Why Comment? Search Engines Could Care Less

Why Comment? Search Engines Could Care Less

...And if blog comments don't get you search engine traffic, why bother?

That's a valid argument, I think... After all, we are marketers -- and our business is marketing, right?

So what brings me to this topic today?

Well, I was over at Dwayne Huggins' site and he brought up an interesting point that I haven't thought much about...

He said that some people don't feel smart enough to comment on his blog! (Go check it out, Dwayne has a great site)

Well, that does explain why we here at DriveTheLine.com get some good traffic, but only a small percentage of comments from that traffic...

But then, I went over to Jason Better's blog and he pointed out that I was "siphoning" off nearly 3% of his traffic -- simply by leaving comments on his blog!

http://www.jasonbetter.com/seo/11-easy-ways-to-build-backlinks/

So how did I do that?

You definitely need to check out this post I wrote a little while ago: Brand Yourself Through Comments

Well, there's the answer, right? ...You comment on blogs to create backlinks to your own blog.

Not so fast!

Cristian pointed out on JB's blog:

Hey, Jason!
Just a short comment –

from an purely SEO perspective.

Hope you don’t mind but I have some objections concerning the effectiveness of some link sources, namely:
# Comments # Forums # Twitter # Facebook.

These are all genuine nofollow links so your site’s link popularity won’t benefit from them. I know, you could argue that Yahoo and MSN are starting to disregard nofollow attribute, but the big daddy Google isn’t – at least not so often as we would need it .

Cheers,
Cristian

And he's right, search engines don't recognize most comment links left on blogs, but here's my question...

Are you writing for Search Engines, or are you writing for people?

Because, if you ask me, search engines don't matter as much when you are writing valuable information that your target market can use.

When you do this, you will naturally get more and more traffic (and the search engines won't be able to ignore you).

How?

Well, it's like you opened a great new restaurant, provided great service and amazing food... Soon you will be flooded with new customers because of the power of word-of-mouth.

So, why comment?

Well, you should comment because:

• You can network with your target market (and brand yourself as a leader in your field)...
• You can learn from what others are doing by getting a conversation going...
• You can help people by answering a question for them...
• You can get yourself noticed by a leader in your industry (maybe even resulting in a guest post)...
• Heck, you can even get some free traffic, just by being sociable!

==>What are your thoughts on the matter? Here's your chance to put this theory to use by leaving a comment below ;)

===>P.S. Share the love and "Retweet" this badboy!

Why Comment? Search Engines Could Care Less is a post from: DriveTheLine.com

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