How To Generate Traffic with Blog Comments

Show me a blogger that does not like to increase her traffic, and I’ll show you a bad liar. The more traffic you get to your website, the more recognition your work gets, and the more doors will be opened to you to take your blog to the next level. In the past, I have written about ways one can use SEO and social media to increase traffic to a blog. Another popular way to increase a blog’s traffic level is by leaving comments on other popular blogs. A few years ago, people used to get away with blog spamming and get away with it. These days, you can’t expect to get much traffic from your comments unless you are providing some value to the communities you are a part of .

You’d be surprised how many people visit a blog’s commenters’ websites. Of course, not every commenter gets lucky. If your comment shows up at the very top, you will get more clicks than everybody else. Here is where people started cutting corners. Instead of focusing on providing value with their comments, some people started aiming for that #1 comment position. While this strategy could bring you some short-term traffic, your traffic won’t last if all you do is provide nonsense just to be in the #1 position.

Believe or not, you need to have a strategy if you want to get anything tangible from the comments you leave on other blogs. Winging it won’t do you any good. If you have no idea where to start, these 6 tips should give you a head-start:

• Find Relevant Blogs: if you have a blog about technology, you don’t want to leave comments on a food blog. The traffic you get from irrelevant sites is not going to be that useful. There are plenty of services (e.g. Technorati, BlogCatalog) that can help you find top blogs in your niche. I personally focus on blogs that are separated by 1 or 2 degrees from my own niche. For example, if I start a blog about credit cards, I would take time to comment on other credit card blogs as well as any other top finance-related website.
• Leave Comments Early: those top comment spots do matter. While I don’t suggest you being obsessed with grabbing that number 1 position, you should at least try to be in the top 10. As people respond to early comments, other comments get a little bit lost.
• Provide Value with your Comments: don’t leave nonsense comments on other blogs. That’s the easiest way to blow your credibility and get ignored by other members in your community. People may not remember your first couple of mistakes. But if you keep doing it, they are going to call you out on it and ignore you.
• Respond to Others: responding to others, even quoting them when doing so, can help you get more responses to your own comments. That increases your link getting clicked by other members in your community.
• Build on your previous discussions: I admit. It’s difficult to remember all your conversations online. But you should at least bookmark the pages you comment on and refer back to your previous discussions with other members to have a richer conversation with others. That can only help your cause .
• Represent Your Brand in a Professional matter: if you are leaving comments on other blogs to drive traffic to your own website, make sure you do it in a professional matter. Don’t be a troll. You are representing your brand. You should act like it.

There you have it. Being a troll is not going to get you anywhere in the blogging world. Those who spend time leaving informed comments have a better chance of getting more people to visit their websites.