Blog > Read other blogs in your industry > Participate on those blogs by commenting > Build a link to your blog in your comment > reap the rewards

Blog commenting is one of the best ways to market your blog if you are incubating a brand new blog or want to increase your readership and build quality links on an already established blog.
If you make interesting/intelligent/insightful comments on highly trafficked and well recognized blogs in your industry and build links to your site through your nickname or within the comment itself, you will be;

1. attracting many relevant visitors
2. building quality links to your blog
3. promoting your brand
4. building some authority in your industry

Once you leave a comment with a link on someone’s blog, they will check out your site. So there is at least one relevant visitor to your blog per comment. If the blog you’re commenting on is in your industry then there is at least one relevant link (we will discuss nofollow / dofollow a bit latter) to your site for your commenting effort.

If you make interesting comments on highly trafficked blogs in your industry, your potential for relevant traffic is infinite. You are also putting yourself in a position to generate natural links because that blogger that followed your link may be looking for topics to cover for their next blog post and just may reference your content.

Best practices for blog commenting for link building include; writing a compelling blog post and then searching on Google Blog Search for any other bloggers that may be writing about the same or similar topic. Read the entire blog post and the other comments. Make useful comments and keyword focus your username (do this intelligently, as keyword focused usernames tend to sound spammy.) Some bloggers are more strict than others when it comes to keyword focused usernames (especially do follow blogs) so read the blog’s commenting policy if they have one. If the blogger has strict rules for leaving links, follow those rules to the T even if it means not leaving a link at all. Use Cligs to track the clicks you get from your commenting effort.

Avoid using any automated blog commenting software and make sure that your comment is not mistaken for spam. Bloggers are especially acute to any form of spam and will report spam by using programs such as Akismet . This is a program that blocks certain commentators based on email and IP addresses as well as the commentator’s name. The rule of thumb is to make your comment sound relevant to the post and avoid phrases such as “I like your blog” or “great post” or “interesting insight”. The bottom line is remembering that your comment will go through a human review and concentrating on making an insightful comment that adds interest and attracts relevant visitors should alleviate any spammy looking comments. If you find that you are having a difficult time coming up with a comment that you like on a certain post than skip it and find a post that you have something of value to add.

Comment on all blogs that you find interesting and relevant to your industry, however commenting on dofollow blogs will help your SEO effort, (don’t just comment on a dofollow for the sake of a link, make sure it’s relevant and that the page your linking has real value to those following the link.) Remember that you are an evangelist for your brand and people can see right through you if your intentions are in the wrong place.

Chances are you will end up finding a few blogs that you really like, when you do, submit the best posts to your favorite bookmarking site, this will add to your profile at your social bookmarking site of choice which will increase your authority at such sites. By commenting on these blogs and submitting posts to bookmarking sites you will end up building a relationship with that blogger. They will start to read your blog, submit your posts to bookmarking sites and eventually you will develop some quality banter which can lead to industry contacts. Link building is about cultivating relationships and this is one of the best strategies to develop those relationships and give back to the community.

Image Credits: Comment box by: Seigel Display Products

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There are a number of reasons why any company should consider blogging. The social media opportunities, networking opportunities and ability to enhance brand reputation are all compelling reasons to participate in blogging. Often times however, these benefits are hard to quantify in a way that illustrates the ROI that is achieved through blogging. Fortunately, blogging is also one of the best available tools to improve your SEO campaign if leveraged properly. Therefore, it is much easier to justify the expense of blogging when one can show the direct SEO benefit to the Web site because search activity is much easier to tie to ROI than brand management or even social media in many cases. Here are the 3 of the top ways that you can use your blog to enhance your SEO campaign:

1. Create new content
2. Create new internal link opportunities
3. Create new external links

While it may seem obvious, one of the biggest advantages that a blog gives you with respect to SEO, is a consistent source of new keyword focused content. Most Web sites do not update or add content very frequently. In many cases at the enterprise level, adding or changing content requires a lot of resources. Often times the content production team must agree to add or modify the content, the marketing and branding people might have something to say about it, and then you need to wait for the IT production schedule to allow you to publish. The end result is not much new content.

Blogging typically allows content producers to circumvent this entire process because most of the time, blog post topics are controlled by bloggers. Because the content lives outside the main information architecture of the site, the marketing team usually has less concern about the impact of the content to the overall site design, messaging and conversion funnel. This also allows for more flexibility in terms of what content can be produced for the blog and therefore, what keyword phrases can be targeted. And because the blog enables the author to publish directly to the Web site, the content production schedule is not dependent on the IT production schedule. For these reasons, effective blogging can give you a huge competitive advantage in your ability to produce keyword focused content.

Another benefit that all this additional content affords your SEO campaign is the ability to create additional internal links to relevant content from new blog posts. Those new internal links will enhance the ranking opportunity of the pages they link to. Having an ongoing strategy to create internal links from blog posts to relevant pages within your Web site should be a key element in your ongoing SEO campaign. If you’re on Wordpress, you can make this process easier by using the following plugin:

Cross Linker Wordpress Plugin

Blogging not only creates additional internal linking opportunities, it is also one of the best ways to acquire one way external links. There are three primary reasons that blogs are so effective for link building.

First, assuming you are creating compelling content that helps your users solve problems, you will naturally acquire links from Webmasters and bloggers who link to your content as a reference. This is especially true of bloggers, who tend to link to other blog posts as references or as talking points for their own blog posts, much more frequently than do traditional Web masters.

Second, blogs humanize your Web site and give you a more personal voice in the blogosphere which allows you to develop more personal relationships with other bloggers. These relationships often result in links as well as votes for your content in social bookmarking networks. And because a large percentage of the users who read social bookmarking sites like Digg and social news sites like Delicious are bloggers, favorable exposure on these types of sites can also produce a number of high quality, relevant, one way back links. Additionally, inclusion and subsequently links on some social media sites like Mixx.com, can also provide some direct SEO value.

Third, blogs publish their stories through RSS feeds. RSS stands for really simple syndication. An RSS feed is a data file that contains information and content from your blog in a standardized format that readers can understand. Some Webmasters include these feeds as a supplement to their own web site content through a feed aggregator that displays snippets of your blog posts on their site. The snippet will have a link back to your blog post for the complete blog post, thus establishing a link to your site. Again this assumes that you are creating thought leading content that Web masters and bloggers can use as a reference.

Blogging is a great tool for SEO. It allows you to create new keyword focused content easily, creates new internal linking opportunities and can be a huge catalyst for external links. By analyzing the search traffic that your blog brings in as well as the links that it attracts, you can begin to paint a more accurate picture of the ROI that your blogging efforts are having on your SEO campaign.

Photo Credits: Thiago Felipe Festa & Beau de Noir

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BusinessOnLine Corporate Blogging Webinar by Catfish

Let me know what you think and have a great week!

Catfish

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SEO Strategy Tip #1: Add Internal Links Based on Your Analytics and Long Tail Keywords

Too often in SEO we focus on the big words that we want and we forget the low hanging fruit that can taste the sweetest. By studying your analytics and getting your keyword referrals, you can usually find a number of long keyword phrases that are relevant to your business. Because these phrases are long, they are not that popular with searchers and therefore the competition to target these phrases is much less. So for example, if you sell dog food, you might find that you start getting hits for “discount dog food in san diego” because your business happens to be located there. So you go to Google and find that you are currently ranked #6 for the phrase and it gave you two visitors last month. Now because you are smart, you have set up your analytics to measure conversions (sales) based on keyword referrals. If you are not smart and haven’t done this yet, stop reading this post immediately and go fix that because it is a major problem with your business. Seriously.

(Back to the analogy) So looking at your conversion data you find that both clicks resulting from “discount dog food in san diego” converted into sales. So obviously it behooves you to rank #1 for that term. And the good news is that because that term is not that competitive, you can probably improve your rankings by adding a little bit of internal link text! Usually a few links for non competitive terms really makes a big difference in your ranking. So the first thing to do is to go to the page that is ranked for that phrase and make sure that the phrase appears at least once in the body of the main content. If it doesn’t, figure out a way to add it without detracting from the readability and professionalism of your content. Now, go to Google and use this command to search:

site:www.yourdomain.com “discount dog food in san diego” (or whatever your keyword is)

This search command will show you all the instances of the phrase that already exist on your site. Change those occurrences of the phrase to link text pointing back to the page that already ranks for the term. If you don’t have any results from the Google search, it’s time to evaluate what other pages on the site you could add the phrase to manually and then link it. This is a very effective technique if you do it CONSISTENTLY. So part of your overall strategy should be to have time every month when you do this.

PS. This also helps with site usability

SEO Strategy Tip #2: Produce Content Based on Keyword Research on an Ongoing Basis

The biggest problem I see with most SEO initiative is the lack of resources dedicated to producing content on a consistent basis. And more so, producing content that is keyword focused. Whether its Web site content, articles or blog entries, your Web site should be producing content that is relevant to your readers on an ongoing basis. And there is no better gauge of what is relevant to your readers than the keywords that they are using to get to your site. Additionally, internal site search analytics are essential to understanding what your audience is looking for, and perhaps having difficulty finding. Give your users what they want and you will be successful. Your SEO strategy must include producing content on a consistent basis that is driven by keyword research. If not, your falling behind your competition even as we speak (um, read..lol).

SEO Strategy Tip #3: Blog

The advantages of blogging from a branding, authority building, content producing and networking perspective are too numerous to mention in this short article. From an SEO point of view, one of the biggest advantages to blogging is the number of links that you can generate in a fairly short amount of time. And I don’t mean blog comment links (from do follow blogs) or profile links (make sure you customize your LinkedIn Anchor text to your Web site) although there is some merit in utilizing both of those in your overall link development strategy. But the primary advantage really in terms of linking is that bloggers link much more frequently than traditional Web masters. If for no other reason than they generally produce more content. But also the blogosphere has a little different culture than the World Wide Web in general and most bloggers are prone to linking within their content and their blog rolls when the content they are linking to justifies it.

Additionally, by promoting your blog in social media sites like Digg or Mixx, you can connect with like minded bloggers who are likely to link to your content (if it’s good enough). Having a blog allows you to participate on the Internet in a completely different way than having a Web site. And if you do it right (make a great resource), you will find that it becomes one of your best link development tools. And it can also become one of your most important content creation tools as well.

SEO Strategy Tip #4: Make the Most of Your Existing Links

Many times companies come to us and they already have thousands and thousands of links. Rather than go out and look for more, sometimes the best use of time is to optimize the ones they already have. One of the things I typically do is gather all the back links I can find for a Web site and then evaluate what opportunities might exist to augment the most important ones with keyword focused ALT text. Many times these are links that the company already controls because they own sister sites or have related divisions under a different business name. Sometimes because of the size of some of these companies, the Webmaster for one division or international section of a company won’t be in communication with another. And that’s a gap that we bridge. Sometimes it’s as easy as seeing which trade shows a company sponsors and asking those shows to add appropriate ALT text to an image link. Sometimes it’s sending an email to a Web master thanking them for the link and asking them to add a keyword or two to the existing anchor text if possible. The point is, there are usually a number of creative ways to take better advantage of links you already have. Part of your SEO strategy should be to evaluate those opportunities on a consistent basis and then take action.

I hope these 4 SEO strategy tips help you to not only improve your overall search engine optimization campaign, but inspire you to start thinking about your overall strategy and stick to it consistently. In SEO, slow and steady doesn’t always win the race, but it’s usually in the top 3

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