniper is an excellent tool to notify you when a new post has been published on one of the blogs you’re following. It’s currently free to download and you’ll be notified via a desktop alert or SMS text once a new post goes live. With this tool you have a great chance of getting in there early and contributing the first comment.
However, don’t be so worried about making the first comment that you sacrifice on quality. Your comment needs to provide added value and be sufficiently interesting or thoughtful to get readers asking the question “I wonder who wrote that?” Unsure what to write? There are some tried and tested techniques to contributing high value comments:
- Point out anything which has been missed, including the reason why it’s important
- Describe your experience – people find it easy to relate to real-life stories
- Ask further questions – this also gives you the opportunity to make further comments
- Refer to one of your posts – “I recently covered a similar topic…”
The fourth technique is particularly effective. Add value by not only providing your thoughts on the article in question but also by referring to a previous article written by yourself.
Finally, link by either your name or your site’s name – “Affordable SEO Services” or a similar keyword combination just doesn’t portray the required credibility to entice people to click through to your site.
Using Entrecard…
If you use Entrecard there is another way to drive traffic to your blog via writing comments. Entrecard has teamed up with SezWho to reward bloggers who contribute high value comments with Entrecard credits, which in turn can be used to increase your blog’s visibility.
You can register via your Entrecard Dashboard, after which you’ll receive a link to the download page. Download SezWho to your blog and you’re ready to start commenting on other participating blogs. You’ll earn Entrecard credits for each comment you make, with the number of credits determined by the rating that the community gives them.
A good side-effect of this tool is that you’ll also notice an increase in comments on your blogs, and with the rating system in place they won’t be of the simple hit and run ‘Nice Post!’ type.
Have you had any success with driving traffic to your blog through writing comments? Feel free to leave any comments below.
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October 14th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Comment Sniper huh? And I thought getting texts from ebay was a bit much. I always wondered if I could be the first to get a comment onto huffington post. With this tool, I just might do it!
October 15th, 2008 at 3:56 am
In addition to your 4 tips above, you could always contradict the article to the extent you get flamed. This is a dodgy technique as it won’t do much for your credibility. But as the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” when it comes to advertising.
Dan
October 15th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I have yet to try EntreCard, I may need to test them out.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Dan - that is true although as you say it’s worth treading carefully with that technique. There’s nothing wrong with constructively disagreeing with an article but not if the intention is just to create a stir and some publicity.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Charles - Yep, I agree, that’s the way *I* am. However, it’s still a valid technique, despite its moral implications.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:31 am
I haven’t heard of EntreCard, but I use SezWho on my blog, which is a good plugin. CommentSniper looks like something I could try out.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Very true: commenting is indeed a new art. It is, also, a powerful way for users in a web 2.0 world to contribute. Blog readers can react with a “thumbs up” comment to say, in effect, “More posts like this.” The commenter, then, becomes the critic who shapes the writer’s next content. Some blogs are sorting comments: a column for in-blog comments like this one; another column for references and notes from Twitter and other social networking sites. What if the comments were sorted by quality?
July 17th, 2009 at 2:51 am
hmmm.. there is nothing wrong of advertising your site through blog commenting.. it is good to know what other people are thinking.. i guess what’s bad are the comments that has no sense and didn’t impart anything to you. If that’s the case, then don’t post it.
Thanks to this article anyways, it is very informative.
Thumbs up sign!
August 15th, 2009 at 8:20 am
thx for your info ^^. i’ll use entrecard
November 5th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Thanks for the link to Comment Sniper. This is new to me and could turn out to be very helpful.
I’ve never been able to leverage Entrecard for useful traffic, it seems very transient as a source of traffic.
June 9th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I agree. Comments can be valuable information or great testimonials. Although, I am always cautious on which comments I should trust, I still think they are great marketing tools to drive traffic to your site. There are a lot of ways to make one’s website known. Invest your time learning some of these ideas and it will be a time well spent. Great post!