How to Get Backlinks: Blog Comments
Credit: DarrenSpruyt.com
When I first started my own website, I thought I knew everything I needed to know (beside all of that technical stuff). I could write well, present a strong identity and personality, and make things pretty enough.
The rest could come later, if ever. Search Engine Optimization? Don’t care. HTML? Yeah, I’ll just download plugins. Pay-Per-Click advertising? No way.
Now, things have changed completely. I spend more time thinking about and researching that stuff than I ever thought possible. In fact, much of my professional life focuses on these significant little gems of knowledge.
But there was still one area of focus I ignored: backlinks.
Yes, just the word makes me want to roll my own eyes. Everyone talks about how to get backlinks. All the freaking time. Like I care?!
Well, I do. Big time, too. If you want to show search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! that you exist and have relevance, you need backlinks. You need to show that other sites lead back to you. That you know your stuff. That searchers would benefit from your work.
This change of heart came from downloading the Alexa plugin to my Google Chrome toolbar. I wanted to creep on my site like it was an old high school sweetheart. I wanted to know where it was going, who it was hanging out with, and whether or not it remembered me.
You get a lot of information from this nifty plugin, including a list of all of the sites that link back to you. At first, I had 6. Which is barely anything. I continued on one with a very simple practice I enjoyed, and then I realized that I was noticing major changes in my Alexa rank.
What was that one thing? I was commenting on relevant sites.
One of my websites is a kitchen blog, which means I write about home affairs (that mostly revolve around my love of food and deep discounts). I love this stuff, which is why I blog about it. I would visit different blogs, and leave friendly comments in response to these wonderful posts that included a little link to my site (in the “Who are you?” section of the comments – never spam!).
Web (Photo credit: Images by John 'K')
Almost overnight, my sites linking in when from 6 to 26. All I did was one little thing. It took about 20 minutes of my time, and started building even stronger and deeper links in the back parts of the internet.
Plus, I was increasing my understanding of my competition and coming up with post ideas.
This is crucial reconnaissance that you NEED to take advantage of if you want your website to grow, become a better blogger, and even increase traffic, comment on other blogs. It’s worth it. Or, you can hire someone to do this for you. Would you want to outsource your professional networking in the real world, though? Or would you be okay with your intern (essentially) doing that for you?