It is widely know that getting back links to your site will improve your rankings with the search engines but getting links by leaving blog comments is commonly over looked.
There are a lot of people out there that will tell you don't bother to use blog comments because all the blogs have no follow tags now and the search engines don't record the links.
It is true that the search engines usually won't follow links with the no follow tag. But more and more you are finding blog that have disabled the no follow tag in the comments section.
When WordPress is installed it automatically configures your blog to have no follow tag on comment but there are some blog owners that want you to comment so they will use a plugin to remove the no follow tags, either completely or based on the number of comments you leave.
Before I get into what to look for to find blogs without the no follow tag I want to cover comment etiquette.
Any comment you leave on a blog MUST have something to do with the content of the post.
If the post you are commenting on is about WordPress plugins don't leave a comment about sports fishing. This is common sense but you would be surprise at how many comments like this I delete.
When you are writing your comments don't put any links in the body of the comment. Not only is this poor etiquette it can actually get you listed on the comment spam lists if you are reported by the blog owners. You can put a link in the comment body if, and only if, it is a resource to something in the post.
Most of the time when I set up a blog I set the comments in the discussion area so that if you put links in the body of the comment it will send your comment to moderation where I have to review and approve or deny the comment before it is posted. This stops all the spammy links.
The name field for the comment form should only be filled with your name or moniker and a moniker should only be used if it describes you or your business accurately. Don't stuff the name with keywords if you start doing this you might have some blog masters ban you and put you on the spam lists. You can have keywords in your moniker but only if they apply (as stated above) to you personally or your business but you are always better of using a name that can be used to recognize you.
That is brief overview of comment etiquette, basically it is the "Golden Rule" don't do anything on another person's blog you wouldn't want done on yours. But I bet there are still of bunch of you asking why you should bother if the no follow tad is in place?
This question can be given a few answers, such as:
1.It is still a link to your site that people will see and possibly follow. If you leave 5 blog comments per day that is 1,500 links in a year that might catch the eye of the reader and could get you traffic.
2.If your comments are on topic and informative people will remember your name and you will become a known expert in the field. This is part of the reason you want to use the same name.
3.If your comment is informative you will also find that a lot of the readers will click on your link to find out more about you.
4.Just because the major search engines abide by the no follow tag doesn't mean everybody does. The last time I checked Ask would follow no follow tags and there are some ad services that do their own back link testing that will follow these links and this could raise the amount you collect for showing their ads.
Now how to tell if the comments have the no follow tag applied to them.
One way is to go to the blog and find a post with comments and look at the page source, find the comment and see if it has no follow tag on the link. This is a pain but it works.
The good news is that you don't have to do it that way. If you are using FireFox or Flock as your browser you can get an addon that will highlight all the no follow tags on a page. It is called SEO for FireFox and you can get it from SEOTools.com or you can search SEO for FireFox addon in Google.
This addon will give you a bunch of information that can be used for SEO but the one feature that we are interested in now is the no follow highlighting. What it does is look at all the links on the page your viewing and highlights all the no follow links in red. If the name in the blog comment isn't red then the no follow is shut off on that blog.
People that run WordPress blogs want you to leave comments and they don't want spam comments so a lot of them have started using a plugin that rewards the people that comment frequently, this plugin is called Lucia's Linky Love.
After they install this plug in the blog master can set it so that the no follow tag will be removed from the comments for people that comment a certain number of times.
It does require that you use the same name and the same email address for every comment (I believe I mentioned using the same name above).
Most commonly this is set at 3 to 5 posts before the no follow tags are removed but the blog master can set if from 3 to a million if they like.
You might now be wondering how you find blogs that are using Lucia's Linky Love, the easiest way to do this is to go to Google's Blogsearch and search for your keywords in quotes plus Lucia's Linky in quotes (it should look like this "keyword phrase"+"Lucia's Linky" ) and you should find some posts for your keywords that this will apply to.
On the blogs I use this on you will need to post 4 times to get a link back to your site. I read the comments and I delete the spammy ones so the people just trying to get the right number of posts never make it. This encourages more comments and usually adds good information.
There are a lot of people out there that will tell you don't bother to use blog comments because all the blogs have no follow tags now and the search engines don't record the links.
It is true that the search engines usually won't follow links with the no follow tag. But more and more you are finding blog that have disabled the no follow tag in the comments section.
When WordPress is installed it automatically configures your blog to have no follow tag on comment but there are some blog owners that want you to comment so they will use a plugin to remove the no follow tags, either completely or based on the number of comments you leave.
Before I get into what to look for to find blogs without the no follow tag I want to cover comment etiquette.
Any comment you leave on a blog MUST have something to do with the content of the post.
If the post you are commenting on is about WordPress plugins don't leave a comment about sports fishing. This is common sense but you would be surprise at how many comments like this I delete.
When you are writing your comments don't put any links in the body of the comment. Not only is this poor etiquette it can actually get you listed on the comment spam lists if you are reported by the blog owners. You can put a link in the comment body if, and only if, it is a resource to something in the post.
Most of the time when I set up a blog I set the comments in the discussion area so that if you put links in the body of the comment it will send your comment to moderation where I have to review and approve or deny the comment before it is posted. This stops all the spammy links.
The name field for the comment form should only be filled with your name or moniker and a moniker should only be used if it describes you or your business accurately. Don't stuff the name with keywords if you start doing this you might have some blog masters ban you and put you on the spam lists. You can have keywords in your moniker but only if they apply (as stated above) to you personally or your business but you are always better of using a name that can be used to recognize you.
That is brief overview of comment etiquette, basically it is the "Golden Rule" don't do anything on another person's blog you wouldn't want done on yours. But I bet there are still of bunch of you asking why you should bother if the no follow tad is in place?
This question can be given a few answers, such as:
1.It is still a link to your site that people will see and possibly follow. If you leave 5 blog comments per day that is 1,500 links in a year that might catch the eye of the reader and could get you traffic.
2.If your comments are on topic and informative people will remember your name and you will become a known expert in the field. This is part of the reason you want to use the same name.
3.If your comment is informative you will also find that a lot of the readers will click on your link to find out more about you.
4.Just because the major search engines abide by the no follow tag doesn't mean everybody does. The last time I checked Ask would follow no follow tags and there are some ad services that do their own back link testing that will follow these links and this could raise the amount you collect for showing their ads.
Now how to tell if the comments have the no follow tag applied to them.
One way is to go to the blog and find a post with comments and look at the page source, find the comment and see if it has no follow tag on the link. This is a pain but it works.
The good news is that you don't have to do it that way. If you are using FireFox or Flock as your browser you can get an addon that will highlight all the no follow tags on a page. It is called SEO for FireFox and you can get it from SEOTools.com or you can search SEO for FireFox addon in Google.
This addon will give you a bunch of information that can be used for SEO but the one feature that we are interested in now is the no follow highlighting. What it does is look at all the links on the page your viewing and highlights all the no follow links in red. If the name in the blog comment isn't red then the no follow is shut off on that blog.
People that run WordPress blogs want you to leave comments and they don't want spam comments so a lot of them have started using a plugin that rewards the people that comment frequently, this plugin is called Lucia's Linky Love.
After they install this plug in the blog master can set it so that the no follow tag will be removed from the comments for people that comment a certain number of times.
It does require that you use the same name and the same email address for every comment (I believe I mentioned using the same name above).
Most commonly this is set at 3 to 5 posts before the no follow tags are removed but the blog master can set if from 3 to a million if they like.
You might now be wondering how you find blogs that are using Lucia's Linky Love, the easiest way to do this is to go to Google's Blogsearch and search for your keywords in quotes plus Lucia's Linky in quotes (it should look like this "keyword phrase"+"Lucia's Linky" ) and you should find some posts for your keywords that this will apply to.
On the blogs I use this on you will need to post 4 times to get a link back to your site. I read the comments and I delete the spammy ones so the people just trying to get the right number of posts never make it. This encourages more comments and usually adds good information.
About the Author:
About The Author: Randy The Hermit Baustert has been working online since 1994 and is the top rated SEO expert according to ExpertRating.com the industry testing services. You can find more free information on SEO and blogging at his newest blog How To Blog Site
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment