Comments used to be one of the most used SEO strategies. It was also one of the most misused and abused strategies. Commenting on blog posts almost became a business in its own right with “professional” SEO companies offering to sell blog comments. If you were the target of this type of campaign, you knew what that would ultimately mean: spam. Lots of it.
However, blog commenting can be used for good instead of evil. Blog comments with a backlink to an ecommerce site, and gibberish in the comment body, don’t help anyone. They look spammy to site visitors, to Google and other search engines, and it doesn’t provide much link-juice to the site being linked to. In fact, many blogs have even turned on the “rel=nofollow” attribute for comments because blog comment spam is still a huge problem.
The way to make blog commenting work is actually to encourage people to comment on your site. You don’t need spammers. You need content. Comments, especially lengthy and on-topic ones, provide additional content to your blog. Google loves this. There are several ways to encourage people to comment on your blog more often:
Offer a Contest
If you offer some kind of contest, you’ll get more people commenting on your blog. What kind of contest? That depends on your site’s theme. If you run a fitness site, run a contest for most dramatic body re-composition or body transformation using the fitness tips you write about. If you’re promoting a product, offer a contest based around that product. Ditto for a service.
Ask a Question
When you end your blog post, ask a question. This works well when you’re writing about something and you leave a few question marks in your reader’s mind right in the post. Maybe you’re blogging about something that is at the edge of your core competency. Maybe you’re throwing out new, untested, ideas. This is a great setup for asking questions to your readers.
Take a Poll
This is similar to asking a question. Take a poll related to your blog post. If you’re using WordPress, you can install plugin features that allow your users to participate in the poll using a “point-and-click” style interface. This makes it fun and interactive. Then, come right out and ask for comments in the comments section under the post. People who have read your post will respond and offer you feedback about whatever it is you are writing about.
Guest post contributed by Peter Nevis, on behalf of Orange Line SEO. Peter contributes to various websites, he’s a marketing expert and enjoys writing articles about SEO & online marketing strategies.
