Using blog comments to generate backlinks to your site is becoming more and more prevalent.
You have probably heard that you shouldn't waste your time with blog comments because the search engines don't follow the link because of the no follow tag.
This is both true and not true at the same time. Yes, a vast majority of the blogs you find will have the no follow tag on the comments. But there are some that don't have no follow tags.
WordPress by default adds the no follow tags to the comment section but there are people that will remove the no follow tags from your comments in return for you leaving comments. Believe it or not there is a way you can find these blogs with a search.
Before I get into what to look for to find blogs without the no follow tag I want to cover comment etiquette.
Your comments MUST BE on topic, if can't come up with a comment on topic don't leave one.
If the post you are commenting on is about WordPress plugins don't leave a comment about sports fishing. This is common sense but you would be surprise at how many comments like this I delete.
When you are writing your comments don't put any links in the body of the comment. Not only is this poor etiquette it can actually get you listed on the comment spam lists if you are reported by the blog owners. You can put a link in the comment body if, and only if, it is a resource to something in the post.
I recommend that you set your blog up so that if there are links in the body of the comment it will go to the comment moderation. This way you will have to approve the comment before it shows up on your blog. This will keep the spammy comments of your blog.
Now your name or I should say the form field where you enter your name. This should be your name or your moniker. For example I will use Randy The Hermit because more people know me that way than by my normal last name. Your moniker can have keywords in it (only helps if there are not any no follow tags) but it should be related to you or what you do. For example if you teach people how to blog you could use the moniker Blog Boy or Blogging Teacher but your moniker should stay the same no matter what you use for a link.
That is a general overview of blog etiquette but you should never do anything in a blog comment that you wouldn't want done on your blog. Even with the no follow tags you should still be posting comments, I bet you are wondering why?
This question can be given a few answers, such as:
1.With or without the no follow tag it is still a link to your site. You can get over 1000 links to your site by leaving 5 comments a day for a year. These links will be seen by 1000's of people that might come to your site.
2.If you comments adds value to the topic of the post the author and readers will start to recognize your name and you will be branding yourself as an expert.
3.Just like above if your comment is interesting people will click on your link out of curiosity just to see what else you have to say.
4.Some of the ad services and search engines, like Ask (the last time I checked) don't read the no follow tag. With the ad services this means that you site will look more relevant and it could lead to higher pay outs on your ads.
There are the reasons to not worry about the no follow tag but what if you want to find blogs that don't use the no follow tag in the comments?
The most obvious way is to find a comment and look at the page source, pour through all the code looking for the link on the name and seeing if the no follow tag is in the link. This will drive you crazy if you do it a lot of times but it does work.
The good news is that you don't have to do it that way. If you are using FireFox or Flock as your browser you can get an addon that will highlight all the no follow tags on a page. It is called SEO for FireFox and you can get it from SEOTools.com or you can search SEO for FireFox addon in Google.
This addon will give you a bunch of information that can be used for SEO but the one feature that we are interested in now is the no follow highlighting. What it does is look at all the links on the page your viewing and highlights all the no follow links in red. If the name in the blog comment isn't red then the no follow is shut off on that blog.
Then there is another plugin that some people add to their WordPress blogs that will reward the frequent commenter. It is called Lucia's Linky Love.
How it works it the owner of the blog can set the plugin so that after so many posts the no follow tag is removed from the comments of that person.
Lucia's actually checks both the name and the email address for every comment so if you are posting on the blog you need to use the same name and email address the minimum number of times before the no follow tag is removed
Most commonly this is set at 3 to 5 posts before the no follow tags are removed but the blog master can set if from 3 to a million if they like.
You might now be wondering how you find blogs that are using Lucia's Linky Love, the easiest way to do this is to go to Google's Blogsearch and search for your keywords in quotes plus Lucia's Linky in quotes (it should look like this "keyword phrase"+"Lucia's Linky" ) and you should find some posts for your keywords that this will apply to.
On the blogs I use this on you will need to post 4 times to get a link back to your site. I read the comments and I delete the spammy ones so the people just trying to get the right number of posts never make it. This encourages more comments and usually adds good information.
About the Author:
About The Author: Randy The Hermit Baustert has been working online since 1994 and is the top rated SEO expert according to ExpertRating.com the industry testing services. You can find more free information on SEO and blogging at his newest blog How To Blog Site Don't reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.
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