Is It OK To Comment on blogs and forums For Marketing Purposes?
Recently, we were queried about a couple of common SEO link building techniques - blog commenting and forum posting. Before exploring this issue, let's take a brief look at what this technique is. Blog commenting is a process by which one comments on another blog with the hope that it will generate some hits on the commenter's blog. On the other hand it creates interest in your own website and allows for people to know about your own work.
Although commenting on blogs is encouraged, mass commenting for the purpose of creating back-links to your own blog is otherwise known as spamming. Nowadays, there are several tools available for bloggers who wish to circumvent mass blogging and spamming. One of the best available is Akismet - http://akismet.com/. These tools are very useful for blocking out comments that are either abundant with keywords that are not relevant to the blog post or use a odd-looking name or URL. Another way of thwarting comment spam is the use of no-follow tags on blog comment links. These have proved quite effective as well. However, there are other kinds of comments that are seemingly acceptable marketing techniques. If a marketer posts comments on a blog that speaks about their website with back-links pointing cannot be considered as spam. Some still do. For back-link generating technique, they usually don't post their comments on any relevant blog. They specifically target popular ones and the posts that are related to their niche. They always try to identify the blogs with no-flag tags. In order to get back-linked, they comment on blogs but not only for the purpose of sharing their thoughts, also get links back to their sites for SEO purposes. So, is that spam?
According to us, it is not. We can further justify it. Television, radio and any other media advertiser searching for their popularity so they target to host their advertisement through the proper channel. All marketers don't prefer to take TV or Radio as a media for advertisement. There are marketing companies who advertise celebrities using their products. Nike pays movie makers and sports persons a lot of money for them to wear their apparel. Iron Man only drove Audi's. All these cannot be considered as spam. So when a commenter finds a blog and posts his comment to get popularity through back-link it is not a spam. So whenever this technique is used in a proper way then there will not be any risk in it.
Don't get carried away. Remember someone can spam your blog as well. Your competitor could use blog commenting too aggressively and beat you at the rankings race. In order to keep this as a feasible technique, this needs to be the same for everyone. Comment on the blogs that has some relevant post to you. Add your message in relation to the content of the blog. Add thoughts, opinions or information that will be valuable to the reader of the blog post. Resist the temptation not to do so. If that makes you post fewer comments so be it. You can at least know that you are doing the right thing. That way, everyone gets what they want.
Kenny Doucette operates The Click Depot - http://www.theclickdepot.com and aims to bring the power of Internet Marketing to local businesses in Raleigh North Carolina. Check out their services at http://www.theclickdepot.com/search-engine-optimization.html
