The Dummies Guide To Blog Comment Posting
This is an article that explains the absolute basics of blog comment posting. Some of you will be fairly familiar with most or all of this, and for that reason, I suggest you skip to the defcon 3 version, that is more nuts and bolts for the mid level SEO.
What Is A Blog
I’ll let Wikipedia answer this one.
What Is A (Blog) Comment?
A blog comment (or blog response) is where the blog post author has posted an article, and the great unwashed (you and me) can submit/post a written response to this article. The author may have her blog configured so that every comment that is submitted has to be approved by her before it is posted. This way, she can manually filter out the crap, like people posting rubbish, libel, defamation or irrelevant links.
Why Should I Post Comments
When you post a comment, you (typically) get to (optionally) post your website link. When that page is spidered by Google, it will look at the link and decide whether it is worth following.
What Do You Mean By “Worth Following”?
When a hyperlink is posted on a webpage, it looks something like this:
There’s a bit of HTML code in the background that looks like this:
<a href="http://nfollow.com/">Visit My Website!</a>
This is a “normal” HTML web link. What happens however, to combat comment spamming, is that WordPress (by default) adds something to the code of the link that looks like this:
<a href="http://nfollow.com/" rel=”external nofollow”>Visit My Website!</a>
That bit in blue tells Google not to follow the link. And if Google is not following the link, your link will not be worth having on that article page.
Why Not?
PageRank™ (PR) is the answer here. Although here is not the place for an in-depth definition of PR, I can sum it up: Every page on the internet has a PR associated with it, based from no pagerank or 0, to 10. This is Google’s reflection of the importance of your page. Generally, the higher the PR of your page, the better it (statistically) will fare in the search results, getting closer or into the top 10 for the search term. PR is determined by a complex algorithm based in part on the number of incoming links to your page/website. So, higher PR, better ranking in Google.
What Do I need To Know About Posting On Blogs
Read my other post on blog commenting do’s and don’ts.
How Will Posting On Blogs Help My Website?
Some blogs out there have actively chosen not to use the rel="nofollow" bit in their links. What this means for you, is that if you can find those blogs, leave a good comment on them with your web address and have it posted, Google will find you and give you some extra PR for your page/site. More PR should equate to better search engine results and more traffic.
How Do I Find Those Blogs?
This is where you’ll need to put some effort in. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it it” is one of my favourite mantras. I annoy people by saying it too much. You will have to find the blogs yourself. Read my other article on how to find them. But here’s where NFollow comes into its element. When you find a potential blog that you think that you should comment on, click the NFollow link that you will have installed in your toolbar, and it will tell you whether it is worth posting to.
“Success” means that it didn’t find that nasty rel="external nofollow" on that blog, and you’re free to post.
“Failure” means that it did find it, and if you post your comment and weblink, Google won’t give you any PR for it.
I’m Still Confused
Don’t worry. I get confused about many things. I administer a rather large ecommerce site that my seniors think requires a lot of administration. In fairness, it doesn’t, even though I pretend it does. So mail me if you don’t understand something. If I’m free, I’ll get back to you.