Comments are one of the most important factors in building relationships with other bloggers. But they are also amazing in getting traffic and in building your credibility as a blogger.
I don’t remember who, but someone told, that “comments are blood of the blogs”. And I agree with that statement. What’s more, these days comments are even most important, than some years (or even months) ago.
You should have comments to prove, that your site isn’t dead. On the other hand, comments on other sites, which link to your blog, help you in SEO and getting traffic to your blog.
If you don’t believe me, please let me give you simple example for it.
This blog, NoPassiveIncome.com is relatively new blog. I started it on the beginning of this year, but in reality, I concentrate on it since one month. To have a lot of visitors and huge traffic, creating quality content isn’t enough today – you must promote it. And since one month, I’m adding each day at least few comments on blogs related to mine.
You may ask – is it working for you?
For me it is. For example on 1st May my Alexa rank was about 8 000 000. Now it’s about 1 500 000. Maybe it’s not first 10 000 (where I want to be in May 2013), but the range of growth is enough for me. The amount of visitors is also growing each day, and some of them are making comments on my blog. Nice, because one of my goals for this blog was, and still is, building my credibility in “English-speaking blogosphere”. And you build your credibility as a blogger for instance via creating relationship with other bloggers.
Below I’ll show you in few points, how to get traffic from comments on other sites, and how to get more comments on your blog
Comments on other sites
1) Make your comment useful
Your comment must be useful for other readers. Otherwise, why they should be interested in visiting your blog? What’s more, comments like this “great post” don’t give any additional value to the discussion – so blog owner may, in the worst case, don’t accept it…
2) If you don’t know, what you want to say, don’t comment
Sometimes you want to comment, but you totally don’t understand the topic, or don’t know what to say. In that case, silence is better, than writing something stupid…
3) Make your comment as a person
Maybe from SEO point of view it’s not the best solution, but if you want to build your credibility, you must sign with your real name, or alternatively with your blog name or address. If possible, for commenting purpose use your email, which is active on Gravatar – it is more personal. Besides, administrator or blog owner see, that you are a human, not a bot 🙂
4) Try to be first commentator
If you want to be visible not only by author of the article or Google bot, please try to be first commentator or at least in top 10 of first commentators. If the post, on which you are commenting, has hundreds of comments, nobody (or almost nobody) will read comments at the bottom of the page. But be careful – some blogs have another commenting system, where last comments are on the top (just below post). You should try to comment on sites like this not only as a first commentator, but also some days after post was published
Comments on your blog
There is a lot blogs and websites, where people can comment. Why they should comment on your site? How to get a lot of comments since first day of blogging? Please read these tips for getting more comments on your site
1) Make people reason for comment
If you want to have great response on your post, write for users. It must be quality content not only for you, but also (or maybe first of all) for your readers
2) Ask for interaction
At the end of your each post, you should place call to action statement. It may looks like:
“And what about you? What do you think about these tips? Or maybe you have your own tips about comments? Please share them with us!” It really helps in getting comments
3) Answer on comments
If someone took pains to make comment on your site, you must answer him or her. If some questions are repeated in a lot of comments – you may prepare blog post with answer on these questions, and in your future answers for the comments, you will link back to that post
4) Make it easy to comment
Sometimes I read great article on someone’s blog and I want to comment. But there is difficult captcha, requirements for login via Facebook or something similar, which makes commenting very hard. Please make it as easy as possible
5) Fight with spammy comments
Of course there are always pros and cons of simplifying your comment system. If your site is easy for commenting for users, it’s also easy for commenting for spammers. But you could use some tools or plugins to fight with spammers – for example Akismet It’s very simple to use, and for noncommercial use it may be even free of charge.
6) Install some plugins, which may add some more value for commenting on your site
Today I turn on 2 plugins on my blog – below you can find them. I suppose, that they will help me in getting more comments, but we will see
1. Commentluv
commentluv is a WordPress plugin, which reward commentators by placing a clickable link to their last post on the blog. There are some paid versions of commentluv, but basic version is free of charge
2. Top Commentators
Top Commentators is also a plugin for WordPress, which award your most active commentators. You may set here, how many top commentators will be shown, what is your “reset period” or if your links will be dofollow or not. For this blog, I set this plugin to show top 5 commentators, with dofollow links, but only on homepage.
And how do you comment on other sites? Or maybe you have your own magic formula, in getting a lot of comments? Please describe it below.
Commenting on other Blogs maybe can build relationship with other Bloggers but not for me because I have leaved more than 500 comments on other blogs in my niche, but no one came back to my blog for comment:S
Let’s talk about you for example. I have leaved at least 7 to 8 comments on your blog till now and read at least 20 of your blog’s posts, but you never clicked on my picture to find your who the fuck I’m and what the fuck is my blog about? Right?:P
People only leave comments when they think it’s neccesary to do so. If your post isn’t compelling enough, they won’t say anything. It’s my experience
Hi Tho, thanks for the comment. And you are right – if there is nothing to comment, people don’t comment. Welcome to my blog 🙂
Hi Ehsan,
I visited your blog, what’s more – I commented some posts – so it’s working for you too 🙂
But it’s not the case – if you comment so much, maybe you should interact with them too – write guest post for them, retweet their post, email them – it should work.
BR, Chris
Hi Chris, Thanks for your reply. I want to write guest post for some blogs but I really don’t know how to successfully submit guest post for Problogger, DailyBlogTips etc. I have sent a guest post to both of them but they never accepted my guest post and they even didn’t replied me the reason of rejection:S
Are you on Facebook? please add me on Facebook I want to ask something from you by direct chatting with you. my name on Facebook “Ehsan Ullah Khoshbakht”
Hi Ehsan,
please try with smaller blogs – Problogger and Dailytips are A Blogs.
Please contact me via Twitter
BR, Chris
Hi Chris!
is commenting better than being a guest blogger?
Hi Maria, thanks for commenting. In my opinion, you should start with making comments on other blogs. But guest blogging is the next step of interacting with other bloggers.
BR, Chris
Thanks for the valuable information. I’ve been learning so much from reading blogs like yours. Now I am starting to learn more things on blogging and SEO etc..Keep it up! Thanks!
Ric, thanks for the comment!
Hy Chris,
Happy to be here. I followed you blog from bloggers.com. ANd I love your article about how to get traffict through commenting in others blogs. Thankz for your advice, surely hope you can visit back
Thanks for commenting, Jupri.
Hi Christ, I love to read your articles. Especially this one. After reading this, I then reflect to myself that I am still not good in blogging. Why? because I was lazy to comment. But Now, I will try my best to show to the world that I am a Blogger.
🙂 by Life is To Give and To Share
Hi Jufry, thanks for commenting. But remember – commenting is only one of a lot of ways, you can build your relationship with other bloggers 🙂
BR, Chris
Hi Chris,
Great post! I totally agree that comments help to build credibility for a site. I like the statement “comments are the blood of blogs”, very true and a good way to show that your blog is active.
I mainly leave comments, not only on posts that I like, but on blogs that I want to get to know the blogger. I’ve made plenty of contacts by leaving comments and also by people leaving comments on my site too. I think (can’t quite remember) that you left a comment on my site and we got chatting that way. Now we know each other and visit each other’s sites quite regularly. That wouldn’t have happened without comments
Thanks Matt for the comment! You are right – firstly I left comment on your site 😉
Regards, Chris
I agreed with you. Commenting helps to earn the huge traffic.But it happens only when the comments approved. So always a risk factor of the time wasting.Can you tell me some more better ways of the commenting.
Thanks for the comment. One more tip – comment in smart way 🙂
BR, Chris
leaving comments in once blog /website is like leaving trails so that somehow, one way or another, some visitors of that site may pick up the trail that leads to your site. I have known this to be a very helpful to bloggers who wants to increase their traffic.
Thanks for your comment, Lawrence.
Hey Chris,
I can talk about getting more comments all the day 😉 Okay I just want to add one simple tip on getting more comments here, try to auto approve comments on your blog.
If you’re worrying about spam, use GASP. I hope this will be helpful for you!
Hi Rahul, thanks for your tip. I must consider pros and cons of auto approving 😉
Hi Chris
I want to know which plugin is best Commentluv or topcommentator
Hi Tarun, thanks for stopping by. If you have to choose only one – I’ll recommend you CommentLuv. But in the mix they work very good.
This is very true and we can’t ignore the benefits of commenting on other blogs as well as getting comments. I do agree with your tips here. While writing posts, we too need to make it easier for the people to comment.
Inspire with all these, I’ve created a facebook group of active bloggers in blogging, seo and social network niche. Please visit my CommentLuv link if you too are interested to join the group. Working united really helps to enjoy success quicker 🙂
Very nice and neat post!
Yeah, i know the benefits of blog commenting! I wrote a guest post on blog commenting.
I am enjoying genuine traffic with my comments, as I love to read and leave my comments.
I like the point ” don’t comment, if you don’t know what to say”, Yes, the bloggers should not reply to comments with single line and with irrelevant information.
Thanks for sharing the useful stuffs here, will try to follow all the ways which you listed here to build my credibility.
So, after a year, how do you rate the two plugins you tried?
I’d never really considered the benefit of comments on my blog before reading your posts today. I receive a lot of spam comments, so I previously just considered comments to be a nuisance. I’ll be changing my mode of operandi from now on. Thank you 🙂
Getting people to comment at my blog is not easy even when I use a CTA. I am wondering if that is because my subject matter (tax law) is technical and people are afraid to jump in with comments. Do you think this could be the case? If so, what should I try to do to increase comments?
It is right if you have nothing to say so don’t comment. But if you like the blog so I think you should appreciate for sharing their knowledge.