An Ultimate Guide To Blog Commenting For SEO

I believe blog commenting is one of the most underrated link building techniques available in SEO. Trust me, if done right, blog commenting for SEO can do wonders to any site irrespective of the niche. In this guide, I will explain step by step process to do blog commenting and making sure your comments get noticed by the blogger.

Why so many bloggers hate blog commenting?

I see many bloggers frowning their eyes when I talk about using blog commenting for backlinks. 

There is a long history of blog comments being SPAMMED. I have seen bloggers struggling with something like 30K pending comments on their blog (most of them were automated). 

Not necessary to mention but many SEOs use automated link building tools to get comments in bulk!

This is what bloggers deal with!

Look at these blog comments we receive on our blog almost daily. Are they relevant at all?

Many bloggers disabled comments or completely stopped auto-approval. Also, many of the SEOs stopped doing commenting terming it a SPAM activity, which it is not!

Well, this article will break a lot of myths on how to do blog commenting for SEO to get the ranks your website deserves. 

But first, what is blog commenting?

The word blog commenting is derived from two words “Blog” + “Commenting”. It is a way to express your opinion/observation in a written form on the blogs you read.

Let’s say you read a blog post about “Outreach techniques”. And, in the blog, you may or may not agree with some content written in it. You can then express your thoughts in the comments option below.

Another great example of commenting is YouTube videos. Out of billions of videos on YouTube, almost 50% of them have comments. If you have watched any popular YouTube video, there are high chances you have gone through comments section as well.

Commenting, whether it is on a blog, a video platform or a Q&A site like Quora are a great medium to state your opinion. 

But, there is a lot more than expressing your opinion when it comes to blog commenting. Let’s see how they can help businesses to get more sales.

Why SEOs hesitate in doing blog commenting:

A lot of SEOs ignore blog commenting mainly because of 3 reasons.

1. No-follow links

Nofollow links, the most underrated thing by SEO guys out there! But what if I tell you, guys at Teknicks were able to increase one of their client’s traffic by 288% within one and a half year with the help of 89% Nofollow backlinks? Don’t believe me? Check out the case-study yourself! 

Regardless of what you think, I can kind of assure you that Nofollow Links work. 

Off Page SEO is all about keeping a balance. Here are some of the tips I keep hearing

• Vary anchor text, so that it looks natural!
• Don’t leave any footprints behind!
• Avoid creating all of the backlinks to a single page!

But when it comes to dofollow backlinks, we often ignore our own advice!

Don’t you think it would be fishy if a site has only dofollow backlinks in its profile? 

You can test this yourself too! Just choose a few keywords and analyse the backlink profile of top ranking urls for those keywords. I am sure you will find around 25-40% nofollow links.

Also, Rand from moz clearly stated in this article that Nofollow links not only help in link profile, they also help in ranking! Do check this study from semrush as well.

Nofollow links are a very important part of any off page campaign and blog commenting is the best way to acquire them.

Update: [Many of you suggested to add a list of techniques which can help in gaining NF backlinks, we are in the process of creating a piece of content regarding that soon]

2. It is hard to find blogs to leave comments.

Well, this one I can relate to.

With so-called SEO guys out there spamming almost each and every blog, many of the blog owners have completely disabled the commenting option.

And therefore, many of us find it very hard to find relevant blogs which are active as well. Don’t worry, I have added a complete section on how you can easily find blogs in no time.

3. They get very less approval rate.

Let’s say you found a blog on which you want to comment. You went through the content and wrote a well crafted comment and wait for it to get approved. Then starts a long wait to get the comment approved.

But despite of writing a great comment, there are chances your comment might not get approved. 

That’s the story of our lives! Literally!

Putting effort into writing a comment and then waiting forever to get it approved, is really frustrating. 

Rest assured, in this article I will be sharing with you some easy hacks to get the work done. I will explain how can you check in advance to ensure your comments gets approved before even reading the blog. This way, you can make sure your efforts don’t go in to vain 

But why they should Do it?

It is obvious to wonder if blog commenting link building techniques is even worth it? With so many challenges and less approval rate, it seems normal for people to avoid this precious technique.

Well, let’s discuss some real benefits blog commenting can bring along:

Balances Your Backlink Profile

As mentioned previously, the right SEO approach is all about making your efforts look natural. Having only dofollow backlinks makes search engines suspicious, and you surely don’t want that.

Having a balanced amount of Nofollow backlinks is essential for a healthy SEO strategy. 

Drives Referral Traffic

While some of us may try it for building links, blog commenting can be a great traffic source too. A lot of readers go through comments in order to consume opinions and extra nuggets of information. 

If your comment adds value to the blog and is worth a read, chances are you might get targeted referral traffic from that blog. Such referral traffic is highly valuable and adds up to sales most of the time. So blog commenting for traffic can also be done. 

Connects you with like-minded people

Similar to social media, commenting on blogs also help you meet like minded people. We have connected with a lot of fellow bloggers by commenting on their blog posts. If you want to expose yourself and your business to leaders in your segment, COMMENT  

Now that you are pretty much convinced on the effectiveness of this link building technique, let’s provide you some hacks on how to do it right. 

Finding Blog commenting sites that approve comments:

Finding sites that approve blog comments might seem complicated but trust me it’s not. 

There are 3 ways to find relevant blogs.

Make use of common blog commenting footprints

There are custom queries which you can use to fetch a list of blogs commenting sites. Below is the list of popular blog commenting footprints.

• “All comments are moderated” “Keyword”
• “Keyword” “Sign in to comment on this entry”
• “Keyword” “Write a comment”
• “Keyword” “respond to post”
• “Keyword” “Leave a Reply”
• “Keyword” “Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)”
• “Keyword” “Post a Comment:”
• “Keyword” “blog comments powered by Disqus”
• “Keyword” “Leave a new comment”
• “Keyword” “Comment on the Post”
• “Keyword” “Related content”
• “Keyword” “Enter your comment:”
• “Keyword” “Comments on this entry:”
• “Keyword” “post a comment”
• “Keyword” “Sign in to comment on this entry.”
• “Keyword” “Notify me when new comments are posted”
• “Keyword” “Reader Comments”
• “Keyword” “You must be registered and logged in to leave comments.”
• “Keyword” “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”
• “Keyword” “Enter this code to prove you are not a robot:”
• “Keyword” “Post Comment”
• “Keyword” “Powered by Drupal” + keyword
• “Keyword” “Add New Comment”
• “Keyword” “add a comment”
• “Keyword” “Leave a comment”
• “Keyword” ‘Leave a Reply’ ‘Name “(required)”‘ ‘Mail (will not be published) “(required)”‘ ‘Website’
• “Keyword” “Reply or Comment”
• “Keyword” “Post new comment”
• “Keyword” “Add Comment”
• “Keyword” “Login or register to post comments”
• “Keyword” “Login or register to post or rate comments”

Use Ahrefs to find blogs for commenting in no time

This is an amazing hack. For this technique to work, all that you need is a backlink checker tool. In this article, I am using Ahrefs.

Find top 10-15 or more competitors in your Industry. Enter their domain into Ahrefs dashboard and click on “Backlinks”. Let’s try it for https://www.viralchilly.com/

Now click on “Link type” button, and select “Nofollow” backlinks.

Now you have the list of nofollow backlinks that your competitors have got. All that you need to do is to replicate these backlinks and you are good to go!

Bonus tip: Sort the backlinks based on “DR (Domain Rating). You don’t want to replicate low quality backlinks, do you?

I have personally tried this hack and trust me, the results have been more than amazing. You already know that these sites are approving comments, thereby ensuring your efforts don’t go into vain.

Subscribe to RSS feed of the top Industry blogs:

There are some popular blogs where a lot of readers leave their comments. Such blog posts have 100s of live comments. This makes them a perfect site for blog commenting. 

But TBH, even if your comment is live, will it bring any value? It will be lost in a sea of other ones and nobody will even read it. 

Here is what you need to do in order to work it out:

1. Make a list of popular blogs in your niche. Let’s say, I am looking for Digital marketing blogs for a company that provides SEO services. To find such blogs I will lookout for https://blog.feedspot.com/seo_blogs/ to make a list of such bloggers.
2. Once you have the list, ensure that the all blogs in list are actively accepting comments. You can also weed out low DA or low traffic sites depending on your goals.
3. Subscribe to feeds of the blogs activate notifications. I use this great Chrome extensionfor feeds.
4. Once you are subscribed, you will get a notification whenever a new post is published on these blogs.  
5. Now you have a fresh blog post from an active blogger with 0 live comments on it. 
6. Go ahead and be the first to leave a valuable comment. Since Top comments tend to get most attention and traffic, you will get referral traffic plus link value in a one shot. WIN WIN!

Sure shot way to make sure the blogger approves the comment.

We can actually predict whether the comment will be live 

You may laugh on this, but actually it is true. I will tell you how.

These are the number of checks you need in order to predict approvals. I am assuming you already have a list of blog posts you want to comment on.

• Does the blog post have previously active comments? Is there any recently approved comments on that blog post? 
• If not, check out some random previous blog posts, like 3 to 4 months old posts. If you can’t find even a single blog post with one or two comments on it, chances are they are not approving comments. So it’s not wise to put your efforts on such a blog.   
• If you are lucky to find blog posts with active commenting, next thing to check is if those active comments have live links? (This is very important if you doing blog comments for link building)
• Are the comments clean? Make sure they are not random “nice article” with a link towards an Adult site. You don’t want to build a low quality backlink that you need to remove in the near future, do you?
• Is the post too old? Old posts have a lot of blog comments already and bloggers are also reluctant to moderate comments on them. In this case, you can find any latest blog post on the same blog and leave a comment. This will give you better traction. 

How to write great blog comments?

Just like other link building techniques, blog commenting for SEO also requires you to put efforts. Comments like these don’t work anymore! They have zero chances of getting approved.

And if a blog approves comments like these, it is not your ideal blog so leave that site and move on to the next one!

Let’s find out what makes a comment “Great”! A comment that is compelling enough definitely grabs attention of the editor and thus has higher chances of getting approved.

Here are some ingredients that make a comment “great”!

1. They have Gravatar associated with it:

Be it guest posting or blog commenting, the idea is to be as humanly as possible. Comments that have no profile picture give idea of a spammer.

To avoid that, make sure to add Gravatar to the mail id you are using to make the comment. Comments like these have more chances of getting approved as they imply a real person.

2. What is in the name?

As I said previously, the idea is to look as genuine as possible. Leaving comments with the names like Jennifer Aniston or Paul Wesley won’t work. Because of course, Jennifer Aniston won’t be commenting on an SEO blog . So pick real names.

Additionally, make sure that your image and name is aligned. You can’t use an Indian name with the image of a American guy or vice versa. I have heard many people say, what’s in a name?

I would say, a lot!! Specially when you are doing blog commenting.

3. Be a giver, offer value!

Now this one seems obvious, but you would be surprised to know how rarely people follow this advice. The first step is to actually read the article. 

I am not asking you to read the article word for word, but having a thorough read on the headings and introduction will help you get the gist and thus your comment will have more weightage. 

Another thing that you need to ensure is to not being pushy. Your goal is to build a brand, so leaving comments that are nothing but a way to get backlinks can actually hurt your business. Don’t leave a comment that completely misses the main point of the article and therefore giving the article a thorough read is a must.

Some blog comments examples that are amazing

Now that you know what makes a great comment, let’s analyze some great comments that are really worth reading.

1. Check out this comment by Ana Hoffman, the founder of Traffic Generation Café.

Why this comment is great:

• She is using Real name
• A real image is being shown
• The comment is adding value to the article.

2. Another amazing blog comment by Sanjay Shanoy, a popular digital marketer.

Here’s what I liked about this comment:

• Use of real name
• His real picture
• Instead of being all pushy, he decided to add some value to the article which actually enhances article credibility.

3. Comment by Tanishq Jain from HellBoundGamers

Things that make this comment good:

• Use of Personalization
• Use of real name
• Value addition via comment

Blog commenting tools that can save your day

This one is really an important part of our guide to blog commenting for SEO.

Blog authority checker

You don’t want to comment on any random blog. To check whether the blog you’re posing comment to is actually worth it, you need to check the blog metrics like DA, PA, Traffic, etc. Having a tool like Ahrefs, SEMRush or Moz will ensure your efforts are going in the right direction.

Auto check live links

Posting comments is one thing but checking it daily to see if your comment has been approved is a real headache. There are many blog commenting tools in the market which can do regular checks to see if your comments are live thus saving you huge time.

Competitor analysis tool

If you are planning to implement the hack provided by me in competitor analysis, you will need a tool that can check the backlinks of your competitors. I have been using Ahrefs for this.

How our blog commenting service can help?

The key while doing blog commenting is to become a giver, not a taker. Blog commenting at ViralChilly is done keeping your reputation in mind. The goal is to write comments that get approved. We spend time reading out the blog to ensure what we write is aligned with what’s already written.

Every comment is done by real people, on real blogs to get your website the rank it deserves. 

• We love becoming your voice. That being said, we would never write a comment that can harm your reputation.
• Quality is the utmost priority. None of our comment looks spammy and to ensure this, we provide value-addition in every comment.
• We aim to build quality and thus focus on getting legitimate high quality one-way backlinks that can represent your brand name a way that builds trust.

Lastly, whichever link building technique you are going to try, make sure every link is backed by great content. Be a giver and backlinks will follow!

source https://tessrijogo.blogspot.com/2019/11/an-ultimate-guide-to-blog-commenting.html