Way back (snicker) in the early days of blogging, I figured out that commenting on other blogs was hugely successful. The majority of growth in those young days was due to my participation in the conversation in other blogs.
Even with the consistent growth of my blog, I continue to try to seek out and find new blogs who are writing great content in relative areas of interest. I also try to promote them in my daily links. With a hundred million blogs out there, there are a lot of conversations to join in.
What is Blog Seeding?
Google and Technorati are my primary means of finding blogs that I’ve never visited before. You can spend 5 or 10 minutes a day blog seeding and get exposed to thousands of new readers. Blog Seeding is simply adding to the comments of another blog’s post and ensuring you have a good backlink in their comment information to your blog. Don’t comment just to throw a link out there, though – that’s spamming. Write some compelling copy, compliment the blogger, or provide some evidence if you are not agreeing with them. The richer your comment, the more attention you’ll receive.
Blog Seeding differs from Comment Spamming
The motivation for Blog Seeding differs from Comment Spamming. Comment Spamming is a black hat SEM method to try to find blogs that don’t utilize nofollow and get higher ranking through backlinks.
Blog Seeding:
- Adds to the conversation of the blog in question. Perhaps you’re supporting the post with additional relative content or disputing the content that’s there. Either way, it’s user generated content that any blogger should appreciate.
- Introduces you to the blogger.
- More important, introduces you to the blogger’s audience! Don’t underestimate how many people read blogs AND read the comments.
Add blog seeding to your bag of marketing techniques to build authority or raise awareness of your blog, product, service or company. It works exceptionally well!
Excellent post Douglas. I’ve used this technique extensively and without fail, it works! I’ve found that your really don’t even need to worry about dropping a link in the body of your comment at all, unless doing so ads significant value to the conversation. If what you have to say truly ads to the conversation, instead of being just a “me too” comment, then visitors will naturally be attracted to your blog.
As far as nofollow blogs go, all my blogs are no nofollow and yes, they attract a great deal of spammers. However, focusing on no nofollow blogs is pointless for those looking to build organic growth. The minimal ranking boost received through a no nofollow link in blog comments is negligible at best. Where commenting has its true rewards is in the relationships it builds and the natural attraction it creates. Others will be quicker to link to your posts organically if you don’t constantly spam their comments with links.
Great post! You’ve got a new reader. 😉
As a novice blogger, I have been shy about commenting on other blogs. Your post set me straight.
What is a nofollow blog and how do I know if I have one?
Thank you
Bill
Thanks Doug. This info was very helpful to me in trying to differentiate blog seeding vs. spamming to my small business clients. It also has inspired me to comment on some more blogs myself! 🙂
For some odd reason, I can’t even loging to Technorati, but that is another matter.
What you have described does work well for individual or industry specific blogs. For corporate blogs, the same method isn’t as effective because corporate blogs are seen as a way of promoting a business and suffer as a result.
I am yet to see a corporate blog which has a high level of shares or comments on a regular basis.
If the corporate blog is set around selling a product, I agree that comments are difficult to come by. However, when the blog has a purpose outside sales, there’s tons of opportunity.
https://blog.facebook.com/ – gets tens of thousands of comments. I realize they are a social platform, though… and perhaps an exception since they have billions of customers 🙂
http://www.lulu.com/blog/ – when the content is right, you’ll see quite a bit of activity here.
Thank you for your reply.
For corporate blogs, like you have stated, the blog should have a wider focus and not restricted to plugging own products or services. I have been creating quality content for our corporate blog and it is doign well in terms of visits but not in the way of user activity.
I will keep trying and thanks for the useful info.
Thanks Doug! This is a great idea for all of us bloggers. I have been publishing at my blog as a hobby. Now, I’m starting to gain followers since switching off Blogspot. I have been writing comments, but I have not included my blog link.
Thanks for the information! http://www.nortoncreative.com/rubberchicken/
But comments aside, what else would you recommend for blog seeding? Do you use tools like Pinterest? Reddit or Digg?