There are great possibilities for driving good numbers of traffic to your blog by commenting on high-profile blogs. This article will explain how I got 230+ unique visitors from one comment in less than a week.
On December 26th I posted a comment on ZenHabits which is one of the biggest productivity blogs with over 79,000 RSS subscribers. The article I commented on was How to Press the Reset Button On Your Life. This one comment brought me 239 unique visitors in less than 6 days after it was written.
These 239 visitors were 11% of my total blog traffic in those 6 days. Average time on site from these visitors was 02:57 which was 8% better then the average total time spent on my blog. Visitors viewed 2.35 pages per visit (11% better than total average), and bounce rate was 61% (8% less than the total average).
What to be aware of when blog commenting
There are some things you must keep in mind to optimize your comment ability to drive great number of traffic to your blog.
Optimize exposure for most clicks
- To drive traffic you must comment on a high-profile blog that normally has lots of readers / RSS subscribers / commenters.
- You must comment on the latest post as soon as possible after it is published. If you do that you will expose your comment to thousands of people who are going to read the post
- You must be an early commentator. The earlier you are, more exposure you are going to get. Not many people are going to read 50 comments from the same blog post. Aim to be in top 5 comments or so.
Provide value to grab attention
- Don’t just comment for the sake of it. Only write a comment if you like the post and if you have something relevant and interesting to say.
- Write a quality comment that creates value and grabs the attention of readers. Add something substantial to your comment. Add your thoughts about the post, provide additional information from your personal experience or from a post you have on your blog.
Brand your comments for long-term benefits
- Brand your comment by using same name, same avatar, same URL and same signature. This should be consistent with your social media profiles. Consistent marketing will build relationships to your blog. When people continue seeing your name repeated in comments sections of blogs and your comments are useful and interesting, it will make them wonder who the person writing is and will get them to click over to your blog.
Now imagine if you do this consistently, and on several high-profile blogs at the same time. It could bring serious amount of traffic to your blog. At the moment it is mine 4th biggest traffic referral after StumbleUpon, direct traffic and Twitter. I would definitely recommend it for you to try as well.
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Great tips, Marko!
Two items you didn’t mention:
1. Type your full name into the applicable comment field, like I do, and not your first name, like you do, to imply a greater reason for someone to trust you.
2. Like you do, Marko, other Wordpress bloggers should install the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin to allow commenters to opt to check the box to be notified of subsequent comments.
But here’s my question: Of the approximate 25+ commenters above me, how many checked the box and how many read the emails? If I mention Gerald, Shirley, or Melissa’s names, would they know and return to post a follow-up comment?
This is someone named Melissa. It has taken me a very long time to catch on to the blogs and blawgs and subscribing to feedburners etc. I admit than when I first read this; I did not have a clue how to read the email or reply to comments etc. I had just recently opened my own law firm and was living on 3-4 hrs MAX of sleep per night. I did get into the habit posting often and consistently {as I write this, I am returning from a two month leave} I have been really overwhelmed and busy with work and family and recently lost my mother. I am making an effort to get back. I decided to set my return so that it coincided with the kids returning to school; but I am running a week behind. I just wanted to let you know that thanks to comments like yours ; I took the time to learn more about what I was doing. I realize this reply is months ovedue, but I had to reply and say thank you.
Great trick to get traffic, but just traffic does not matter for me, i love to read good content
The uniqueness of one’s name has nothing to do with it, though I’d argue having 5 comments by Marks vs 1 comment by Mark Smith, 1 by Mark Rubin, etc., is more confusing.
Another interesting thing todo as well as addition is create an accompanying gravatar for commenting!
Great tips Marko!
BTW–how did you get that cool “Welcome Googler” at the top of your post?? Is it is plug in??
I have been playing around with comments to drive traffic. I have had limited success so far but probably because I am usually the 50th commenter
@Steve – Yeah it is plugin called “referrer detector”. I have written about it in some of my older posts, you can try and use the search function for more information on why and how I use it. Link to the plugin is http://www.phoenixheart.net/2008/11/referrer-detector/
It goes to show, that every little thing counts!
Great article. Of course we all comment to get the backlinks and the commentluv, but above all what we are looking for is traffic, and good traffic. To do that, as you say, you need to write a good comment, something that people will read and want to read more of, plus you have to be an early commenter, otherwise it’s likely your comment will get missed.
The next key for me to work on is how to get visitors to my blog to register for the feeds/comments.
Marko,
Thanks for this short but concise and informative article
It has given me the motivation to start commenting more often, hence this message! JOKE!
Just came across your site via twitter (you just added me).
Keep up the good work mate
Hi good expalanation
really helpsfull for me increase the traffi
thank you
Marko,
firstly i would like to thank you for this amazing blog post. It really helped me, though i already had imagined that trick. Still, you enhanced my optimism and taught me some of the values that go together with this comment-trick.
Continue your great work
My salutes from Greece,
Frikolakas
It is been sometime since I have put my efforts on giving meaningful comments on high traffic Blogs. Marco, Thanks for reminding and I will make it a point from today onwards to make atleast a 5 comments per day.
I hope this comment will drive a lot of traffic to my blog.
No, seriously – another rule you should follow when commenting: Write comments on blogs that cover similiar topics as yours.
1.You’ll seem to be an expert.
2.The traffic will be useful for your blog because the visitors will be interested in your articles as well.
Hi Marko!
Well done on an awesome post! Your tips are extremely valuable! Can’t insist enough on the power of TWITTER! Extremely easy to use and SO rewarding! Just started a couple of months back and already reaping great results!
Keep it up,
Michael
I am starting a niche blogging and also a blog design business. I didn’t realize how important being on top & one of the very first to comment was!
I will start a strategy now of commenting alot more often & to the top as much as possible. Also just checked your “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail “!
Thanks for the fantastic blogging advice.
Thank you for this useful and interesting post….:)))…
Thanks for the post.. A useful comment can really bring a great traffic to your blog
Great post! So good, I had to retweeted to my big list of Twitter followers and got a couple retweets as well. You can see the stat results here: http://bit.ly/info/QzKRD
Keep up the great work! You have a lot of great content here.
Tom
@Tom Duong – Thanks for the tweet, I am glad you liked the post!
wow i didn’t think blogs could bring you that much traffic !
im agree for the post.. A useful comment can really bring a great traffic to your blog
So in a nutshell, how to find the most important blogs, ie the highest profile blogs
Found the information worthy as I had no idea of posting a comment on the blog,.
Thanks !!!!!!
300 visitors till last month. But then I learnt the importance of commenting. And I started to post my comments. Each comment brought me 6 visitors on an average. And in addition, an offer or two for partnering with them, or writing for them.
2500 visitors added in about over a month. One key factor was the comments. I read every word before I wrote my comment.
Your ideas on commenting have added value to my thinking. More than the information, your own comment is the best tutor. Thank you.
Komarraju Venkata Vinay
@Komarraju – Impressive work! Congrats. I am glad my article helped you.
So blog is kind of powerfull online advertisment… Maybe it's a good Idea to hire a good bloger for oline ads… it's very interesting blog, thanks.
hey great it is realy true that if we comment on some big blog then we definitely get more visitors to our blog, But you have to take care at the time of commenting your comment should be meaning full and informative , it should related to blog post,
i also doing this and i am getting good amount of traffic from commenting
What I find funny is how many people who like this post NOT apply it when they comment here
I’ve not yet had 230 unique visitors from a blog comment yet, but it can certainly generate some extra traffic, with the added bonus of building relationships over time.
The only thing to be careful of, is some blogs will filter out links if placed in the actual comment section. I guess I’ll see whether that’s true of this blog in just a few moments…
Paul Hancox
P.S: Seems like it won’t accept them in the comment section!
Yeah, I agree with you. I have no rules on link or not really, I will manually edit your comment if I feel it is too spammy. In your case, Akismet put your comment with link into spam, not sure why, you might want to be careful how you comment on WordPress network as it may start putting all your comments there.
Good advice. I guess it’s working since you have all these commentor. Keep up the good work.
I am starting a niche blogging and also a blog design business. I didn’t realize how important being on top & one of the very first to comment was!
I will start a strategy now of commenting alot more often & to the top as much as possible. Also just checked your “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail “!
Thanks for the fantastic blogging advice.
Hey,
I didn’t know that one could bring such huge amount of traffics through just one comment. Well, just got this brilliant idea from your site. I’m gonna try it for sure. Thanks buddy! But though nowadays, I’ve developed a habit of commenting on good posts and as I liked ur post, that’s why I am commenting you too. It’s a “Happy Commenting’ for me…
Fantastic article!! It’s always nice to be able to drive traffic to your blog while commenting on somone else’s blog (it’s a win-win situation), but it’s also good etiquette to provide some good solid verbiage to show that you are really interested in that post and not just around to spam the comments. Thanks for the great information. This is for sure going into my bookmarks for future reference!
nice tips..
i know that blog commenting is such a great thing.. not only for backlink but also for increasing visitor..
thanks your sharing buddy,
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