Hi,
I thought I’d write up a little article to address a particular issue I’ve been experiencing on several of my blogs. The problem; spam!
90% of people are going about blog commenting for traffic all the wrong way.
If your doing any of these things:-
Fake trackbacks
Using bots
Using any kind of posting automation
Using comment spinners
Using products or keywords as your name
Promoting your own crap regardless of the article content
If your using any of these lame methods you’re wasting your time and more importantly your wasting the blog owners time, the comment will be deleted or flagged as spam and you get nothing!
Blog commenting for free traffic is about the quality not the quantity, you can post a 1000 comments and maybe one will stick (won’t get deleted) using the those lame spammer methods.
Or you can write 1 comment and get it to stick. Thats a 100% stick/success rate.
This is how you blog comment the right way:-
(Assuming you want to build your reputation and traffic to your website)
1) Find blogs that are related to your niche/market/topic/subject
You can do a special search on Google to find related blogs, in the search box type:
Your Keyword “Proudly powered by WordPress”
For example if I were looking to find blogs on free traffic I would enter
free traffic “Proudly powered by WordPress”
And Voila!
Lots of wordpress blogs on the subject of free traffic.
Note: It does not matter what PR (pagerank) the site is or if its no-follow, what’s most important is that its relevant to your website and active (at least one new post per month).
2) Read through the articles
Read through the articles and find one that interesting to you and ideally related to your website on a specific level, you don’t have to read every single part of the article but read at least enough to understand what the article is about. If you can’t find anything interesting articles move onto another blog, other people will be doing the same and so there’s no point commenting here.
3) Its time to comment
You’ve found your target and its time for you to comment.
But first…
Does article already have comments? Is the comment thread active? Is there a discussion you can join in?
Joining in and sharing your thoughts is the primary purpose of blog commenting and you should try to get involved when you can.
4) Filling in the comment boxes
Important, please pay attention to this part or all your hard will go down the drain.
Most comment boxes ask for these pieces of information
[Name] So enter your REAL name, not ugg boots, not low rate loans, not cheap holidays. Entering your real name or even a pen name instantly add credibility to your comment. [Email] I recommend you add in your real email here and check the subscribe to comments if the option exists, this allows you to be notified of update to the comments area and allows you to come back and engage the other users. [Website] If you have a website its perfectly fine to add it here and most blog owners expect it, but make sure its a proper domain name. I don’t recommend using yourname.wordpress.com or blogger.com/yourname or any other free domain. Also make sure the domain does not sound spammy like the in the name example don’t use a name like www.cheapuggboots.com or www.fakewatches.com [Comment] Okay, the most important part of your comment. Your comment should be a direct response to the article your commenting on as a response to the on going discussion in the comments area. You can and only if its appropriate add a link to your website. For example if someone asked when can I get XYZ cheap? then it would be okay to suggest a website.You must respond to the content or the discussion and it also helps a great deal to refer to a part of the article, as this proves that you actually read it.
5) Following up
After you have posted your comment it may take a few hours or even a few days to be approved, when you leave your comment make sure you tick the subscribe to comments if the option is available.
Bookmark the article and check back in a few days and see it your comment was approved, if it was your free to write more comments on this blog in the same manner as before.
Subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog, this way you’ll get notified when new articles are added. This gives you a chance to comment early and this means lots of eye balls reading your comment.
I hope people use this strategy to great effect, focus on the quality and I promise you’ll see results.
Have a great day.
Lee
P.S Your free to share this article using the buttons below, in fact I’d really appreciate it :)
P.P.S Please leave your comments below, using what I told you above. Just for fun I’ll update this post in a week with all the spammy comments from people that are blog commenting the wrong way.
You now have the skills, do it the right way.
After 5 minutes of this post going live we have a spammer, and this spammer claims to teach SEO! Don’t ever Ever comment like this. Can you guess what button I’m going to press?
Oh and just for the record I have most spam filtering plugins turned off to provide good spam examples. I’ll write another post in the near future on what plugins you can use to prevent comment spam.
Lee,
It’s been a while since I have read a post on your blog and this was a great way to come back. Very useful information for someone trying to get more links my site. I have made these same mistakes so I will correct them and try again on some blogs. Thanks!
Jorge
Hi Jorge,
Great to have you back, I’ll be providing lots more tips in the near future. Let me know if you would like to know anything in particular.
Helpful tips for blog commentting. I wonder which plugin are you using to generate validaton code.
Hi Eric,
The captcha code is generated by SI Captcha anti spam plugin.
Hi, and thanks a lot for your post. This help me so much.
Hi Lee,
Straight to the point! I like your style. As I can see this page is already packed up with interesting names.
Thank you for the tips!
Hi Veneta, thanks for leaving a comment. I can only write in a direct manner (I can’t waffle), its great to hear some feedback on my writing style and I’m happy you like it.
Thank you!
I guess I am a spammer,but I was doing as instructed by my coach.
Hi Michael, I think you need a new coach! What kind of results have you been getting?
Interesting comment from MasterBates
(slight miss-spelling) but you get my meaning.
I agree. You need to concentrate on joining in and contributing to the discussion and not just writing drivel in order to receive a backlink.
Hi btman, yes getting involved & contributing is super important.
By the way did you know you can buy a domain and redirect it to your ebay store, it will make it look neat & tidy and get more clicks. Email me and I’ll send you some discount codes for godaddy.
Thank you Sir for this tip. I will consider using some redirects in the future but at the moment I would like to raise the pagerank of my actual ebay shop to see if traffic is increased.
Eh spammers… What to do, but to fight against them. I have the forum that deals with various ways of making money online and the number of IP addresses I put on banned list every day was really huge. Those bots can be really annoying. Fortunately the site named “Stop Forum Spam” helps a lot. :-)
Hi, the whole section on techniques for following up to see if my post was accepted was new to me. I appreciate anything that makes my time better spent and I think this really is helpful. Thanks so much.
Hi Lelia, I only learned about the follow up process recently myself, glad you liked it.
Thank you. Appreciate it. I actually read the all of your article about blog comment the right way because it is really interesting unlike some spammy articles only promoting something we really do not need. Sometimes we spend so much time on doing something without knowing the right way of doing it and all that time we put in could be wasted.
Hi Lee, I enjoyed reading your spamming article and hope I am not one of the “spammers” you describe.
I endeaver to do better and learn every day…
Pete.
Hi Pete, glad you liked it.
Good post and I hope many read and take heed. Between junk and spam I receive about 150 a day. Top of today’s pick was several about pet grooming products?!!!***
Why would an Architect want dog combs and flea powder? I know I am not the most stylish, BUT!
And here is a classic example! REAL name, not company name, straight after reading why not to spam, and guess what? None of it sunk in.
There you are Martin real name. Any happier? Comment still valid though.
Commenting on this blog has little relevance to my business. The submission forms at the bottom of the page tend to be automatically filled in. So it can be my first name, company name, a group I belong to etc. It is laziness on my part rather than an attempt to promote to a market that is of little relevance. Also I tend not to post in my own name, or advertise myself directly, as a pair of terrorists shot me some years ago.
With the amounts of spam I receive I am definitely not a person who indulges in spam promotion campaigns. It alienates me. So why would I follow suit?
Hi Lee,
Yes … the spammers grrrr!
I installed GASP (Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin). It is terrific. Since installing it, about 3 months ago, Akismet stats 1,847 spam during that time, I’ve only had to manually delete about 3 maybe 4 spam comments which got passed the GASP.
Great post Lee and top advice on leaving comments.
Take Care
Julie
Hi Julie,
Thanks for commenting, you also reminded me about using profile pictures in comments. I’ll add this to the main article later.
People prefer to see who they are dealing with. However there are quite a few people who cannot use profile pictures of themselves for numerous valid reasons. Threats from terrorists, intimidation etc. Or equally it could be the likes of whistle blowers.
It is a real handicap for anyone trying to promote what they do
Hey Mr Admin,
So, where’s your photo? ;-)
I’ve since read that there are people actually getting paid to ‘spam comment’, which then gets passed the anti spam-bot plugins. Eg., they’ll take a short sentence from the article, placing it in the comment, adding a ‘oh, yes I agree’ or ‘great information’, then a name and of course a URL.
As with domain names, I don’t mind as all if the commenter has a free blog domain, if they have a name, make a genuine comment, I’ll approve, answer and return the visit.
Interesting results their Lee.
Take Care
Julie
I have a website which I blocked all comments because a Guru mentioned this to me: “People who comment on YOUR blog will be leaving backlinks to THEIR site which will help THEM and you”.
After reading this article, i think it’s still better to open up the comment to get more backlinks.
Hi Raymond, Getting people involved and discussing your article is very important, keeping the comments open is a good idea.
Thanks for this article. My blog is fairly new and I do get a lot of spam comments. I didn’t realise that they were spam until lately.
A few weeks ago I got nearly 100 in one day. It took ages to delete them. Thanks for the tip because now I know what to loook out for.
June
Hi June,
Two great plugins I use and stop 99% of spam are: SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam & WP Spam free. Also Delete Pending Comments is great if you have a ton of spam and need to clear the whole lot.
Really it is very interesting to find a post about how to comment in the right way the issue which don’t discussed many in articles .
So i find it very to save time and efforts to comment in the right way and at the same time in the perfect way .
Best wiches
Hi Dear,
I am thankful for your early caution on how to submit blog comments. I like to add this in my Book Mark.
I read through your entire post, as a blog owner I know how irritating spams are.
Actually I make comments in a way just like you described above, It’d be great if people made comments that way. It’s only wasting time on both sides: the comment maker and the blog owner.
The main problem in my case now is that my blog’s subject is not related to this post. :)
I’ll let you off on this occasion :) Its more important that you responded to the article itself, welcome back anytime.
Im going to start commenting on blogs to build links,but dont want to look like a spammer,thanks for the tip on commenting on blogs the right way.
Thanks for commenting, by using these tips I’m sure you’ll be off to a flying start.
Hi,
Thank you for the heads up on the proper procedure, for Blog Commenting For Free Traffic.
Hi Lee
Good post, I have akismet on my site and it can capture up to 100 spam comments in a couple of days. this means that I have to spend time continually deleting them.
Its such a shame that this is happening all day every day.
They are all sent via gmail with loads of weird names.
All of them are links to sites selling crap.
I stopped blogging for a while to see if it continued – Yep it does!
So may as well keep on blogging.
Cheers Steve
Thanks for commenting Steve. I’m hoping to educate at least a few people that spamming is just a massive waste of time. I’ve had spam on brand new blogs :) never ending battle.
I just can’t imagine the Internet without spam…