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CC: Conversation by kool skatkat.
Today I will write about commenting on so called dofollow-blogs and whether it makes sense as a link building strategy. Let me explain why:
No doubt the power of habit is a thing that makes you perpetrate the worst mistakes. For instance some people will vote for the same party again and again no matter what disastrous laws it will enforce. Webmasters are prone to be victims of the power of habit. The power of habit can be even inherited, then it’s called tradition. People who have never done a thing before will do what they perceive to be a habit of others.
On the Web people stick to the same habits like in the real world although the nature and rules of the Web change at an amazing pace. So many webmasters still stick to the habits of the twentieth century while we’re already nearing 2009. One of these hopelessly outdated habits is: Search engine and directory submission.
While search engine submission is obsolete since the appearance of Google 10 years ago, directory submission did make some sense for a few years longer but in 2007 and 2008 Google killed off most general web directories for being too low quality.
Some directories still work but only focused niche directories have a long term future according to Matt Cutts, Google’s “head of webspam”. I do not want to write about directories this time though. I want to write about the “directory submission approach” which is very often part of the typical SEO 1.0 mindset. People just don’t get the change that took place.
Most webmasters still seemingly assume that the best way of gaining links is to submit them somewhere.
Where can you submit nowadays when directories have less and less value? You can press “submit” on blog comment forms. It looks very similar and even does not take that much time. Many people still recommend commenting on dofollow-blogs that is blogs that do not add the “nofollow” attribute to comment links.
This nofollow attribute marks those links as worthless for search engines. Especially Google discounts them. Thus many webmasters collect “dofollow blogs” where the links still count. My blog is part of several lists by now and the more popular I get via these lists the more clumsy commenters visit my blog and leave their comments here.
I have formulated quite strict instructions as to how you should comment here but many people fail to follow those simple common sense rules and get their comments removed for breaching my commenting guidelines. Also I’m amazed at how people apparently assume that blog commenting is a viable link building strategy in the first place. Why?
Dofollow links in comments get discounted as well!
It’s widely known at least since 2006 that Google knows where a link resides on a given page, whether it’s in the footer, in the sidebar or in the editorial part of a page. Also Google knows that a link is a comment link which is no wonder as most blogs out there are either Blogspot or WordPress blogs and most other platforms have a similar structure.
Not surprisingly Google assigns less value to comment links. Footer links have been devalued long ago, I think 2005 or 2006. Sidebar links have been discounted a while ago too, 2007 when the first anti link buying campaign by Google has been started.
So even if your comment link is on the same page as the high value authority link in the post your link counts much less if at all.
Watching the bizarre ways people comment for links I can only scratch my head:
- Barely any context agreeing: “I also like SEO”
- Bot-like flattering: “Thank you, great post”
- Stupid questions: “What is the difference between blogs and SEO blogs?”
- Repeating a phrase from the post or rephrasing it, sometimes ignoring the message in the post: “Dofollow blogs are great for link building”
The ways people to circumvent my guidelines are ridiculous as well.
- Making up a keyword containing nick name like “SEO guy”: I said a name not keywords, besides, I’m the SEO guy here.
Do you really think that dropping a nonsense comment on my blog will be of advantage for you? Do you really assume that I won’t notice “solely for SEO” links as a SEO since 2004 and online publisher since 1997? At the same time I got a few real commenters, be it other bloggers or my peers from social media. Even without seeing their names I can already recognize their style of commenting:
- It’s adding value
- it’s conversational
- it’s not flattery even if it’s a compliment
I check each of my comments and I visit the sites you link to.
- I will delete links to empty pages etc.
- I will just take a short look at the “directory submission style” comment links.
- I will visit the pages of real commenters and read the content there
- I will submit their content to StumbleUpon
- I will bookmarks or link their blog
So do you see the difference? The SEO 1.0 type commenters add no value and receive no value. The SEO 2.0 type commenters add value and get more value back. So does commenting on dofollow-blogs make sense as a link building strategy? No, it doesn’t.
Does it make sense to participate in blog discussions in the comments in order to get links and traffic? Yes, it does! In case you have some valuable content it will often end up getting my power stumble, bookmark or a link.
This thing has 48 Comments
Great post, Tad.
Dofollow hunters suck and are pretty easy to spot. You’ll see a new visitor popping in via an online dofollow blog spam list of some sort, followed by a comment from someone named ‘Profesional SEO company’ -which is a pretty weird name, even for a misspelling-, leaving a comment that barely says anything… Yuck!
It’s stupid not to mention your URL when you’re commenting on a blog while you’re building links, but it’s even more stupid to just drop your link because you’re building links…
For me commenting on other people’s blogs was always a way to network with other bloggers and form long term blogging relationships.
I actually do set aside a brief block of time each day to find new and interesting blogs to read and on which to comment.
My own traffic hasn’t received an automatic bump, but readership has built consistently. And the quality of the conversation has grown as well.
I also like SEO
I drop my link anywhere I can. Just as you say however, the best value is not in the backlink but in the added value to bring to the discussion.
I always note that good comments that add value deliver traffic. Not only from the webmaster of the blog but also from other visitors that are following the discussion.
Great strategy and it helps you building a network and an online presence.
Only thing with this discussion is that my blog is in Dutch, haha.
Nevertheless, good article and to the point.
Great post!
Personally I use commenting to build the blog awareness when starting a new blog. People still do seem to click on the link after reading the comment, and for a new blog it is one of the quickest ways of attracting visitors.
Search engine rankings are something that I see as a long-term project so getting some visitors via writing comments or via social media is a great way to get the first visitors, while building content and working on seo.
I compare this to an advise from an accountant-friend many years back in Germany: He told me not to buy any property just for tax reasons - even without the element of saving taxes it must still be a good investment. Applying this to blog commenting means that writing the comment should be a good investment (in your time) even if there was no google. That also means that it does not matter if the blog is follow or no-follow. If investing the time to write that comment is a good one, then do it. Even if at this time Google might not be able to see the semantics in the comment, at one point it will be able to, and then that link will become also relevant for link building.
I’m in total agreeance with you.
Blog commenting can be an awesomely powerful in gaining new readers for your blog etc. But it must be done correctly. Even sweeteners such as “Nice post! I stumbled!” go into Akismet. It doesn’t work, plain and simple.
Also, it makes me think they have some sort of software to do it. Reason I am aware of it is that one guy commented under the name of “your website name here”. Fool.
Really from what I have found, trying to gain traffic and link building in comments only gets you a high bounce rate, not worth it.
Great comments guys. :-) Now I can’t add much to the conversation… Next post: How to encourage discussion and NOT make everybody agree with you ;-)
I’m not convinced that Google is as infallible at reading where and how important a link is, as they and you would have us believe.
Equally, I don’t believe that no-follow is designed or indeed effective at stopping anything other than transfer (for want of a better word) of PageRank.
IMHO Goog got sick of paying bloggers a larger amount for AdSense because they’d blog commented up their PageRank. No-follow is effective at saving Goog money, it’s less effective at denying any advantage in the SERPs.
SEO 2.0 is sounding more like Rand by the day… I hope you’re not going to follow him down his outing route!
PS Most other places I call myself Gidseo - not because I think it gives me any useful link value - it’s just what I tend to comment using - how does that fit in with your rules?
Haha…late to the party. But nevertheless this is great advice. I love it when people come and comment on my blog (and ADD value) SEO 1.0 commenting…not only is irritating, it detracts from its original intent. I wish more people would understand this when they write things like “great post” on my blog. Thanks for the post Tad.
Ha! You have to love John Doe’s comment above. So appropo! (not sure if i spelled that right). But anyway, loved the post, agree wholeheartedly, but unfortunately, the silly commenters will continue on because it’s just what they do. It’s rare to be able to get thru thick skulls, but who knows, maybe you’ll change the habits of one or two. :)
While spamming dofollow blogs is a super lame linking building strategy, people will continue to abuse abuse it. Why? Because it works. People are lazy.
It’s as simple as that.
While yes dofollow links can be devauled, as any link can, Sites can rank entirely on blog comments alone. I don’t feel Google is perfect at filtering out the rubbish just yet.
But it won’t be long I’m guessing.
I’m with you on the solid comment philosophy. Say something semi human, i’ll check out your stuff.
I also like SEO.
Great post.
:p
Commenting on blogs has never been one of my recommendations for link-building because it is too easy and I know my barely updated personal blog gets enough spammers and I don’t want to add to that.
I agree with your commenting philosophy; however, I did not know Google disregarded this type of link even if it is dofollow.
I have heard this comment-spam link-building strategy recommended at search conferences as recently as a few months ago (I know some people don’t consider it spam, but I sure do). Are the black hat SEOs not being truthful with us? Should I even ask that question?
I also like SEO.
I consider myself to be a reasonable guy, so when I get a new comment, I check out what is said and immediately approve it if it is related to the post.
If it isn’t, it never sees the light of day and I move on.
Odd, if people would just add a thoughtful and related comment to the thread, I’d approve their message. Their laziness (and rudeness for distracting the conversation) is never rewarded by me.
I agree with Erik “the best value is not in the backlink but in the added value to bring to the discussion”. The main point of leave comment is we can share our mind with other reader. Backlink is just bonus.
Is this not a contradiction of terms; first you say that there is no value in leaving comments on Do Follow Blogs and then you say it adds value for traffic and links.
For sure there are dummy’s out there that leave stupid comments that give no value to the discussion, while there are good commentators that leave interesting views and are of value.
If the search engines are discounting these comment links, is this because they have honed in to the more lucrative higher traffic blogs and websites or do they just see this as buying or bribing for links, therefore breaking their T.O.S ?
Thanks’ for this great read. I have a post due out tomorrow on this very subject.
I’m wondering how Google can see if a link in a comment is spam-like or not. I mean, you can build links this way just by placing comments which are adding value to the topic. So when are you just placing comments to build links and when not. Who says I’m not ‘link-building’ right now?
Nevertheless, I think when you’re involved in a lot of blogs of your interest and you’re placing some quality comments here and there and you don’t, in the first place, do this only for link building… I don’t see the problem… Google neither I guess.
I agree with the philosophy that you presented in the post. That is, I understand why commenting on do-follow blogs shouldn’t be something that bloggers do for the sake of getting a higher PageRank.
I do, however, agree with a previous commenter, erik, in the idea that dropping my link anywhere I can is something that I like to do. To be honest, I wish I did it more. I just don’t think that specifically commenting on do-follow blogs is the best way to do it; I agree with your assessment that it’s like directory submission.
To add something else, I’ve noticed that a good chunk of my visitors these days are from do-follow lists. Those visitors don’t make up a huge percentage, but I notice several a day (many of which happen to be from India). If your looking to increase your international audience, getting rid of the nofollow attribute is a good way to do it.
hey Tad.
am also in partial agreement with Gids above that these links are not entirely useless, but obviously do not a whole linkbuilding strategy make..
kevsta
Really what I found, trying to gain traffic and construction of link in the comments that you made a high bounce rate, it is worth nothing.
I find even funnier all the people trying to drop links on my no comment blog.
Now blog commenting can be a valid strategy for building traffic, when you have something intelligent AND interesting to say (controversial is good too), but random dropping of links, regardless of “follow”, just makes no sense as a primary SEO strategy
No I disagree. You can say spam-commenting on dofollow blog is unethical but it does make perfect sense for SEO.
When you’re aiming on long tail, low-to-average competition SERP, blog commenting works (which explains why people are doing it) - it simply improve a site’s ranking. In fact the ranking can be lifted drastically if your comment slips into a related blog with high authority.
Proof? Check out the blog ranking mid (i wouldn’t name the site) on this SERP: http://www.google.com/search?q=review+lunarpages&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enMY239MY242
I’ve been testing this for a while and it’s been hard to see a big difference in SERPs. I’ve been slowly adding to the strategy to gain more diversity.
It just takes a lot of time!
Well, building links through blog comments seems like an entirely valid way to pass time in the office. Beats looking for stuffs to bid for on ebay.
If you post a helpful comment it does not matter if the blog is “do follow” or not.People will visit you anyway to see what more you have to say.
Thanks for writing this up. I just discovered the world of ‘dofollow’ and wondered how effective it actually was. If at all. I’ve enjoyed reading your blog too! It seems to look an awful lot like it would attract spammers up the you know what.
I can’t imagine this tactic will work for any length of time. G hates people gaming the system and this seems to attract gamers, and not the good kind!
(sorry for the @Manzanillo Mexico and the deep link in the ‘bounce’ post, as I said, I was experimenting)
I guess the main point here is to prove something useful in your comments, and then repeating it an enough number of times. Traffic is sure to follow
I have some high pagerank blogs and I keep the do-follow tag on all of them. I get a lot of spam comments and I get the regulars, its easy to tell them apart since its a fishing blog and not as many people are out to leave their link behind as are seo bloggers. Adding to the blog discussion is what makes me approve, if they give google and my readers a nice chunk of content then I will let the comment stand and give them 1/100 of my page rank link juice. Commenting to get pagerank will work but using commenting for the purpose of solely getting ranked for a keyword, sometimes, in most cases no. Google looks at how many links are on the page and if the page is related to your anchor keyword, that is how you get the juice. If someone left a ‘cheap hair dryers’ comment on my pr4 fishing blog and i approved it, they would get less juice than leaving a comment on a pr0 blog that is all about hair dryers. Relevancy in the google algorithm seems to be the best way to rank for keywords these days, not commenting on non related pr5,6 blogs with your unrelated anchor text.
OK, now I feel like a total idiot. I came here looking to make an SEO-friendly link in a comment. I admit it. I was going to write something thoughtful, but I was also looking to increase PR on my new blog.
You say, “Not surprisingly Google assigns less value to comment links.” But they’re still more valuable than nofollow, right? So your main complaint is the nonsense spam commenters, but is it really a terrible SEO strategy to comment on high PR sites with do follow comments? Better than nothing still seems better.
Well I think I followed the rules. I hope my site gets some link juice!
I see there’s alot to learn on this blog. Very interesting post for what I’m into. Thanks for all the hard work and staying true to the craft and giving back :)
Stumbled
I think that what comes into play here is that a lot of high PR dofollow blogs end up with a lot of ‘link juice dilution’ on the high PR posts. If there were only 5-10 comments then a good amount of juice would be passed but when there are 50+ there is a lot of dilution of PR.
I’m rather confident that commenting on dofollow blogs works well when this dilution isn’t allowed by the blog owner performing vigilant moderation.
Why would commenting on blogs be any different than links in forum signatures. G can likely tell that as well. I think it all passes juice but how much… only G knows.
At least commenting on blogs you don’t run as big a risk of getting flame sprayed by someone having a bad day such as a forum comment…
Hope you accept my comment! I like SEO too
well, here is my experience with dofollow.
I think Google hasn’t yet sophisticated enough for judging the link value…since all my website could reach page 1 (for my my target keyword)only using commneting on blog, even–I thought–it’s hard competition keyword.
let’s see 1 or 2 years later
I have set my blog to DoFollow, because I think that if I give something in exchange, people will be more likely to leave a comment.
By giving something back, I hope that the buzz around my blog will increase and then Google will notice the activity and maybe pay more attention to it.
Well, that’s my strategy and hopefully it will turn out in my favor.
Commenting on other people’s blogs was always a way to network with other bloggers and form long term blogging relationships, but with all the spam out there today, it has really hurt that scenerio.
I used to use commenting on other peoples blogs to get links and network, but since everyone now seems to get their blogs spammed into the ground I’ve virtually stopped it.
A lot of people take the short-cut of link building through blog comments. Many use software to run up their post count, I’ve seen sites go to PR 4, on the strength of 20 blog posts, with the traditional “like your blog” BS comment. It can be very discouraging when you actually think about what you post and try not to abuse the moderator’s courtesy.
Companies runnig on a low budget making comments on any blog related to their business, brings awareness.
If the blog is a DoFollow then there is the additional benefit of having a lesser valued link to their website.
Requirement:
- Plenty of time
Advantage:
- Low cost if you have the time
- Link
We have a DoFollow blog too and everyday we browse through the 30 post on Akismet spam blocker.
When I watch my incomming links on my wordpress blog from an do follow site I happened to comment on it does seem like it is a good thing. But I have long abandon any concious link building plans and turned my time to more content building. I know this is cliche but if I was to spend 1 hour a day commenting on other people’s blogs or one hour a day building something meaningful on mine, I would choose the latter for SEO purposes. With exceptions from time to time.
Whilst I am a long time web user I am a relative blog newbie and I suspect many newbies like me do not understand the etiquette of commenting on blogs. I have read quite a few blogs of late and yours is the first I have seen to have commenting netiquette, nothing wrong with that. I have no idea when I comment if blog is follow or not, for me it is not an issue.
lorne: Most blogs have implicit commenting guidelines. They will just delete you.
I found that I was getting so many “spam” type comments I had to switch to admin approved first.
It was the only way to save my blog. Since then I have seen the attempt of “spam” type comments drop to almost nothing and the “real” comments go up.
Not 100% if they are just pulling one over on me or if it’s real, but the commenting has improved.
I am a newbie in the blog world too, but I think PR doesn’t really matter if you have stupid content. I have a website with PR 1 which makes me more than my PR4 website.
and I don’t really care if the blog I am commentig is dofollow or nofollow.
Hello, I think everybody who has given a good comment deserves a follow link, even if the person comments with a keyword as name.
The problem is to give a norm to the expression “good comment”.
One common misconception is that if you go to a site with high PR, you have to have your link on the page that has the high PR, and if you go to a page with no PR, you don’t get credit for having the link on an authority site.
When asked about this, Matt Cutts basically said no comment. IMO, his silence is deafening
I just learned about do-follow links and, in all honesty, I was wondering if attempting a campaign of blog-commenting would be a valid SEO approach to marketing. Something in my gut says that it would be worthless and that Google could easily be smart enough to “notice” a site trying to spam blogs. I think, in general, when it comes to SEO, if it starts looking unnatural, even if it feels unnatural, a smart SE like Google will pick up on it, and who knows, it could even hurt your PR in the end (yes remember how Google punished all those pay-per-post bloggers)? So thank you for this article, I think I’ll listen to my instincts and rescind my plan for blog-spamming
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