I started blogging back in 2006.
Much has changed in the blogosphere when I look back now. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad.
One of the most effective ways to build backlinks, drive traffic, and connect with the blog owners was through comments back when I started. It was pretty much like guest blogging right now.
Is Blog Commenting Effective in 2012?
Commenting for Backlinks:
If you are commenting for backlinks, I will definitely say that blog commenting is working very little or not doing anything at all. In the future, it's not going to change. I wouldn't be surprised if link-juice for blog comments, even on do-follow comment blogs seizes to do any SEO magic.
Verdict: Grade F. It's not effective. Stop chasing do-follow blogs or commenting on no follow blogs for any type of link juice.
Commenting for Traffic:
A lot of people comment on blogs for driving traffic back to their blogs. While it can be effective sometimes, most of the times it drives very little traffic. Even for very popular and high traffic blogs, you hardly get more than 5 visitors for the life time of the comment.
You can imagine how much commenting you need to do in order to drive a sizable traffic to your blog. You can say that you'll just comment on 100 blogs and drive 100-500 visitors to your site. But imagine the amount of effort you need to put into blog commenting to get that kind of traffic for your site.
Most of my comments on blogs are extremely long. Some are so long that they could easily go as a blog post by itself. Here are some interesting trends I have noticed with blog comments
- The comments that tends to drive traffic to your blogs are usually long ones
- Comments which appear as the first 2 or 3 comments usually drive the majority of the traffic. People don't usually read a lot of comments
- Comments which disagree with the author strongly tends to attract clicks
- Comments with links in them drive less traffic even if they appear on the first 3 spots
- Comments with keywords as anchor texts instead of your name almost always never drive quality traffic
Verdict: Grade C. Somewhat effective. Don't expect a lot from it though.
Commenting for Building a Relationship:
Very few people do blog commenting to build a positive relationship with the blog author.
Don't get the idea that building a relationship means trying to please the author so that they might link to you. While it may work with few people, most genuine bloggers can see right through your intentions. You are never going to build a positive relationship if you are trying to please the blog author so that he may return the favor.
The right way to build a relationship with the blog owner is by
- Commenting on blog posts when you have a unique idea to share. It's great to agree with the author. But unless you bring in some extra value to the content in terms of your own idea, it's not going to make the author like you
- Don't comment on each and every blog post. If you have a unique idea to share on each post, well and good. But if you are commenting just because you want the blogger to notice you, it's not going to help
- Reply to their comment if they reply to yours. I have noticed a lot of bloggers post a comment and when they get a reply from the author of the article, they never care to respond. Sometimes it's just a thank you. But in most cases, you might be asked a question and when you don't reply to it, it just shows that you were not serious about the conversation in the first place
Verdict: Grade A. It's effective when done right. Go for it!
Over to You:
What do you think about blog commenting in general? Why do you comment on blogs and how effective has it been for you? Let me know in the comments.
Is Blog Commenting As Effective As It Used To Be? is a post from: We Blog Better. © 2011. Share it freely, but please link back to this source.