We all know why bloggers should comment on other blogs: For the benefits of backlinks, traffic, and branding.
The difficult part is drawing a line between self-promotion and building a powerful brand. Some of you may know that itchy feeling of dropping a link to your best article and using your keyword name as your commentator name (along with other mistakes new bloggers often make).
Commenting remains one of the easiest ways to drive traffic.
Building backlinks and forming relationships with other bloggers are certainly some key benefits of strong commenting habits. There are, however, people who focus on quantity, perhaps misunderstanding that more comments do not equal more traffic and improved relationships with fellow bloggers.
The only time comments will help is if the comments add value and are meaningful, useful additions to a post.
Always remember, when talking about comments:
- Quality is better than quantity.
And indeed, I have personal experience to back up this statement, as my blog has benefited from good commenting habits, and I have built good relationships with other bloggers by adding useful, meaningful comments onto their blogs.
What kind of blog comments do we hate?
I moderate more than 100 comments every day, and I know what kind of comments make me feel good or give me food for thought, and what kind of comments leave me with a negative feeling or no feeling at all.
For example:
- “Nice info!”
- “Great share!”
- “Useful post”
- “Amazing write-up!”
Such comments may be positive in nature, but they add no value whatsoever to the post. Nobody wants to read a meaningless drivel that simply takes up space. A blog’s commenting feature should only be used to add value to the post.
If you are making the mistake of adding meaningless 2-3 word comments on various blogs, you are wasting your time, and more importantly, you are wasting the time of the other blogger — annoying fellow bloggers is not the point of commenting.
You might add 100 comments on various posts of any blog, but you will never build a good relationship with that blogger, you will never benefit from your meager efforts, and you will be hurting your own brand name.
How can you add value to your comments?
Let’s talk about how to develop a practice of good, strong, meaningful commenting that will benefit you and your fellow bloggers and readers.
First, I suggest that you sign up for Gravatar so that you can add a personal image or brand image to your commenting profile. This is a must-have requisite when looking to brand yourself.
Next, whenever you read a post that you find useful or meaningful in some way, think about how you can add value to that post.
If you read a post that you think is deserving of only a “good info” or “good share”, then you don’t have anything meaningful to add to the post, and don’t comment. But, if you liked the post, you should consider sharing the article to show your appreciation and/or respect.
If you are going to add commentary, state clearly what you liked about the post, or mention how the post has helped or enlightened you as a reader. If you have additional information, add it within the context of your comment.
Have you tweeted the post? If so, mention it in your comment. This will let the blogger know that you respect what he/she has written and that you appreciate and value the great work that he/she does.
For more info on commenting, check out this awesome resource:
Add your thoughts on commenting in the comments section below! But make sure it’s adding value!!
If you find the information in this post useful, share it with your friends!
![How To Start A Blog in 2025 [Blogging Guide For Beginners]](https://www.shoutmeloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/blog-431x230.jpg)
Hi Harsh,
This is a really interesting point because I don’t think that man bloggers learn to refine their commenting strategy until they’ve been doing it for a while. One thing I learned after going through my analytics yesterday was certain blogs provided much stickier traffic from my commenting efforts even though they may have not have yielded as many visitors. That to me is more valuable then the person who comes and looks at a site for 30 seconds. One thing that I have found effective is to pick about 5 blogs and take an active role in the conversation there. While I still comment on others it’s really about applying the 80/20 rule and focusing your efforts on high ROI activities.
Blog commenting is very important and i get some nice traffic to my blog while commenting on other blogs. I believe that the commentator should have something to contribute to the discussion. Blog commenting also helps you to make some brilliant relationship with your readers.
I can’t stand those annoying two word comments, they are almost as bad as those comments that say something like “Inspiring post added you to my RSS feed” when the post could be just a photo! Often than not I do RT a blog post so I don’t need to mention it in a comment, oh I just have 😉
A budding blogger here :). Got a gravatar.
Comment should add to the info of the post, is what I think.
You are right. The reader should give his/her point of your either supporting or giving some contradicting views to get more insight and in this way more ppl can also pitch in the discussion…
All are some nice points Harsh when commenting on other blog, well we should try to build one good relation with other blogger by giving some nice comment.
I moderate all comments, so I get a chance to delete any “nice post” comment where the URL is from a site that the poster (or bot) is promoting. I don’t need links to spammy sites, even if they are no-followed.
Pingbacks from splogs are also deleted here. Far too many idiots out there using bots in the hope of getting links.
A decent comment needs to be several paragraphs in length. Then even a no-follow link to a splog “makemoneybuyviagra.com” can be excused. 🙂
my personal experience with comments tells that they get you more traffic than advertising
Yes, you are right? But, if a person is not from Tech background then it is difficult for him to post detailed comment.
It does matter that you comment in depth but only thing that matters is that you try to bong with other commentators while commenting.
My readers comment a lot on my posts and I am glad that they make lot of big comments .. sometimes its hard to match their length while replying 🙂
Manish
Hi Harsh,
Commenting is really worthy community building system but sometimes many visitors just add “Nice post” etc words on the blog in commenting section which is unethical way to go into hell.
If you want to be an authority,you should read complete blog post and then write any points or feedback about the post.
One more advantage of long and relevant commenting is to get popularity in the blog-sphere.
Isn’t it ?
Yeah you are right Harsh. Eespecially the gravatar point was true. It shows the loyalty of the readers towards the blog.
The first thing that we should do is reading the post first. You will only able leave a good comment after reading it.
dude… I was about to ask you the same
I just forgot it when we met that day
thnx a ton for this post
Most of the people don’t even read the post before they comment, so i think your post will teach most of us a good lesson! And like to add some more to this…. if you don’t have something valuable to say…. just try to find something to add to that post or try to find a place where you are unclear in that post and ask it… 😀
Now a days generally all big blogs are no follow. Difficult to find big blogs.
Even if you don’t have anything to add to a post, you could always ask a question, or even better suggest a post idea to clarify your doubts on a related topic! According to my experience, commenting on blogs providing newsletters is eespecially very useful in terms of traffic. The visitors are usually looking for additional info, and follow you through useful comments.
All Points are True And Gravatar is a Must SO That You Have Your Own Identity…But To Encourage the Commenter To Comment more The Blogger Should Also Do Something Like Having Commentluv/KeywordLuv/Top Commenter Widget Will Also Help To Increase The Comments and That Too Quality Comments 🙂
Btw Retweeted 😉
Yes that’s right. Commenting is the best way to get backlinks and increase your ranking on search engines. By the way, I would like to congratulate Harsh because ShoutMeLoud is again back on track with <10k Alexa ranking. 😉
for clicks, back links, invitation to them to visit my blogs 🙂