Blog Commenting Marketing Strategy … (Stupid, and a complete waste of time!)

Let me just be clear here so there's no confusion. Commenting on blogs as a means of joining a conversation, or being part of a topic or community, is great. It's what makes blogs (and blogging!) fun.

But a blog commenting marketing strategy is just plain stupid, in my opinion. And a complete waste of time.

Don't worry - I'm going to back that statement up and tell you why.

Given the rash of new blog comment spam that many bloggers are experiencing this week, including myself (grr!), I thought this would be a good time to talk about blog commenting as a marketing strategy - and why you should ditch it.

Even if you're not a "spammer"...

While I'm referring mainly to comment spammers here, this just might apply to you as well. I see all forms of comment spam on my own blogs. Some of those comments even coming from people I know!

Blog Commenting Marketing Strategy

The main idea behind a blog commenting marketing strategy is that it's an easy way to get tons of inbound links. Most people do it as a means of link-spamming to increase their search engine rankings. The goal being to leave comments on blogs all over the web to get a live link back from the URL field.

Most people outsource this task to a team of spammers, or use an automated software to achieve the task. Some of them copy other (legitimate) comments already on the page, others spin content so that it doesn't even make sense, and then there are those that make an actual attempt to say something that might seem like a legitimate comment.

And then there are "marketers" that DO leave a legitimate comment, but make themselves LOOK like spammers by inserting keyword phrases in the Name field.

🙄

Issues with a Blog Commenting Marketing Strategy

Most of these comments get caught by filters and never see the light of day.
What doesn't get caught by the filter gets deleted by the blogger.
It makes you look like a spammer.
Most blog comment links use the no-follow link attribute.
Blog comment links carry very little weight with major search engines.
It's incredibly time consuming and/or costly - with very low ROI.

I mentioned in the list above that blog comment links carry very little weight with the major search engines. Meaning, in contrast to other types of inbound links. When it comes to link building, you really want quality inbound links - not a huge quantity of junk links. And certainly not a huge quantity of the same type of links (such as all blog comment links). Serious mistake!

Blog comment links are lower on the totem pole for many reasons, but one of the primary reasons is their location on the page. Inbound links from the content area of a related page carry much more weight than links from static areas - such as: sidebar, footer, comment section, etc.

That's IF your blog comment even passes the filters or the delete key, of course.

Inbound Links are considered "votes" or credibility for the page they link to. The search engines know that blog comments are links left by the person commenting. While a link in the content area of a related web page is likely a true endorsement. (Duh) The search engines are kinda smart. They know the difference, and measure the weight of those links accordingly.

Why Blog commenting as a Marketing Strategy is STUPID,
and a complete waste of your time!

Let's assume you're a pretty cool person, not a nasty spammer, and you really just want to get your website indexed or improve your search engine rankings.

Someone told you that blog commenting was a good way to get inbound links, and so you spend hours and hours of your valuable time reading blogs and commenting on them in hopes of improving your traffic.

(I hope you haven't wasted *too* much time on that.)

Imagine for a second that you have an offline business downtown. Maybe it's a computer shop or a bakery. Now imagine that you spend all day every day walking down the street and stepping into each business along the way. You make random comments to the customers in those businesses, such as "Hi, I have a bakery three doors down" and then walk out.

That seems kinda stupid, doesn't it?

You would probably get kicked out of those shops, probably voted off the square, and at the very least you would get a lot of blank stares and start some pretty interesting gossip about which mental disease you have. And sadly, your business would ultimately fail because you're not focusing on what really matters: quality products or services - and serving your market.

That's blog comment spam, in real life.

The truth is, there are FAR easier ways to get inbound links. Methods that take A LOT less time and result in MUCH higher quality links - that will actually improve your rankings (and bring you immediate targeted traffic!) much more quickly.

In the same amount of time you spammed as many blogs with useless comments as you possibly could... or even legitimately read and commented on blog posts to drop your link & anchor text... you could have done some seriously powerful content marketing.

I don't care if you outsource your blog commenting, use a software program, or do it the hard way (yourself). That same time invested in legitimate content marketing would bring you MORE results (ie links) and BETTER results (ie quality of links).

Let's take Guest Blogging for example. That will allow you to optimize the page (post) linking to yours for a specific keyword phrase. You write the content yourself, so you know it will be a relevant link. The link you include in your post will likely be the only outbound link in the content area (win!). And your quality, relevant inbound link (with anchor text of your choice) is in the space on the page that carries the most weight: the content area.

Work Smart, Not Hard. Or in this case: Work Smart, Not Stupid.

Here are some sources for Link Building and Content Marketing:

Content Marketing will have a much higher ROI than a Blog Commenting marketing strategy, all day long. Make sure you're spending your valuable time doing the things that will serve your business long-term, not just fly-by-night tactics that eat up your time and brain space.

Happy Commenting! 😀

Best,

Discussion

Lesa says

March 31, 2014 at 7:52 pm

While I agree that blog commenting doesn't have good ROI for ranking for keywords, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have other usefulness.

In checking the Google Analytics for my blog, I've seen highly targeted traffic (ie, traffic that visits more than on page and stays on my site for 5 minutes or more) land on my site from comments that I left on related blogs. This type of targeted traffic is difficult to find, especially for free. So for this reason alone, some amount of blog commenting is worth your time (just don't over do it or do it just for links).

The other benefit of blog commenting is its a super easy to rank your website for your name. In the niche I serve, many "experts" tell people to brand under their name, rather than a business name. However, this makes it difficult to sell your blog/business if you want to retire. What these experts don't realize is that ranking for your name is super simple -- just leave some great comments on blogs in the same industry with your name in the name field and your url in the website field. Doesn't even matter if they are no follow or do follow -- a good mix is ideal at any rate.

shahbaz says

June 9, 2019 at 12:56 pm

I think it’s helpful to have some way of letting commenters know you’ve responded to their comment via email, so they don’t have to subscribe to the entire comment stream or keep returning to the post to check, in order to see responses to their own comments. I used to use the ReplyMe plugin for this, but now have the CommentLuv plugin, which incorporates this function. I will no longer subscribe to comment streams for individual posts – it generates too many emails – and I don’t have time to keep checking back on posts I’ve commented on, so unless a blog has this kind of system, I never see the replies to my comments, which is a shame.