In order to market your business/brand online it’s necessary to get your name out there on the sites that your target audience members are spending time. One way to do so is to become active with blog commenting. By leaving a thoughtful comment on an industry related blog it will improve your exposure and help to establish your credibility in the industry. It can also help your SEO link building and traffic generation efforts since many blogs allow you to include a link to correspond with your comment. When utilizing blog commenting as a part of your online marketing strategy it’s important to go about doing it the correct way.
Here is the proper blog commenting etiquette:
Comment on industry related blogs
It’s really easy to find a blog to comment on. What’s more challenging (depending on your niche) is finding a blog post to comment on that is related to your industry and recently updated. While it’s more challenging, it’s also much more valuable. You don’t want to comment on a blog that isn’t relevant to your business. The people reading the blog won’t click over to your site and it won’t establish any relevancy with the search engine spiders. In fact, it could actually confuse them. The most difficult and time consuming part of blog commenting is the research component. Blog directories and Google blog search are good places to start.
Don’t focus on the link
For SEO link building purposes it’s much better to comment on a blog that allows a link as opposed to one that does not. But you need to keep in mind that that should not be the primary purpose of the comment. More importantly, it’s about gaining exposure within the industry and making connections that could lead to future opportunities. Some blogs may allow a link with the comment but the link is “no follow”, meaning that it’s not followed by the search engines or considered for ranking purposes. That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth attaining because it shows the search engine spiders that you are building a natural link portfolio that is more focused on marketing the business to target audience members than to the search spiders.
Don’t promote
A blog comment field isn’t a place to sell the product or service that you offer. At least not in a direct way. The comment should be feedback on the blog post itself. The indirect way to sell is simply to show off your knowledge. If you know what you’re talking about and the comment is insightful it will attract attention from the blogger and the readers. Never add a link within the comment field itself because there’s a good chance it will just get flagged as spam and you’ll never be able to comment on that blog again.
Keep commenting activities organized
It’s important to keep track of when and where you comment on a blog post. You don’t want to forget that you already commented on a post and then comment on it again. This way you can also go back and see if someone responded to the comment and continue the conversation. You can also take note of the blogs that don’t let the comments go through so that you don’t waste your time commenting there in the future.