Connor BrookeIs Backlinking from Blog Comments a Good or Bad SEO Tactic?
In the ongoing fight to get your website ranked highly by Google, many folks look to backlinking as one of the best options to achieve this result. But, is it a good idea or not to employ this sort of tactic?
Before we start anything, I will state categorically, “Do not buy Links!”
The reasons for this will be self-evident as you read on.
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is quite simply a link from a website back to your website. For example, your company is listed on your local Chamber of Commerce website and they place a link on their site back to your website. That’s a backlink!
Here’s another example of a backlink from the Yellow Pages.
So, why is it important to get backlinks? A simplistic overview, without going into too much detail and boring the life out of you, is that quality backlinks from high ranking domains give SEO juice (credibility) to your website. And subsequently, Google looks to rank your website higher in the organic search results.
It’s similar to a business referral. If you get a referral from someone you know and trust, then you know that the referral is worth a lot to you. Get one from someone you don’t know, and the trust factor diminishes substantially.
But what about placing backlinks in the blog comments section of a website?
Why Is It A Bad Idea?
As SEO tactics go, placing backlinks in blog comments is not necessarily a good or bad thing. However, if you are using the tactic solely as a way to gain more SEO credit, then you are wasting your time and will ultimately hurt your website’s credibility. Some of first things to keep in mind when making comments on a blog are: “Is the website and discussion related to my own business?”, “What value are you bringing to the discussion?” and “Are you furthering the discussion by offering alternative viewpoints or information. In essence, “Are you bringing VALUE?”
In this example, the original discussion was about using cloth diapers vs disposal diapers on a pregnancy website. You can tell from the comment that they are not adding any value at all. Because this particular website has a high domain ranking, they simply placed so text and a link to their own website home page to try and garner some seo juice. While the tactic may work in the short term, Google’s algorithms will catch up with you eventually and ding your website in a way that you may never recover from.
Just placing a link in a blog comment does nothing and you should get nothing out of it if that’s all you bring to the table. Writing comments like, “Wow, great article you really nailed this one, link,” also serves no purpose for the reader. If you sell Pink Dresses and place links on websites that deal in Nuclear Fusion or Casino Gambling, why should you get credit for this when it has nothing to do with Pink Dresses?
To illustrate how these tactics can affect you, a 2011 article by the New York Times concerning J.C. Penny shows just what can happen if you use “black-hat” tactics to try and subvert the ranking process.
J.C. Penny hired an SEO firm to help them try to get their website pages to rank higher in Google search results. After a period of time, the tactics seemed to be working. Many of their website pages started to rank very high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact, they started beating out their own supplier’s website pages in the SERPs. But what J.C. Penny did not know was that the SEO Company was placing hundreds of links all over the internet to influence the rankings.
When information came to light about how J.C. Penny (their SEO Company) achieved these results and the information was reported to Google, their rankings plummeted down faster than someone wearing a pair of cement shoes in a body of water. This is what Google did:
“On Wednesday evening, Google began what it calls a “manual action” against J.C. Penney, essentially demotions specifically aimed at the company.
At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite Carry On Luggage.”
Two hours later, it was at No. 71.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was No. 1 in searches for “Living Room Furniture.”
By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68.
In other words, one moment J. C. Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country. The next it was essentially buried.”
You can see that just placing links on websites with no relevance to your product can cause you massive problems. J.C. Penny fired their SEO Company and worked hard to correct the problem.
When is it a Good Idea?
As we mentioned earlier, placing comments on blog articles is good when you have something of value to offer. The reader will be further engaged, informed or educated about the topic. The process should be looked at 
as one of building social influence, rather than one of link building. Developing a relationship with particular websites and making regular contributions via comments in blog articles will have a better effect on your social influence than getting a backlink. You must also keep in mind that many influential sites that allow blog comments have “rel-nofollow” attributes assigned to them. So, you would get no SEO credit for the backlink anyway.
If you do leave a link, make sure it has good anchor text. Don’t leave link looking like, http://businessname.com/pinkdresses, put “Pink Dresses.”
So What Should You Do?
Backlinking is still an important part of gaining website online credibility and getting yourself ranked in Google’s organic search results. But it is hard work. Here are a few things you can start to do:
Develop Relationships. If you find a site that has influence in your industry, start to develop a relationship with them. Ultimately, if you bring value to them, they may give you value back by giving you a backlink.
Guest Post. Some people say this method is dead, but I disagree. Getting original content onto influential websites not only provides them with additional value to offer their audience, but gives you a powerful backlink. Don’t forget to ask them if they provide a backlink before you submit anything to them.
Directory Listings. This is still a good method of getting a free backlink. It is especially helpful if the directory listing site has a high domain rank.
It’s not easy to build quality backlinks. There are companies that charge thousands of dollars to maybe get just 4-6 top quality backlinks for you. It takes time, patience and the desire to do things the right way!
Do it the wrong way and like most things in life, you’ll pay for it!
Read more: The Difference Between Good Backlinks and Bad Backlinks
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Hey Bill, Great idea, this will help me out in bringing my organisation to the top.
Hey Bill, great tactics. You really explained it in a clear cut manner.
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thanks for sharing the concept of blog commenting back links.
With blog commenting we can attract more visitors on our website. And its helpful for back linking of our blog
Great idea. thanks for sharing the concept of blog commenting back links
first of all .thanks for share. its really a important think to know is backlink from blog comments are good or bad for seo tactic. but i think it can be a good idea if we do it ethically.
Blog commenting is good in this way you can share what you think about the post. It helps me to increase my website traffic also.
Yes it is. Not only can you share what you think of the post but also by way commenting give illustrative examples and links to your social media accounts for the points you wish to clarify. For instance, originally and firstly used in Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SunKnowledge , scattered hashtags/keywords can come handy in blog comments too.
Beneficial Article Blog commenting is the best way to increase your web traffic. But your contents are king if you plagiarized your traffic will be decrease. Free plagiarism checker tool is the plate form where you plagiarism issues.
http://seotoolworld.com/free-plagiarism-checker-tool
Thanks for taking the time to share Bill, love reading the thoughts that its pondering regarding blog commenting. And so I thought that everyone here might want to read also this http://imarkets-group.com/ link that every SEO should see.
What i do not understood is actually how you are not actually a lot more well-liked than you what I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing to your feed now, tay be right now. You are very intelligent. You understand therefore considerably in the case of this matter, produced me individually believe it from numerous varied angles. Its like men Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say thanks.
The simple reason is that every blog comment has a name associated that links back to your site.
That are best for all kind for SEO. Great topic you started. http://mobilefone.pk/Mobiles/Rivo.html
Yes its a really helpful for seo worker.
Thanks really for sharing this side link for seo worker.
ya really help full post ya blog commenting is good and really works for getting back links abut on related blogs with good pr
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I like your post,it is too informative and thank you for share.
Thanks For Ur Article. Its very useful for me.
SEO benefit from blog comments is that every time you leave a comment, the blog owner takes notice of you and search engines read the links in your comment.
good idea,thanks for sharing
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I am grateful for your tips…. Thank you so much :)
Nice post here, i Love SEO jobs
I think its a good tactic to do blog commenting. Rest thanks for your tips!
Really nice article dear admin thanks for sharing best tips for Freshers i will share your article.
Blog commenting backlink is the best way to increase web traffic but contents are more important.plagiarized your traffic will be decrease.i am using http://www.wikilink.biz service but after reading your nice article i will try to get more information from here.Thanks a lot for sharing this.
Thanks for sharing this kind information this is really very unique information. I like your post,it is too informative and thank you for share.
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These suggestion will help me to improve my business.This post is of full of knowledge about Blog commenting Link Building.
Thank you So Much for sharing great piece of information!
WOW! That JC Penny story was pretty shocking and amazing. I guess no one is safe from Google LOL. I don’t think using any automated software for creating a blog comment is a good idea. Using automated software to find the right blogs to comment on is a good idea. Just make sure you read the article and leave a relevant comment. I personally use the Top 10 Blog Comment Software program to find relevant blogs that are on the first page of Google. This way your comments are most likely to see a lot of traffic.
Thanks for the back-link knowledge! Its good to know that you can manage your backlinks through blogs you trust just by commenting on their blog! Great read, thanks again.
nice post man
Thanks for sharing back-link knowledge . it helps to build high quality back links and increase website traffic also .
By commenting on their blog you can manage your backlinks through blogs you trust just ! Great read, thanks
Now i had an idea about the backlinks, and how to generate the backlinks and website traffic,thank you so much for sharing this article…
Hello sir
Thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing this useful information, It is very useful and who are searching for E-Commerce Website Development Services
Thank you for seo tactics
Blog comments can increase the back links for the web site.
Appreciating the time and energy you put into your blog and detailed information you offer. It’s awesome to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same unwanted rehashed material. Great read!.
Great Blog !
Thank you for sharing this post.
Thanks for the great tips. There are so many information out there about Back linking from Blog Comments information that I always did not whether it is useful or not. After reading your post I will definitely try blog commenting.
post is very informative and useful..seo gain from blog comments is that whenever you leave a comment, the blogger takes word of you and search engines like google and yahoo read the hyperlinks in your comment.
I think it has great effect if we left link in blog commeting.
Hey Bill,
Thanks for your efforts and sharing such great post with us..!!
I will keep in mind next time.
Is blog commenting effective for keyword rank?
Or Can you share guest posting site list?
great post