Leaving comments on blog posts is one way of building backlinks. And the more backlinks you build from high ranking domains, the better your blog’s ranking with the search engines. So, yes, you should leave comments on highly ranked posts. Should you leave a comment on every highly ranked post you see? Now that’s a whole ‘nother story.
I remember the first time someone left a comment on my very first blog. I was so excited. I felt my blog had finally been “found” and I was only inches away from success. The next day there was another comment, and the next day another. It was three weeks before I finally realized I’d been had by some spammy blogger just trying to build backlinks. I deleted every single one and found myself some good spam detecting software.
The moral of the story is this: If you’re just wandering around Cyberspace dropping links at every blog you come across you’re eventually going to be found out and those links will be deleted. You’ll have wasted all that time and energy for nothing. All bloggers eventually learn the difference between sincere comments and spam and guess which comments get deleted.
Your time would be much better spent doing the following:
Identify high ranking blogs that are relevant to your niche. You can leave comments all over the Web if you want to but why bother? If your comments are engaging then other people reading those blogs are going to follow your link back to your blog. That extra traffic is nice but it’s not targeted. In other words, if you’re blogging about baby care you don’t need traffic from a sports blog so you’re only wasting your time leaving comments there.
Actually read the blog post you’re commenting on. Your comment should add to the conversation and that’s hard to do if you don’t know what the conversation’s about. When it’s obvious a commentor hasn’t read my post I just delete the comment.
Take time crafting your comment. Once you’ve read the post, sit back and think about it. How can you contribute to the conversation. “Nice post. Thanks.” contributes nothing at all and simply lets the blogger know you’re just there for the links. Again – DELETE.
Your goal is to make your comment stick so you can get that backlink however, if your comment engages other readers they might just click your link and come to your blog, too.
Subscribe to the comments when you’re finished. Crafting a well-written, thought-provoking comment also encourages other readers to engage with you, right there in the comments on someone else’s blog. Make sure you subscribe to the comments before you leave that blog so you don’t miss anything.
Don’t try to get spammy with your links. Most bloggers have set up their blogs so you can link your name with a URL. This URL doesn’t have to be your homepage, you can use any link you like. In fact, it’s better if you link to deeper content on your blog. Link out to an article that’s relevant to the one you’re commenting on. But don’t try to include anchor text or URLs in the body of your comment. Most bloggers consider this rude and it’s just one more reason to hit that delete button.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!