Participating in the conversation by commenting is a powerful marketing practice that can help build your brand as a writer and driving traffic to your articles. The problem that arises is since Google focuses heavily on back links in their algorithm, comments get filled with low quality conversation spam and links to low quality resources. Much like most of the Q&A websites and their low quality answers, comments get spammed frequently due to their low barrier for entry and ease of use. If you have ever taken the time to read a comment thread on most blogs you will find that it’s filled with spam, low quality conversation, and links to low quality sites.
Get In The Correct Company
With the amount of spam that riddles the blog comment threads it’s important to align yourself, as a writer and marketer of your business, with the people who are actually commenting to have a conversation. You don’t want to be placed the same company as a spammer, as it can hurt your brand as a business, make you less credible, and get you lumped in with the other spammers who are just out to game the system without putting forth the effort.
What Type of Sites Should You Comment On
Since the goals of the comment are participation and traffic back to your articles, you want to find high quality blogs and sites to participate on that are relevant to the topic of your article.
Blogs and Websites To Participate On
These sites will have a few metrics in common.
1. They will have a higher page rank.
2. They will moderate all their comments.
3. They will get a lot of traffic to their site due to their quality and longevity.
The overall goal of commenting and participating on these type of sites is to capture the attention of their built in community of visitors and readers, market your knowledge, and give them a link to learn more. This can only be done by participating in an educated way with a strong comment and link back to your supporting article. The better the site (the more positive metrics they have, as noted above) the more effort it will take to get your comment to get through their moderators, but the higher the potential payoff.
Examples of These Type of Websites
Techcrunch.com
Entrepreneur.com
Mashable.com
Readwriteweb.com
Blogs and Websites NOT to Comment and Participate On
Most of us have heard of dofollow blogs. These are blogs that are usually very low quality and do not place a nofollow tag on the links that people (spammers) place in the comment area. The theory is that these placed links will pass link metrics and help with SEO. Spammers target the dofollow blogs to try and game the SEO system by mass commenting on these blogs in hopes that the link metrics will flow through to their site. As a writer and marketer you want to stay away from the dofollow blogs. These blogs are filled with spam, poor conversations, and in almost all cases have been devalued or penalized by the search engines. This not only gives little-to-no SEO value, but it can also put your article in the neighborhood of other low quality low trust pages on the web, thus hurting your article and reputation as a write.
Rules For Commenting On Blogs
1. Be Polite
If someone disagrees with you or you disagree with someone else, don’t be a jerk. Respond with facts and information from your article and follow it with a link to your article that helps prove your side of the conversation.
2. Don’t Just Link
We have all seen the comments where there is nothing in the comment area but a link to another website, most of the time it’s to an unrelated website that has no relevance to the article. This adds nothing to the conversation, so don’t do it.
3. Read the Article
If you’re going to comment on an article or quote part of an article in your conversation, please read the article and understand what it’s talking about before you give your opinion and a link to your businesses article that supports or adds to the post.
4. Be Relevant
This goes along with reading the article. If you’re going to have a relevant conversation you need to know what the article is about and what others have said before you. Think of it like this; if a person out of the blue walked up and inserted themselves in a conversation between yourself and a friend, and just said some random stuff (unrelated to what you two were talking about) and finished by saying, “visit my website at www…”, what would you think. You would probably think the person was crazy, annoying, and do your best to avoid him/her if you saw them again.
5. Write Something Meaningful
Be part of the conversation. Don’t just write “great article” and add a link to your article, or “I agree” and add your link. Participate in the conversation and write a few sentences before placing a link to one of your related articles that backs what you have said.
Bill is the Lead Linchpin at the company and focuses on SEO and content strategy. Bill’s ten-year background in digital marketing, SEO, and building online companies has helped him rise to strategic lead for some of the largest online brands and content websites in the world. Bill believes that at the core of a website's success sits the value that website provides it users.
Click here to learn more about LinchpinSEO's Lead Linchpin.
Comment Marketing: Market Your Small Business By Joining The Conversation
Participating in the conversation by commenting is a powerful marketing practice that can help build your brand as a writer and driving traffic to your articles. The problem that arises is since Google focuses heavily on back links in their algorithm, comments get filled with low quality conversation spam and links to low quality resources. Much like most of the Q&A websites and their low quality answers, comments get spammed frequently due to their low barrier for entry and ease of use. If you have ever taken the time to read a comment thread on most blogs you will find that it’s filled with spam, low quality conversation, and links to low quality sites.
Get In The Correct Company
With the amount of spam that riddles the blog comment threads it’s important to align yourself, as a writer and marketer of your business, with the people who are actually commenting to have a conversation. You don’t want to be placed the same company as a spammer, as it can hurt your brand as a business, make you less credible, and get you lumped in with the other spammers who are just out to game the system without putting forth the effort.
What Type of Sites Should You Comment On
Since the goals of the comment are participation and traffic back to your articles, you want to find high quality blogs and sites to participate on that are relevant to the topic of your article.
Blogs and Websites To Participate On
These sites will have a few metrics in common.
1. They will have a higher page rank.
2. They will moderate all their comments.
3. They will get a lot of traffic to their site due to their quality and longevity.
The overall goal of commenting and participating on these type of sites is to capture the attention of their built in community of visitors and readers, market your knowledge, and give them a link to learn more. This can only be done by participating in an educated way with a strong comment and link back to your supporting article. The better the site (the more positive metrics they have, as noted above) the more effort it will take to get your comment to get through their moderators, but the higher the potential payoff.
Examples of These Type of Websites
Techcrunch.com
Entrepreneur.com
Mashable.com
Readwriteweb.com
Blogs and Websites NOT to Comment and Participate On
Most of us have heard of dofollow blogs. These are blogs that are usually very low quality and do not place a nofollow tag on the links that people (spammers) place in the comment area. The theory is that these placed links will pass link metrics and help with SEO. Spammers target the dofollow blogs to try and game the SEO system by mass commenting on these blogs in hopes that the link metrics will flow through to their site. As a writer and marketer you want to stay away from the dofollow blogs. These blogs are filled with spam, poor conversations, and in almost all cases have been devalued or penalized by the search engines. This not only gives little-to-no SEO value, but it can also put your article in the neighborhood of other low quality low trust pages on the web, thus hurting your article and reputation as a write.
Rules For Commenting On Blogs
1. Be Polite
If someone disagrees with you or you disagree with someone else, don’t be a jerk. Respond with facts and information from your article and follow it with a link to your article that helps prove your side of the conversation.
2. Don’t Just Link
We have all seen the comments where there is nothing in the comment area but a link to another website, most of the time it’s to an unrelated website that has no relevance to the article. This adds nothing to the conversation, so don’t do it.
3. Read the Article
If you’re going to comment on an article or quote part of an article in your conversation, please read the article and understand what it’s talking about before you give your opinion and a link to your businesses article that supports or adds to the post.
4. Be Relevant
This goes along with reading the article. If you’re going to have a relevant conversation you need to know what the article is about and what others have said before you. Think of it like this; if a person out of the blue walked up and inserted themselves in a conversation between yourself and a friend, and just said some random stuff (unrelated to what you two were talking about) and finished by saying, “visit my website at www…”, what would you think. You would probably think the person was crazy, annoying, and do your best to avoid him/her if you saw them again.
5. Write Something Meaningful
Be part of the conversation. Don’t just write “great article” and add a link to your article, or “I agree” and add your link. Participate in the conversation and write a few sentences before placing a link to one of your related articles that backs what you have said.
Bill is the Lead Linchpin at the company and focuses on SEO and content strategy. Bill’s ten-year background in digital marketing, SEO, and building online companies has helped him rise to strategic lead for some of the largest online brands and content websites in the world. Bill believes that at the core of a website's success sits the value that website provides it users.
Click here to learn more about LinchpinSEO's Lead Linchpin.