In my opinion there is nothing wrong with developing a quality back link from a decent blog post that you have taken the time to comment on. In matter of fact, if like me you like to comment often on blogs, as you may know it is a fantastic way to increase the amount of inbound links directing towards your website. However, there is a “right” way and a definite “wrong” way to go about accomplishing this.

Before I start ranting about the things you should not do, allow me to point out that gaining links by using blog commenting is a benefit and not a right. In other words, gaining a link should not be your main objective. You should be commenting in order to bring something towards the conversation.

I believe that if you take the time to read and place a good comment on my blog then I really don’t mind giving you that chance of a back link to your website, after all you took the time to read my blog.

Here is a brief list of things “not to do” when commenting on blogs;

• Don’t leave comments like “great post” or “I agree” and then include a link. It is quite blatant and obvious that you are there only to try to earn some unearned link juice. Leave comments like that on this blog and they will be deleted. I will also take the time to add your ip on the spam list so next time you can’t even post.

• Make sure your comment is “quality value”. Poor information,spelling, grammar or even abuse can and will look badly on you, of course doing you more harm than good.

• Don’t try to stuff keyword rich, anchor text in the “Name” field. Most bloggers know your name is not “Cheap Viagra” or some other keyword stuffed phrase. If this practice does not get your comment deleted, many bloggers (definitely myself) will edit what you included and will delete your website link. A simple way of doing this is sometimes use a first name and your second name as a keyword.

• Use the URL field to include your link instead of adding to the actual Comment field itself. There are times where a link is warranted in the main body of the comment but most often if simply linking to your site, the “URL” field is the best place to include a link.

• Don’t mass comment all at once. When I see the same person commenting on a number of posts, each time their intentions are blatant. Strange that I rarely find quality comments when this happens.

• Don’t spam the same comment over and over across multiple blogs. This sometimes occurs when several bloggers are covering the same major story or news. Remember that many bloggers in any particular “niche” know each other. Comment spammers can be easily identified and dealt without much effort at all.

The bottom line is to use blog commenting in the way it was originally designed. Most often it takes little time, it allows you to interact with the author of the post as well as other people, you may attract visitors to your own site when you add quality to the post and you’ll get a lovely back link in the meantime and of course adding to your page rank.

This is going to be a quick post but I though I will make a quick statement after getting a email from someone who saw my last article about getting traffic from ebay.

They emailed me to ask if I had any more tips about getting traffic from unexpected sources and in my my reply I asked how what have they done once the website is built?

“Well Dan, when I built my website I done the keywords and then started to get backlinks and join up to forums like digitalpoint”

To my amazment the reply was the same everytime and this is quite disturbing up to a point. After I build my websites I start promoting it it the same way as I would promote anything (im a dj and club promoter in the real world).  I look at my target and then go after them !

To start getting at least some traffic I tell my friends, family and anything that has a pair of ears about my new amazing website that they should have a look at and tell me what they think and give me honest reviews.

After all your website is nothing without real people is it?

The average person know at least  250 people(according to google) who they have met and spoke to on a friendly basis more than once, this mean that even if you told 75 people of those 250 thats 75 hits on your website that you didn’t have in the first place. Why not tell real humans rather than just promote on the internet?

There is so many options about promoting your website offline so why not give it a try?

These are a few basic guidelines I use when I start a new website once I’m happy for people to view it and hopefully you will take notice of one of them :

1 : For example I have a facebook acount and promote like hell, tell anyone that will listen, I also get family, friends to stick my link on all of there status. Just remember that the average person has at least 100friends on facebook some social network sites have even more i.e myspace is a average if 300 friends!

2: I use vistaprint as they offer 250 business cards for about £2 postage and you get high quality business cards withiin a few days. I dont mind just chucking them anywhere I can get away with as they are so cheap and disposable but do the job they are intended for. I think every phone box in Suffolk has seen my cards

3: Even though I hate Twitter with a passion, I do have a couple hundred followers and of those about 50 will follow my links and view my website. I also get a couple of friends and family to “tweet” my link so even more coverage for my website.

4: I am quite lucky as I work in a office thats quite small (400people or so) so I can get away with emailing them all  at the same time, but my point once again is that even if 80 of the 400 people look at my website then thats 80 people that looked at my website. This takes me about 5minutes to write a email if that!

5: I change all of my signatures in forums that I use to my new website with my keyword anchor text. i.e Suffolk Seo

6: Email, its a tool we all use pretty much on a daily basis so why not use that signature of yours to self promote?

I think your starting to get to grips on what I’m trying to put forward to you?

Think slightly out of the box and remember that just because your website is “virtual” it doesn’t mean than you cant market or promote your website to real people in the real world.

Start with the basics and then start your link building, seo, optimizing and what ever else comes with it.