A few months ago I read a great piece by XFBML on a topic they called commentstorming. The idea is simple:
Go to a blog you know and read every day. Comment on one of their posts. Then click on a link within their blogroll that you’ve never visited before (or visited rarely). Pick a post, and comment on it. Go to their blogroll, pick a blog that you’ve never visited before, and click through to it. Comment on a post.
Comments on blogs are not always directly helpful for your SEO rankings as offsite links but this exercise actually does multiple things. Let’s think about it further.
Commenting on someone else’s blog makes them and their readers more likely to visit you, comment and possibly subscribe.
You know it’s true. If you get a comment, how often have you clicked the site and left a nice comment back? One of your photographer friends comments on a wedding and all of a sudden you’ve commented back on their latest portrait session. It happens. What also happens is the readers of the other blog start to check you out as well. I’ve tested this with my food photography blog. A comment on a small blog almost always gets a reply. A comment on a more popular blog almost always gets MANY hits but few replies. So either way it is win-win for you. You can drive targeted traffic to your website as I’ve done here:
More traffic, more subscribers and longer site visits mean higher SEO rank.
Once you start getting traffic from commentstorming, you can convert that into longer stays, more pageviews, etc. If you convert readers of IMMABIGBLOG.com to your site, that’s a double bonus for you – increased RSS subscribers also benefit your SEO rank. So having people find you on Google is great. Getting found organically on a comment they liked on a blog – MUCH better overall. Commentstorming can thus be a powerful way to to use blog comments for traffic generation.
You get more comments by commentstorming!
This one’s simple. You comment more, you get more comments. As above, people are at least somewhat likely to return comments. If you really want to start a ferocious comment storm, post on a photography forum or Facebook page/group that you’re going to return all comments left within 24 hours. You’ll get so many you’ll disown me as your SEO go-to.
Comments are great – comments make you look popular and make you feel like you’re doing a great job. Not bad for making someone else’s day just a bit brighter, right?
Commenting can directly benefit your SEO with backlinks.
Not all blogs help your SEO. In fact, a good many don’t. That’s hardly the point if you’re getting real traffic, right? The point of SEO is getting more visitors to your page. With commentstorming you can skip the step where you have to rank and trust Google to get you traffic. You can go get it yourself, regardless of your rankings for any keyword.
Obviously we can point out more benefits of commentstorming: you learn more about your industry, you find relevant blogs you didn’t know existed, you network and make new friends, you grow your entire blog’s readership… but basically all you need to do is pick out an hour or two a week and do it! Commentstorm often for the best results.
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Should You Drive Traffic by Commenting on Other People’s Blogs?
Posted by Matt Antonino on Friday, January 23, 2015
