Success with natural link building is one big feat, especially for new blogs. Do you want to know what I’ve discovered on how to get inbound links?
Be a good blog reader.
What the hell about being a good visitor or reader that will get you links?
If you have a blog, how do you expect your visitor to behave? Maybe many would say, “Duh, I want them to click my AdSense ads, of course!” But seriously, aside from going away from your blog because they found an ad that interested them, how else would you want your readers to act when they get to your blog?
If you have provided quality content that made them keep on nodding while reading it and made them jump from one page of your blog to another, which usually means they like what your blog contains and are eager to consume more, that’s another action that you want your readers to do, right?
But what else would you want your reader to do that will increase the value of your blog?
You want them to leave comments.
One of the SEO lessons that I have learned as a blogger is that if you want your blog to reach a good search engine placement, say first page of the SERPs, aside from getting people to link to it, it’s important that you get people to leave comments. Now I’m not saying that you have to keep on leaving comments on every blog post that you read.
Those that interested you the most, those that you found most useful and got you thinking - those are the blogs or blog posts that deserve comments.
What are the consequences if you leave a comment to a blog post? Either the blog owner responds to your comment or not. But whether the blog owner decides to respond to your comment or not, you have already contributed your two cents’ worth.
Leaving a comment is a display of appreciation. And if you have become a regular reader of that blog and you grew to love participating in the discussions that that blog start AND the blog owner decides to reward your loyalty, you may get a blogroll backlink OR…
You may get an in text backlink from one of the blog posts, which is what I’ve learned more beneficial in some ways. Search engine optimization experts appraise backlinks from content as more valuable than a blogroll link or a sidebar backlink because of the pagerank juice (vote of trust that a site that received a backlink) that it receives and the better chance of getting traffic from that backlink since it’s mentioned contextually or it was a part of the story that that blog post told.
You may get that coveted in-text backlink if you have become a preferred blog reader. One characteristic of a preferred blog reader is someone who leaves comments that add to the conversation. These types of comments more thought-provoking than ”Great post!”, “Thanks for the advice.”, worse - “Buy cialis” or “Please visit my blog.”
Now maybe you’re pissed that I did not just give this post a title like “Get a Free Backlink by Leaving a Comment” or “Comments Can Get You Backlinks”.
Emphasizing that you don’t just leave comments anywhere is important if you want this way of link building to be effective. You should only leave linkworthy comments on blogs that are related to your blog’s topic. Ask a question that the writer of the blog hasn’t tackled yet or share new tips and tricks.
Now start adding to the conversations around the blogosphere. You can start here. 
[image from Shenghung Lin]
31 comments ↓
I have found comments to be a great way to get both links and traffic. It is always surprising to see how many people check out my blog just by clicking on my name in other blog comment sections!
By the way, thanks for visiting and commenting on my blog.
I just wish I could freeze time and just follow the links where they lead me. There’s so much interesting stuff online, but too many unfortunately.
Hi Genesis,
No sweat! I’m an at-home-aunt who loves to read WAHM blogs.
One good thing about blogs is they allow you to… blog-hop from one blog to another, to another, until you get tired of absorbing all the new info you can. And that’s just what I so love doing.
Hello Rico,
Info-overload. That’s what I usually get everytime I check out my RSS reader. It’s ultra-counterproductive, too. So yeah, if only there’s a time machine.
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