Although blog commenting has lately become a “spammers’ heaven” due to spamming tools like Scrapebox and Xrumer, there are some great methods to get some valuable links from niche-related blogs with few to ’0′ already approved comments. This does not mean you should build your strategy only on blog comments but it is “yet another piece of the puzzle” that you should work upon.

Here are some tips to get the most out of blog comments:

1. Use names instead of keywords

There are many other linking opportunities where you can grab a link with your keyword as anchor so at least for blogs, try to use your real name in the comments. Once you have used keywords instead of names this triggers a red flag for the blogger and chances to approve your comment drastically decrease. Tip: KeywordLuv blogs allow you using name@keyword so you are getting both trust and some anchored link juice.

2. Contribute with your expertise

If you are commenting on a niche related blog it is a natural thing that you should know a few things about that industry. Create a comment that contributes/adds value to the blog post even if you argue with it. Constructive comments are always welcomed.

3. Subscribe to future comments

If you have written an insightful comment maybe the author or other readers would like to hear more about your points. Subscribe to future comments and try to come back when other folks are asking you questions/argue with your comment etc.

4. Go for quality instead of quantity

Opting for mass comments is definitely the wrong way to do it. Always aim for quality websites that manually approve comments and try sticking with fewer comments/week but on authority niche related sites.

Although with latest Google algorithm updates lots of rumours related to whether backlinks from blog comments help or not, it is almost a certain thing that they do work. Tested and proven by many folks from webmaster forums! However, what is the proper way of doing this?

There are two ways in which you can build links through blog comments to a website: there is the mass commenting (with tools like Scrapebox you can literally comment on thousands of blogs in few hours) or manual commenting on high-pr, related blogs. Each of these strategies has its positive and negative aspects.

1.      Mass commenting

Pro – easy to harvest massive amounts of blog posts and to comment on those; just click a button and watch the software doing the job

Cons – many blogs are nofollow, are unrelated to your industry and/or are already spammed to death by other people, thus getting less link juice to your site; potential links from “shady neighbourhood”.

2.      Manual commenting

Pro – comment only on relevant blogs,  only get links from high PR blog posts, sort the dofollow from nofollow, get more link juice from non spammed blogs

Cons – It is difficult to find only high pr dofollow blogs, requires a hectic work and research; few chances of getting the comment approved when commenting with an anchor text

When it comes to the first method, it is only a numbers’ game – you can get massive amounts of backlinks with ease, but are they more valuable than links coming from niche-related dofollow blogs? Some people consider they are, some consider they are not. The best way of finding this out for yourself would be to try them both. Word of advice: do not try the mass commenting feature directly on your website or things could turn back against you for spamming other people’s blogs and getting links from “shady neighbourhood”.

While “content is king” and always will be, allowing visitors to participate and comment on your blog can make your blog more attractive and more interactive, thus creating a strong relationship with your readers and most of the times making them come back for more.

Here are some great tips to attract comments on your blog:

1.     Ask questions

Whenever you write a new post end it with questions, for example “what do you think about this method?”, “have you ever heard about better tools than this?” and so on.

2.      Ask your friends to start the discussion

Most of the times people do not comment on posts where nobody else commented, therefore it would be a great strategy to ask some of your friends to help you out at the beginning by adding some valuable comments to your blog posts.

3.       Dofollow? YES!

There are multiple plugins that make your blog a dofollow one, however this strategy should be approached carefully while once you turn your blog into a dofollow one you will also notice massive increase of spam comments. Top commenter’s is also a great method to make people contribute to your site and also gaining a link on your homepage.

4.      Create “unfinished” lists

If you are writing top x lists, always make them somehow incomplete. Allow people to add “numbers” to your list by not sharing the whole one. Create from “top 10 list” a “top 5 one”, this will definitely increase your comments’ numbers.

5.    Keep it simple!

Do not request people to register in order to place a comment, leave the comments open to everyone, but in the same time moderated. By asking them to register on your blog you might just tell them “comments are closed” if, of course, you are not SEOMOZ.

Many people are wondering nowadays how can they create a successful blog and how to maintain its success for long time. From corporate blogs to personal blogs, this article will highlight the most important aspects of blogging.
1. The biggest mistake someone can do when creating a blog is by choosing a niche that he/she has no clue about. The second biggest mistake is not choosing a niche at all and just writing about general subjects that burst into your mind. Niche-targeted blogs are the most read ones, that is a fact.

2. The next question is how often the content should be updated. This only depends on what kind of blog it is, what kind of information you will deliver and a few other aspects. For example, you could write only twice a week and have a tremendous amount of readers or you will have to write 1-2 posts daily, depending on where your content is syndicated, where does your traffic come from etc. In the end, more is always better.

3. Stay up-to-date with any news, rumours and gossip related to your niche. You will always find out new things to write about.

4. Always keep it simple when it comes to social bookmarking or any other sharing method, whether it is Twitter or Facebook. There are plenty of plugins to help you achieve this, just upload-install and you are ready to be syndicated.

5. Always communicate with your readers; from replying to comments to adding different polls or any other interaction methods, make your visitors feel welcomed and start building online relationships.

Feedback from your blog readers is most of the time underestimated but at the same time it is one of the most important aspect of blogging. A “like” on Facebook, a Tweet on Twitter, even a comment is a sign that your blog is important and the post you have recently published is a good one.

Of course, there is no ideal recipe for developing a strong relation with your readers, however there are some tricks that could definitely increase your trust and “love-sharing” among your readers:

1.      Ask questions – by asking questions you give the opportunity to your readers to leave a comment and start a discussion based on a blog post of yours

2.      Readability – this means a clean design, no hundreds of banners and pop-ups, perfectly written text and so on

3.      Participate as well – you have published your post, you’ve got some comments, but are you participating to discussions as well? Answer questions, talk to your readers and develop a strong relationship with them

4.      Become more personal – if you will only write “for the search engines” you will end up nowhere, in terms of building a relation with your readers; try to be as natural as possible

5.      Offer just a small piece of the puzzle – when readers subscribe to your RSS feed they should be sent only a preview from your article and not the whole thing; chances are that they will want to read the whole story and click on the link, thus landing on your website once and again

Of course, more can be said about how to build a relationship with your readers but these five tips are definitely a great start for any blogger, whether you write on a personal blog or a corporate blog as well.

The great thing about this tool called Scrapebox is that it is probably the best harvesting/commenting tool ever released in the wild. Although most webmasters consider it a spamming tool (and it definitely can be) it is always a great help when trying to find niche-related websites or even harvesting a list of proxy for other uses.

One of the best features that Scrapebox offers is the possibility of finding quick auto-approve blogs, whether we are talking about BlogEngine, WordPress or any other blogging platform. But aren’t auto-approve blogs almost 100% spammed to death, you may ask? What are the benefits of having an auto-approve blog list? We will talk about this in the following post.

Warning! This is quite a blackhat method but as we said before, we will reveal all kinds of methods link-building related, whether they are whitehat or blackhat. OK, so let’s put the wheels in motion.

First you want to find a highly spammed page, one like this one: http://www.internetsafetydad.net/post/Internet-Safety-e28093-different-rules-for-different-ages.aspx As you probably know, BlogEngine blogs are usually auto-approve, do-follow blogs, so this page could be a great start. You see, there are almost 3,000 comments there so placing your link on this page will not bring you any benefit, however, it could also be a negative vote for your website.

So we have posted the URL into Scrapebox, now you want to use the Addon called Link Extractor. This will extract all outbound links from that page, and this is exactly what we are looking for. Once you have got them all, save the links and import them again into Scrapebox. Next, you will want to use the Backlink Checker Addon and see where those guys got  other links from as well. The massive list that you will end up with should be saved and again, import them back to Scrapebox. From here on, remove duplicate URLs/domains, list them for blog comments and do a test blast with a URL like http://www.xrusjgrt.com. Once you have finished, use the Check Links feature and instantly see where your comments stuck from the first blast. Those should be your auto-approve blogs.

Notice that you should definitely use private proxies for commenting and free ones for harvesting. OK, from now on it’s up  to you what to do with the list. You can use it for your link pyramids, use it to faster index your valuable backlinks or even sell it on Fiverr, the possibilities are endless.