Blog Commenting

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The First Step of Link Building For Niche Sites

Blog commenting is how I start link building and promotion for all my Amazon Affiliate Marketing and Niche Sites. It’s what I teach in my course Multi Profit Site, and it’s been repeated as a successful strategy again and again by my students.

Blog Commenting Myths

There are a lot of thoughts about effective link building: what works and what doesn’t. It’s been a heated debate for SEOs and niche site owners, Gray Hats and White Hats, since the inception of search engines.

Keep in mind, there are countless ways to do things – more than one way to skin a cat as they say.

Commenting on blogs isn’t the only way to build links, but it’s one way, and it’s the way I do it.

I’ll answer some of the objections now.

“But, Doug, blog comments are ‘nofollow’ links! So that means they don’t help my site rank in Google. This is a waste of time…”

That’s correct. If you’re just starting out with niche sites and SEO, regular links are so-called ‘dofollow’ links and Google effectively counts a ‘dofollow’ link as a vote for the page that’s linked to. It’s the best kind of link to have.

Alternatively, the ‘nofollow’ designation means that Google effectively discounts the link, i.e. it’s not a vote. Blog comments are ‘nofollow’ links by default on most all websites. This was done because the blog comments were used by Gray Hat link builders in the past, and the ‘nofollow’ designation helped to reduce the practice.

That said some ‘nofollow’ links in a site’s backlink profile are, indeed, normal. Look at some popular Internet Marketing and Content Marketing blogs and you’ll see plenty of blog comments written by the bloggers. It’s a normal thing to do.

Sometimes blog comments are ‘dofollow,’ and I show you how do find those in the video by searching for the plugin called CommentLuv. I’m not sure how to find the blogs that have the settings configured for ‘dofollow,’ but if you comment on a few dozen blogs, you will see them in your backlink profile.

“I want my site to rank, Doug. I heard that you can’t rank in the top 10 with blog comments alone.”

Actually, that’s mostly true.

If you’re targeting a high volume, juicy keyword that’s competitive, you won’t rank with blog comments alone. You need to do more than your competition. Period.

That makes total sense, too. Look at ranking your niche site as a competition, so you can imagine that you need to do some work to make it happen.

I want to point out two things:

1. Blog commenting will lead to other backlinks – ‘dofollow’ backlinks – and I’ll tell you how in a minute.
2. You can rank a page using backlinks but only if you are targeting the right kind of keywords.

You can rank fast, normally within 24 hours, if you use the Keyword Golden Ratio. (Watch the video explanation here on YouTube if you aren’t familiar. Opens in a new tab.) So go for low competition keywords and blog commenting can be effective.

“Blog commenting takes a long time. Can I automate this tedious, boring task with some tool or app?”

No. Next question.

Just kidding! Okay, here’s the deal.

You need to do them manually. You can effectively automate blog commenting.

It takes time to do manual comments. If you want the comments to be approved, then the comments need to be some what insightful and in the best scenario make sense.

You can, however, hire a VA to help you do the comments. I advise hiring a native speaker of the language you need to comment in. For me, that means a native English speaker and I would even specify “American English” since there is some variance in the the vernacular of English.

The fact that blog commenting is a good thing for those of us that are willing to do the work. If niche sites were easy, then anyone could and would build a niche site. (You are willing to put in the work right?)

Blog commenting is super easy, but it’s a little boring. However, that an advantage for you because it means most people won’t actually put in the work. If you do, you will be rewarded.

Getting High Authority ‘dofollow’ Backlinks Through Blog Commenting

In my link building and general promotion strategy, blog commenting is essential. Here is why:

Blog commenting builds relationships. Relationships lead to guest posts.

When you comment on a person’s blog, it’s an interaction. 99% of the time the blogger will read the comment. It’s one of the easiest ways to get in touch with a blogger, often times it’s better than an email. Let’s look at a quick example of that for Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income on a recent blog post.

I’m not suggesting that you can get a guest post on Smart Passive Income, but illustrating that one of the most popular bloggers in the internet marketing niche reads and replies to comments.

I talk about guest posting a lot elsewhere so you can check out these posts to learn more about how to do that.

• 6 Guest Posts in 6 Weeks (for a BRAND NEW Site with a 15.8% Success Rate) – A Case Study
• My guest post at Ahrefs on Guest Posting and the Skyscraper Technique

• Guest Posting for Authority and Niche Sites

Top 5 Tips

Here are some quick tips to keep in mind:

1. Be sure to find active blogs. The best way to do this is by searching for recent blog posts, say published in the last 75 days, and you can use Google advanced search options to filter your results.
2. Use your name in the name field. Do not put in a keyword in the name field – It screams “spam” and won’t get approved.
3. Use your root domain for the website field. Do not put in a specific URL. Again, it seems spammy and won’t be approved.
4. Be original and look up unique footprints. I shared a great advanced search strategy in the video. It’s the one I personally use. But you should think beyond the normal searches that everyone suggests – they are too generic. The biggest mistake is looking for your keyword. If you do then you’ll just find blogs that you’re in direct competition with so they will not approve your comments. Instead, try to look for the general niche, or even better look for a related, non-competitive niche. For example: if you have a niche site that reviews fitness products, then you could search for yoga blogs or health blogs.
5. Be nice. That goes for comments and life in general.

Questions?

If you have any questions or comments just post them below!