One of the best ways to drive a lot of extra traffic to your own blog and website, is by commenting on other blogs.  This is a wise SEO strategy for one compelling reason.  Because backlinks are considered to be great “Google juice”, the number of backlinks that are created can dramatically increase website traffic.  An effective search engine optimization strategy should include following at least ten blogs within your niche market, and reading/commenting on three blogs per day.

Three comments with backlinks every day for 365 days would result in 1,095 extra backlinks.  If each backlink only encouraged one extra person to check out your website, that would conservatively bring almost a hundred people per month to your own website of blog.  Even if a lot of the backlinks are no follows, some search engines still recognize them, such as Yahoo Search.

Another reason that commenting on blogs is a wise SEO strategy is that when you allow for blog comments on your own blog, there is an opportunity for additional keywords to be recognized.  FOr example, if you write a blog post about how to lose weight, and I comment that I usually recommend a gluten-free diet as well, when someone searches “gluten free”, your blog may appear in the search engine results because I had mentioned that keyword.

Keep in mind that there is an etiquitte to leaving blog comments.  Many blogs, such as Cheryl Heppard and Front Street PR, invite people to include their website url when leaving comments.  This is an open invitation.  However, if there isn’t a box that asks for that information, it is considered bad manners and very spammy to leave a website address.  This could result in having your comment deleted, and possibly blacklisted on certain SPAM directories.  You can always contact the blog owner and ask their permission.   I don’t mind website addresses on Michigan Health Coach, but the program I use doesn’t offer that feature.

So get out there and start commenting! And oh look, you’re on a blog right now. . . . .