On the first part of this series we talked about how you can generate traffic to your website by getting it featured on Web Design and CSS galleries. On the second part we talked about Blog Carnivals. Today we will cover another basic yet effective strategy: leaving comments on other blogs.
The concept: Blogs are conversations. Most of them, in fact, allow any user to post a comment at the end of every article. Usually you just need to write down your name and email (kept private) and publish your comment.
Most blogging platforms also allow you to insert your website URL, which will then be used to hyperlink your name to your website.
Should people get curious, angry, excited or feel any other emotion while reading your comment, there is a good chance that they will click on the name to see what kind of website you have on the other side. If the blog where you left a comment is a popular one, you could end up receiving hundreds of visitors from a single comment.
Does it work?: Yes, but mainly when your blog is new. You will still receive traffic from blog comments even if your blog is one or two years old, but by that time I expect that your average daily traffic will be too large to be able to notice the blog comments incoming visitors.
There are also some guidelines that you should follow. First of all do not spam as many blogs as possible with as many comments as possible. People will recognize a self-promotional comment miles away, and usually they will just delete it (apart from the fact that it is pretty lame to leave comments just for the sake of traffic).
So first of all make sure that you are adding value to the conversation with your comment. That should be something easy and natural if you comment on blogs that are related to your niche. You should have endless things to talk about the topics you like after all, right?
Secondly, there are certain types of comments that will attract more attention: the first comment, funny comments, thought provoking comments and controversial comments are just a few examples.
Finally, pay attention to the size of the blog where you will be engaging in the conversation, and on how active the community over there is.
How to get started: Just create a selection of blogs that are relevant to your niche and engage on the discussion there. Ideally you should subscribe to their RSS feed so that you can keep updated and follow up with comments as soon as an interesting post is published.
If you don’t know many blogs on your niche just head to Google and start searching, it shouldn’t be difficult to find heaps of them.
Over to the readers: Have you used the strategy of leaving comments on other blogs to generate traffic? How did it work?
Website Traffic Series
- Part 1: Web Design and CSS Galleries
- Part 2: Blog Carnivals
- Part 3: Leave Comments on Other Blogs
- Part 4: Faking A Website Sale
- Part 5: Pulling an April Fools Prank
- Part 6: Using Forum Signatures
- Part 7: Putting A Blog on Your Static Website
- Part 8: Adding a Forum to Your Site or Blog
- Part 9: Buying Targeted Traffic
- Part 10: Email Signatures
- Part 11: Put Your URL On Online Profiles
- Part 12: Email Bloggers to Showcase Your Best Content
- Part 13: Faking a Hacker Attack
- Part 14: Promoting Your Content on Social Bookmarking Sites
- Part 15: Promoting Posts That Link to You on Social Bookmarking Sites
- Part 16: Promoting Your Content on Social Networking Sites
- Part 17: Using Article Directories
- Part 18: Exchanging Links with Partner Sites