A simple statement - “How to get backlinks from blog comments” - but it can lead to a much broader answer and discussion relating to the reason you are looking for backlinks.
Page Authority
First off, if the exercise is to increase your page rank with the search engines then without doubt the ultimate backlinks are from already highly ranked sites that contain content relevant to your own blog.
The increasing intelligence of search engines has resulted in more prominence being given to links from truly relevant sites. This is because the search engines number one objective is to provide the best possible results based on the search term used by the browser.
If you were looking for information on say, ” how to play better golf”, but all of the results from a particular search engine showed information about VW Golf cars you’d soon try another search engine. If the backlinks to a particular site called “play better golf” are from other sites all about golf this tells the search engines that “play better golf” is indeed an authority site (also thought of as relevant by other golf sites) about golf and will receive higher prominence in the results as a consequence.
If the links are from all manner of random sites then although the backlinks will help to a degree they will not help build the authority that is so necessary for consistently high rankings.
Backlinks from relevant sites are also very likely to result in an increase in traffic from those sites as visitors (who are more likely to be interested in what you have to say and / or sell) click through your links.
Backlinks Count
Although there are thousands of blog posts on the subject of backlinks many of these talk only about getting backlinks by leaving comments on as many blogs, forums and social sites as possible. There are link building software programs available but the basic aim of most of these is to build up the number of links regardless of where they come from. These link exchange type of programs typically produce a “directory” of links – guess what – Google is on to you!
If you use a program like Market Samurai you’ll find that some of the top ranking sites have far fewer backlinks than lower placed sites. Other factors such as keywords in titles, categories, tags and in the content of the post are clearly more important than pure numbers of backlinks. The algorithms (don’t ask me what that really means – just the methodology used by the search engines to asses sites for ranking purposes) are becoming more complicated and are no longer based on ranking sites highly because there is a liberal sprinking of the keyword throughout the page!
This screenshot, for example, shows the relevant positions for the top ten sites for the search term “dog fleas”.
You’ll see some of the lower ranked sites have hundreds of thousands of links but there are other factors at play that result in different sites ranking higher.
Backlinks - Click To Open In New Window
So although numbers of backlinks will help, the relevancy of those backlinks is becoming more important (after, of course, the other SEO factors we teach at Blogging Beginners).
Traffic
If your objective is to generate traffic through backlinks then there are two issues to consider.
Getting a higher ranking should ensure more “organic” traffic – that comes from people finding your site through their searches on the search engines.
But if your thinking is that you will get visitors as a result of your comments containing the backlinks to your site then you need to think through exactly what you are saying. If you are on a site about “playing better golf” there is absolutely no point leaving a comment along the lines of “Great information” and expecting anybody to be so impressed they come in their truck loads to read your other pearls of wisdom on your site.
Similarly, if you left a comment “great information – read all about getting rid of dog fleas at my site” I expect you will be sorely disappointed at the results.
Your comments must add to the conversation going on. Try to encourage people reading your comments to visit your site without being blatant. If they think you have something relevant and interesting to say they are much more likely to visit.
So something along the lines of “I think you have a very important point here. I agree / disagree about…. As I was telling my visitors last week, my golf pro insists that I should….” may well entice some extra visits.
Even if you comment on seemingly unrelated blogs you are often able to link to your site with a relevant comment. Regardless of your niche you can almost certainly tie in a comment to an internet marketing based site since indirectly by having a blog / website your are involved in that sector too.
So a relevant comment on a post about getting backlinks from blog comments (ahem, you may spot a little clue here) could be:
“This subject is really interesting for me. I’m trying to build the traffic to my post about “eradicating dog fleas” and have tried commenting on blogs about dogs in the past. Although the product I’m selling guarantees to rid your dog of fleas forever and is potentially highly relevant I’m finding it very difficult to find enough suitable blogs to comment on. Do you have any ideas how I might find some?”
Now that’s not blatant nor is it strictly targeted – but many people reading the comments may well have flea bitten dogs and may be taken by this revolutionary flea eradicating product and take a look at the blog. However, the blog owner may be happy too because you have expanded the conversation and given an idea for further posts about finding suitable blogs to comment on.
Blog Comments
Virtually every blog requests your name, your site url and your email address before you are able to leave a comment.
The name you leave becomes the anchor text and the url the actual link. Rather than always giving just the basic site URL it makles sense to get some deep links by leaving the URL to a specific post – particularly if it is highly relevant to the post you are commenting on.
Ideally, the “name” you use (which is the anchor text) should contain the keyword of your post. However – be very careful. Many blog owners will delete or treat as spam comment any “name” that looks like a blatant attempt to use their site purely to obtain anchor text backlinks.
For example using text like “SEO Tactics” is likely to be deleted whereas sometimes you might getting away with “John the SEO Guy”.
Personally, I’d just accept that it is difficult to achieve perfection with this and any backlink from a relevant site is good – particularly if you are also likely to leverage on the traffic from that site by attracting some targeted visitors from the post on which you left your highly intelligent and relevant comment.
I’m sure you’ll appreciate that chucking up some ill-thought out information that is not relevant to what is being said on the site is unlikely to be of any benefit to anyone. It may be deleted as spam, your reputation will not be enhanced and you are unlikely to attract any visitors interested in what else you have to say.
There is another factor that needs to be mentioned. For some reason some people are reluctant to allow backlinks on their sites and use a “no follow” approach on their sites. This means that the search engines will not “follow” the links and therefore you will be wasting your time commenting on such sites. Part of the reason for this stance appears to be related to stopping comment spam but in my opinion it also reduces the real purpose of blog comments and that is to build social interaction.
You’ll see that on this blog I not only allow comments but use the Comment Luv plugin that seeks out my guests latest post and automatically offers to link to that.
So one of the easiest ways to get backlinks from blog comments is to seek out blogs (such as WizzerSays) and leave thoughtful and relevant comments.
I look forward to seeing what you have to say – and by the way, many bloggers are like me and take a look at their visitors sites as a matter of course – it would be rude not to!
