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Blog Comments for SEO Backlinks

By Randy The Hermit Baustert

Using blog comments to generate backlinks to your site is becoming more and more prevalent.

You have probably heard that you shouldn't waste your time with blog comments because the search engines don't follow the link because of the no follow tag.

There is a trace of truth to this but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use blog comments to get backlinks because there are some blogs that don't have the no follow tags on their comments.

WordPress by default adds the no follow tags to the comment section but there are people that will remove the no follow tags from your comments in return for you leaving comments. Believe it or not there is a way you can find these blogs with a search.

Go out and post your comments on these blogs but before you do I want to make sure you aren't leaving spammy comments so here is some blog comments etiquette.

Your comments MUST BE on topic, if can't come up with a comment on topic don't leave one.

If the post you are commenting on is about WordPress plugins don't leave a comment about sports fishing. This is common sense but you would be surprise at how many comments like this I delete.

Don't put links in the body of your comment. This is very bad etiquette unless the link is to a resource that expands on your comment. This doesn't mean if you have a site on sports fishing you can put a link to your site in the comment body but if the post is on a new way to string a leader you can put a link to a page (on your site or another) that shows how to do this.

I personally have my comments set up so that if you put links in the body of the comment it will go to moderation and not be posted until I get around to reviewing the links. This might be done quickly or it might take me a week to get to it. Remember, some people never check the comment moderation.

Now your name or I should say the form field where you enter your name. This should be your name or your moniker. For example I will use Randy The Hermit because more people know me that way than by my normal last name. Your moniker can have keywords in it (only helps if there are not any no follow tags) but it should be related to you or what you do. For example if you teach people how to blog you could use the moniker Blog Boy or Blogging Teacher but your moniker should stay the same no matter what you use for a link.

That is a general overview of blog etiquette but you should never do anything in a blog comment that you wouldn't want done on your blog. Even with the no follow tags you should still be posting comments, I bet you are wondering why?

This question can be given a few answers, such as:

1.With or without the no follow tag it is still a link to your site. You can get over 1000 links to your site by leaving 5 comments a day for a year. These links will be seen by 1000's of people that might come to your site.

2.If you comments adds value to the topic of the post the author and readers will start to recognize your name and you will be branding yourself as an expert.

3.Just like above if your comment is interesting people will click on your link out of curiosity just to see what else you have to say.

4.Just because the major search engines abide by the no follow tag doesn't mean everybody does. The last time I checked Ask would follow no follow tags and there are some ad services that do their own back link testing that will follow these links and this could raise the amount you collect for showing their ads.

There are the reasons to not worry about the no follow tag but what if you want to find blogs that don't use the no follow tag in the comments?

The most obvious way is to find a comment and look at the page source, pour through all the code looking for the link on the name and seeing if the no follow tag is in the link. This will drive you crazy if you do it a lot of times but it does work.

The good news is that you don't have to do it that way. If you are using FireFox or Flock as your browser you can get an addon that will highlight all the no follow tags on a page. It is called SEO for FireFox and you can get it from SEOTools.com or you can search SEO for FireFox addon in Google.

This plugin will provide you with a lot of SEO information but it will also highlight any links that have no follow tags in red. If you find a post with comments if the name for the comment is highlighted in red it has no follow tags. Don't worry if you get tired of the red highlights you can turn the plugin off with a click at the bottom of your browser.

There are a couple of plugins that blog masters will add to their blogs that automatically removes the no follow tag from the comments and another plugin that will reward the people that comment frequently by removing the no follow tags from that individuals comments. This plugin is Lucia's Linky Love.

Once Lucia's is installed the blog master can set up the comments so that after a person make so many comments the no follow tag is removed for that person.

It checks the name and email address to see if this person has ever commented before and keeps track of all the ones that match. If you use different names (which has already been pointed out as a no no) or different emails you will never have the no follow tags removed.

Most commonly this is set at 3 to 5 posts before the no follow tags are removed but the blog master can set if from 3 to a million if they like.

How do you find blogs that use Lucia's Linky Love plugin? The easiest way is to use Google's Blogsearch, put your keywords in quotes and then put a plus sign and then Lucia's Linky in quotes and do you search. It should look something like this "keyword phrase"+"Lucia's Linky" you results should sow you posts that are related to your keywords and using Lucia's Linky Love plugin.

On my blogs I usually have this set at three and I review the comments on a regular basis any comments that read like pure spam I delete. Because I delete them the spammers never get to the magic number of three and the no follow stays in place. This leads to more comments that are usually more informative.

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