If you have a blog it's very easy to get obsessed with the mechanical, technical aspects of traffic generation. You find yourself constantly thinking about backlinks, keywords, anchor text, and Alexa ratings etc. Odds are you'll also be checking your stats regularly, wondering how to lift those visitor numbers. These activities can take up a lot of time and make blogging seem like hard work!
It's important not to fall into this trap. It is putting the cart before the horse.
If you focus on what you enjoy, then follow that, it's a much more pleasant approach. And you end up with better results in the long term. (Well, perhaps that's not entirely true. You do have to promote your blog to some degree, particularly on social media. But you should try to keep that enjoyable too. Ease up if it's becoming a chore!)
You can find enjoyment in writing your posts, of course. You can also do this when reading other blogs, and commenting on them.
As any blogger knows, comment backlinks have long been a ranking factor. Even though most of these are set to "nofollow" by default, having a lot of them linking back to your domain still seems to help with SEO. So a lot of bloggers continue to spam the crap out of squillions of blogs, or pay others to do this. This doesn't work nearly as well as before, and can result in the linked to site being penalized. Yet it still happens a lot. That constantly amazes me!
Really, it's so much better to forget about the link you're getting when leaving a comment. Do it because you like the content and have something interesting to add to it.
Rather than think "I should do some commenting" go looking for blogs in your niche that you'll enjoy reading. If you find ones that are stimulating, informative and interesting then commenting will just come naturally.
You'll write much better comments because you've got the right attitude. And the odds that you'll strike up a friendship with the blogger go way up. If they develop these relationships can be enduring and keep delivering benefits indefinitely, particularly if the blogger is influential.
They'll link to your blog in the body of posts from time to time. Or they'll share your content on social networks. SEO benefits aside, their endorsement of you will be seen by others, and add credibility and authority to your name.
Blog commenting remains one of the best ways to forge meaningful connections with influencers. But this will never happen if you're just doing it for the backlinks. Do it because you genuinely like to read them. If you have this intention it will be much more pleasant, as well as beneficial over the long term.
It's important not to fall into this trap. It is putting the cart before the horse.
If you focus on what you enjoy, then follow that, it's a much more pleasant approach. And you end up with better results in the long term. (Well, perhaps that's not entirely true. You do have to promote your blog to some degree, particularly on social media. But you should try to keep that enjoyable too. Ease up if it's becoming a chore!)
You can find enjoyment in writing your posts, of course. You can also do this when reading other blogs, and commenting on them.
As any blogger knows, comment backlinks have long been a ranking factor. Even though most of these are set to "nofollow" by default, having a lot of them linking back to your domain still seems to help with SEO. So a lot of bloggers continue to spam the crap out of squillions of blogs, or pay others to do this. This doesn't work nearly as well as before, and can result in the linked to site being penalized. Yet it still happens a lot. That constantly amazes me!
Really, it's so much better to forget about the link you're getting when leaving a comment. Do it because you like the content and have something interesting to add to it.
Rather than think "I should do some commenting" go looking for blogs in your niche that you'll enjoy reading. If you find ones that are stimulating, informative and interesting then commenting will just come naturally.
You'll write much better comments because you've got the right attitude. And the odds that you'll strike up a friendship with the blogger go way up. If they develop these relationships can be enduring and keep delivering benefits indefinitely, particularly if the blogger is influential.
They'll link to your blog in the body of posts from time to time. Or they'll share your content on social networks. SEO benefits aside, their endorsement of you will be seen by others, and add credibility and authority to your name.
Blog commenting remains one of the best ways to forge meaningful connections with influencers. But this will never happen if you're just doing it for the backlinks. Do it because you genuinely like to read them. If you have this intention it will be much more pleasant, as well as beneficial over the long term.
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