I really was going to wait much longer before handing out secrets on this site, but the pressure is killing me. I spend the better part of my mornings reading “expert” blogs and learning from the best “gurus” in the business. They all want you to pay for this information I am about to reveal to you. I have researched for thousands of hours to come up with this plan to boost your SEO to the next level, so feel free to link back to me so I can get credit please (I plan on writing a book later and will need all the credit I can get for this one!)
SEO Is All About Backlinks:
- The first really big secret is that you MUST go out and drop links on every directory, bookmarking, and submission site you can find on a list.
- Second, go out and slam some forums with links in your signature
- Third, comment on 50 blogs a day
- Fourth, join every social networking site known to man (and some that aren’t known to man) and spam your links everywhere.
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Fifth and final secret………….. DON’T EVER BELIEVE “EXPERTS”
Ok, there you have it. And I am by no means an expert in any of this! What I am, is a guy who has spent a couple of years developing sites, writing content, and experimenting with different techniques to get the results I was after. Some of my regular readers are much better at this than I am, some are not (I can look at your code and see how much you know).
Seriously, how many times have you seen this advice? If you take it seriously, you really don’t belong on a computer. I have seen so many times that you must chase down the “do-follow” blogs and forums to get links and then your PR will rise! Let me tell you another secret, it is all LIES!!!!
Blog Commenting is Advertising:
Yes, this one is actually true, commenting on blogs really has nothing to do with SEO, it does however help you to PROMOTE and ADVERTISE your site. But as with any form of advertising, if it isn’t done properly, it simply will not work.
Trust me when I tell you, you can go out and get thousands of comment links and not ever reach a PR3 and your traffic won’t ever increase. Also, you can go out and get 500 comment links and your PR may jump to a 5 and your traffic could become more than your host can handle.
Let me clarify, the PR doesn’t matter, so don’t fret over it. The advertising does matter. If you enjoy commenting on blogs (and I really do, ask some of the people who comment here how many sites a day they see me on) and you are ACTUALLY passionate about the topic you are commenting on, it will show. If you are digging for links, it will also show.
If your comments are compelling, people click over to your site, if your content on your site is awesome, then they decide to link to you in an article, or even better, from their sidebar or homepage. Now you have made some headway! That is a “natural” link, which is at least 100x better than those comment or forum links you thought were valuable.
My point is this:
Commenting on blogs is great for building community and for advertising, it is also a great way to network. What it is not is any part of SEO. If you are talented enough to write good content on your blog, then you are talented enough to write a good comment. Think of your commenting (on other blogs) as an extension of your content, is it compelling enough for someone to click your link? If it is, you are golden!
Take commenting seriously, and forget about the “backlinks” from the comments, try to write content in your comments and it will be the best “trick” you have ever learned!
27 Comments, Comment or Ping
Wow I thought my blog was the only one you came by
LOL Hey you have a great point because your comment on my blog is the exact reason that brought me here.
Case dismissed
January 4th, 2010
Your points greatly influence on my blog. Before I only think for get backlink by commenting only. But now a days I am seeing lots of traffic by commenting on other blogs. So now I try to put valuable comment on blogs.
January 5th, 2010
I’m also a supporter for quality comments too.
Some handy tips you have there and thank you for sharing them. It’s true that sometimes we need to think about our blogging goals. What truly matters? Is it to build a relationship with readers or simply ‘good post’ type of comments? Nice meeting you on Twitter, keep up the good work in your blog writing too.
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
January 5th, 2010
Thanks and “nice meeting you on Twitter” Ching!
Sometimes I can get stuck on what truly matters for a while, but if we keep in mind that actual people surf the net, we will be fine…
January 5th, 2010
You have an awesome point there, I like commenting because it gets my name out there to other bloggers and their readers. Plus, it’s a way to show my support to other bloggers.
January 5th, 2010
Great advice Keith. I only wish I had more hours in the day to read more content and leave thoughtful comments.
January 5th, 2010
Fortunately for you Todd, your site is well established already and is doing well. It is a great example of how to build a blog and promote it.
Thanks for using what little time you have to comment here!
January 5th, 2010
Keith, such a great post. As an SEO consultant I see where you are going with this. As I grow with knowledge, I am finding that backlinks are the way to go. I am about to to run some tests on a new account (my wife’s new blog) and start a backlinks campaign with her. Only problem I will have is getting her to be more active with social media.
As for me with my sites, I have a hard time finding 10 or 15 sites to make meaningful comments. Generally I can only comment on several comments a day. I try and at least comment on 5 to 10 blogs a day.
I read a lot of SEO so called expert sites. I always take these so called SEO exprets posts with a grain of salt. You have to remember, SEO gurus and upper level SEO guys(I am not, I consider myself a novice), will not share everything and they diffently won’t share their secret weapons in the SEO game. Most of them post articles and run their blog sites, not to be helpful but as a way to drive buisness to their sites.
January 5th, 2010
Thanks for the well written comment. These gurus won’t share everything because there isn’t really that much to it. Keyword research, internal linking, outbound links, title and alt tags, etc… but most important is content fit for people to read, not bots.
thanks again for the comment and I hope to see you here more…
January 5th, 2010
Commenting on popular blogs can bring in tons of visitors. If the post gets indexed and ranked well, you get even more visitors.That is the main use of blog commenting.
January 5th, 2010
Backlinks and page rank building exercises are very important, IMHO. The process of finding suitable places to build backlinks, including blogs like this one that use CommentLuv, article directories, and forums on your topic is helpful to understanding how credibility is built on the internet. Even if you’re unable to gain many backlinks, the exercise of searching and learning is critical.
Writing quality content is important, but, a lot of content suitable for mass consumption in blogging is re-hashing other material that can be found on other blogs. In this respect, its difficult to get bloggers to link to your content, as they may already have a go-to blogger for that same content.
So, no, page rank and number of backlinks isn’t the end-all-be-all. But, the engaging in the process of building these metrics is essential to having a well-rounded understanding of promoting online content.
January 5th, 2010
Keith, Backlinks do play a very big role in Google’s pagerank algorithm and there are several ways to get backlinks, but you are correct that it may or may not increase your PR.
I use to be the person who shared ways in backlinking your way to a higher PR, but now I’m a firm believer that bloggers should concentrate on writing compelling content that bloggers will want to link to.
Submitting to directories, and including your link in forum signatures is still helpful, but building backlinks & PR should not be your main focus.
January 5th, 2010
You obviously did NOT read the article….
January 5th, 2010
I don’t have any proof yet, but I believe that the backlinks you “drop” in forums, directories are devalued by google and they can tell the difference between a “dropped” link and a “natural” link. This is why you see sites with thousands of links be a PR2 and sites with less than 100 links become PR4-5.
I think the algorithm is changing, they know people go out and build links through these forums and directories, and in all honesty, just because you post something on a forum, doesn’t mean you have a trusted site. If I can see that, then I am sure these engineers and think tank wizards see that too and work to make changes so it is more accurate of a measure.
Of course, this is just the way I see it, and from my research and testing, I am probably on the right page, or at least in the right chapter.
January 5th, 2010
Thanks for your advice, which is best blog commenting or social networking?
January 6th, 2010
back links are best for ranking, but quality back links are more necessary for keeping the top positions in search engines
January 6th, 2010
It depends on what you are after. I essence though, both are networking.
January 6th, 2010
Incoming links are all you need for SEO. But you need to work smart and hard to get them.
January 6th, 2010
Really? So, we don’t need to pay attention to title tags, keyword placement, url slugs, internal linking, meta descriptions, 301 redirects, broken links, oh and content?
That is why your site has 40k links, is almost 3yrs old and is a PR3?
Proof that the links don’t necessarily give you PR right there folks!
January 6th, 2010
Hi Keith,
I like your blog.
I’m learning more about SEO and honestly I find it quite boring. On the other hand I find commenting on blogs much more interesting, and in some cases pretty darn fun.
I’m a Twitter addict and I see a lot of my traffic coming from Twitter. By far the best thing I’ve done since I started blogging (besides writing good content) was joining Blog Engage. It’s such a diverse community that there is never a dull moment. I wouldn’t have searched Google, Bing or anywhere else looking for any of the great content I’ve discovered at Blog Engage.
Thanks for the conversation.
@Ileane
January 7th, 2010
The most important link you can get for SEO purposes is a content link. Having a body of text surrounding your link in the area of a page has much more value than a sidebar link, a footer link etc (hence the real power of guest blogging).
There is a bit more to SEO than just links and content, SEO has to include, as an example, conversion rate optimization, especially for e-commerce stores without blogs attached, you also have 301 and 404 management, URL canonicalization, and so on, things that if they are not handled properly can have your site penalised for not facilitating the ‘user experience’.
I’m totally with you about blog commenting, it is more of a way of getting you and your brand out there and in front of people. Commenting on blogs can lead to bigger and better things such as being invited by the site-owner to become a guest blogger etc or even to form a joint venture partnership.
All the best Keith,
Karl
January 7th, 2010
The body tag was removed from my sentence but it should have read ‘Having a body of text surrounding your link in the body area of a page has much more value than a sidebar link, a footer link etc (hence the real power of guest blogging).’
Makes a bit more sense to read it like that.
January 7th, 2010
That was my point on “natural links” but you explained much better!
Would you like to guest post here?
.-= Keith´s last blog ..Why You Should Link Out: =-.
January 7th, 2010
SEO can be boring but it can’t be ignored either.
.-= Keith´s last blog ..Why You Should Link Out: =-.
January 7th, 2010
That was my point on “natural links”…’ sorry Keith, was meant to reference your post to clarify my point but got passionate and started rambling. lol
But yes, natural always works best. Ask any long serving SEO if they had to start again (for their own website) what they would do differently, you’d probably be told that they would build more inbound links to their internal pages (deep linking) rather than having all the links pointing to their homepage.
It doesn’t need spelling out which of the two looks more natural to the search engines.
‘Would you like to guest post here?’ I’ll hold you to that if that Keith.
January 7th, 2010
Send an article to me anytime Karl, you are always welcome to post here. If you want I can create a sign on for you to get in and write one from the admin, or you can send me the html and I will paste it in.
Shoot, your comments are like getting guest posts already, you might as well get “natural” links out of it!
January 7th, 2010
The one things I have learn from SEO guru that blog comment is one feature of SEO. You are the one person who is writing that blog commenting is part of SEM. I have read your two posts and found knowledge.
September 4th, 2010
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