Drive Traffic to Your Site with a 6-Step Blog Comments Blueprint

One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your web site is by commenting on other people's blogs. However, a vast majority of people don't do this the right way. Their primary traffic strategy is to leave meaningless comments on the posts of blogs in their niche just to get a few clicks from the passing traffic. I get these comments all the time on my blog, and wonder why the commenter bothered. I just delete the posts because they add nothing to the conversation, or, worse yet, are a blatant attempt at promoting someone's site or product.

Serious bloggers value great content over everything else, and only value those comments that are on topic and enhance or add to the conversation on their blog. Any comments on the blog should meaningfully continue the conversation started by the blogger. So, you could say that the secret to blog comments that successfully generate traffic come from establishing meaningful relationships through pertinent comments on blogs in your niche.

Here's your 6-step blueprint to driving traffic to your site via blog comments:

1. Use blog-specific search engines to find blog posts on which to comment. Some of the more popular ones are Google Blog Search, (link to http://blogsearch.google.com ) Technorati, (link to http://technorati.com) Blog Catalog, (link to http://blogcatalog.com) and Ice Rocket. (link to http://icerocket.com) In your search, make sure that you blog is read by potential clients, not your peers in your industry. As they say, there's no use preaching to the choir. As you decide which blogs to choose, pick blogs that seem to get traffic (as determined by Google Page Rank or Alexa ranking) and are getting a fair number of comments currently.

2. Pick your posts. Once you have identified 10-15 blogs that are relevant to your target market, identify posts that contain relevant content. Not all of them will, so be picky and choose the best posts.

3. Batch your research. This strategy works best if you dodo all of your searching at once and then do all of your commenting. Then, open a number of posts before reading and deciding to comment.

4. Format your comments. It's important to remain consistent as you post comments throughout the blogs your selected. Brand yourself by always using the same name and same email address. I also use my self-appointed title as a part of my name to give readers a quick view of what I do. Most importantly, always leave a comment that adds to the blog post or the conversation that is happening in the comments. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post" -- those comments are a waste of everyone's time.

5. Link to your site. Always leave a link back to your web site, but link to different pages, not always your home page. You might link to an offer page or a blog post or article that you've written about the topic of post on which you're commenting that would add additional information to the readers of the blog.

6. Frequency. More is better -- more comments mean more backlinks and more visits. Try to leave at least 5 posts a day at least 2 times a week.

For this strategy to be effective, blog commenting should be something that you add to your daily marketing activities. In just 30 minutes a day, you could add 3 to 5 comments to other people's blogs, resulting in 15 - 25 opportunities per week for new high quality links, more chances for direct targeted traffic, as well as connections to take your service business to new heights.