Does commenting on relevant articles positively impact our seo?
-
I have read conflicting perspectives on whether or not businesses should partake in relevant conversations on blogs' or articles' comments sections. Does anyone have insight on this?
-
My opinion - if you're posting on blogs/articles purely for SEO value, you're wasting your time.
- most comment sections provide only "nofollow" links
- most good comment sections have so many comments that even if the link is "dofollow" the share of influence passed will be negligible
However! If you're posting good, useful comments on blogs that are relevant to your business, you are contributing to the process of making yourself a subject matter expert/influential. Others will see your helpful contribution and perhaps follow you back to your own site/blog. If you're lucky, you may even be able to generate some interaction with the blog owner, resulting in new promotional opportunities (guest posting?) or social media interaction.
The one SEO side benefit that you do get from good blog commenting is your backlink profile will be more natural with quality nofollow backlinks to go with all your dofollow links. As we've just seen with the Penguin update, the best backlinks aren't just the ones made to "look" natural, but that actually "are" natural!
So - focusing your commenting efforts on a smaller number of relevant blogs and designed to help build your reputation (rather than a huge "spray and pray" approach) will be a better use of your time.
Paul
-
There are a couple of things to look for. Does the link in the comment area have a no follow or do follow attribute? Also how many links are in the comment area? Google factors this in when determining how much link juice it'll pass along. You might benefit regardless if potential clients of yours are looking at those blog posts and then click your link. Example, I have a real estate website and I also comment on the Trulia blog that has a no follow attribute but those looking for an Agent might see my comment on the trulia blog click my link and I now have a lead.
-
As long as the blogs are contextual relevant to what you are doing. I would not expect a big boost in organics by the majority of these, but could help in different ways.
An example may be a plumber commenting on a topic. A prospect may be researching on that topic, saw the post and goes to the plumber's site (that happens to be local) and hire them.
-
My feeling is that, when I am logged in using a commenting platform, like Wordpress or-- better yet-- Google, is that it does help.
Google hosts blogs. If you are logged in as a Google user and you write relevant comments on Google blogs, I would think you are demonstrating that you are an active member of Google's web, which is the kind of user they want. If your own websites are tied in with your actively-participating-in-Google, Google profile, I personally think it makes sense.
Other people will tell you that when you comment on blogs you get "no follow" links, which are worthless. This is not true. They are not worth as much, but they are not worthless by any means.
So Google and Wordpress accounts notwithstanding, I still think commenting on blogs is a good idea to create backlinks, even if they are no follow links. If no follow links were "no good" SEOmoz wouldn't measure them right?
So the short answer: Yes, commenting on blogs helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
New article algorithm changes -- links allowed
hey guys, i understand that google has made algorithm changes for article writing in that only one link is allowed now per 500 words. would this include the "author resource" box if you don't place links in the body? any suggestions would be great: Due to the latest changes in Google's algorithms, regarding the proportions between the length of the content to the outbound links, ArticleSlash's requirements are changing effective immediately. • - For articles with up to 500 words, we will allow only one hyperlink • - For Articles up to 900 words - two hyperlinks • - For articles with 900 words and above - three hyperlinks Short articles with many outbound links are running the chance to get into Google's spam filters, which is why we are implementing this change, effective immediately.
Link Building | | tm46150 -
Fake SEO Site
What do you think of this site? This is the top, number ranking site in Halifax, UK. No authority, no backlinks and high keyword density considering the low amount of content. http://www.maknetic.co.uk/ Search term is SEO Halifax. How is it number 1? There's nothing in it and no user value at all!
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
How to do SEO for a social networking site?
Howdy SEOmoz fans, We are about to launch an educational social networking site. We have planned a lot of good strategies for offline and online marketing. Coming to SEO, how we can do search engine optimization effectively for our social networking site. The home page will be sign up page and there wont be any content in it. It would be great if you can suggest us prefect SEO tactics for our site. Thank you.
Link Building | | jjv0 -
Best Relevant Directory submission software
Hi Guys, Is there any really good relevant directory sumbission software out there?? Or am I just wishing for too much here! There must be a good sodtware tools out there where I can submit my property website to relvant property related directories with a jit of a button! Any help of poing me in the right direction would be very helpful! Thanks! G
Link Building | | GAZ090 -
SEO directories
Recently I did a research of one of mine competitors and to my surprise his major backlinks located on seo directories like: http://alistdirectory.com/ http://www.ggfb.org/ http://www.bitterskank.com/ http://www.directorypage.net/ And .... he is showing on first page of Google by particular keyword "Dentist Dubai". Frankly speaking I am confused a little bit, because I believe that this SEO strategy has stopped working a long time ago. Could someone share with me his thought about this? Furthermore all of those websites are asking about a Reciprocal link, which I did find on his website. How he did it? Thanks, Russel
Link Building | | smokin_ace0 -
Blog commenting
Is this still a good way of getting backlinks? I do not plan on making it my only method. Most of my backlinking is done through content creation, press releases, and guest blogging. But looking for some variety in there that can be done quicker. Is it even worth the time or are the links too spammy now? If I did I would actually hand build the links and comment to the article.
Link Building | | webfeatseo1 -
Blogging to add SEO value to site... recommendations
Hi Mozzers! A client has a high authority website in the travel industry, and needs any and all advantages to get ahead in very competitive keywords. The send out a newsletter bimonthly, but have no blog, so I recommended at the very least, they publish online their emailed newsletters to add informational and relevant content. The question is, for max SEO value, should they... create a blog as a subdomain or subfolder of their existing site? should they self host a blog with a separate domain? or should they simply use a blogger/wordpress.com free blog? Consider that just adding on a blog to their existing site isn't easy. It's some old CMS that's apparently a nightmare to deal with. Plus, branding a WP install to match the site isn't something they want to spend a lot of time on. Your insight is welcome and appreciated!
Link Building | | rosstaylor0 -
Competiton Creating Links from high ranking blogs through comments?
So I have been noticing that a lot of my competition is leaving a lot of non sense comments on high ranking blogs. What they are doing is either A. Linking the username they are using back to the page they want to link or B. Within their comment on that blog leaving their URL in the text or end of comment. Question is does this even work to get links back to your page? Is this that even ethical SEO? Might be a dumb questions but how am i suppose to fight this when its already hard enough to come up with unique content for a e commerce site and then i have to battle my competition doing this?
Link Building | | Horrific_ending0