Blog Commenting – Making the Most Out of It

Since sites that are rich with relevant inbound links are rated favourably by search engines, link building is of vital importance in SEO.

By virtue of its ease, commenting on blogs has become a convenient and popular tactic for link building. Regularly scanning blogs by experts, reading news posts and adding comments that link back to the commenter’s website, seems be the quickest way out.

However blog commenting offers many more benefits; and you should aim to get much more returns from your comments. Here are some simple tips help you achieve this.

Technology Bloggers comment form

Showcase your awareness

Promoting yourself needn’t be equated with dramatic sales talk. In fact using blog commenting space for sales promotion is taboo.

On the other hand, simply adding a line of appreciation just to earn a link is not the right way either. Rather, invest some time in reading and comprehending the entire post and only then adding an insightful comment – comprising a minimum of three sentences – to enrich the conversation.

In this manner, blog commenting offers a good platform to showcase your awareness and experience and thus grow your brand.

Engage with the blogger

Some blogs make for extremely insightful and enjoyable reading. Why not try and develop a connect with those bloggers?

Following them on Twitter and other social media increases the exposure of their writings. Once they see you enriching the quality of their blog with well-thought of comments, they will be attracted to read and endorse your blog too.

Foster relations with the community

It’s quite likely that visitors of a particular blog, where you regularly submit comments on aren’t reading your blog as yet. The good news is that commenting on blogs is a great way to share your experiences and opinions, and establish yourself amongst a completely new set of readers.

Further, if you are a regular contributor of interesting and relevant comments, it could mean more opportunities for your blog. Replying directly to the comments of blog readers and initiating a conversation or debate on a specific subject, is great way to be recognized too. Replying to the first 4-5 comments enhances visibility within the community.

Finally, remember to be proactive on your blog too. While there aren’t many SEO advantages, blog commenting is a great tool for networking and building brand awareness.

Monitor your blog on a daily basis; always allow comments on your blog; and be sure to reply to those who have queries after reading your posts.

Do note that a lot of individuals commenting on blogs are bloggers too and there are benefits to be gained from having a good reputation among your peers.

Google Plus – a breath of fresh air?

For years websites like MSN and Facebook have been growing in numbers. Many rivals, less efficient and less popular social networking website, have died out as they are crushed by the giants. But Facebook seems immune from the possibility of extinction, with a growing number of users currently at over 640 million users!

MSN had a golden period and enjoyed strong competition with Facebook. But the Microsoft owned site has 120 million users and falling. It looks like MSN will be joining the likes of Bebo, Digg and Myspace.  I myself deleted my Myspace account when I decided to hop onto the Facebook bandwagon.

But for years it seemed that Facebook would never be challenged, and that was the case, until, now! A company which has 15 times the amount of revenue is stepping up to the plate. Google. The internet giant is taking over world computing. With 85% of the world using Google as their search engine, 15% of internet browsers in the world are Google Chrome – but this is fast growing – and now the $30 billion company is preparing to take on Facebook with its own social network – Google+.

In its two month infancy it is showing similar trends to Chrome and is rapidly growing in usage with 20 million worldwide users at the moment. Although this may seem puny, bear in mind it isn’t open to the world public entirely just yet.  At the moment, Google+ is an invitation only site until it opens fully in a couple of months.

I have put my name down to use it on its somewhat large waiting list. But what is all the hype?

Key Feature:

  • Circles – This allows me to group my friends, so for example:
    • Music pals – Joe, Tom, Abby…
    • School pals – Michael, Adam…
    • Work Colleagues – Jane, Adam, Monica…
  • Hangouts – A 10 people group video chat
  • Sparks – Using Google’s search engine you can search for interests
  • The Stream – Users can see their Circles’ updates – similar to Facebook’s wall
  • +1 – Allowing people to recommend items and websites

These are just some of the functions available to use on +.  But is it what we are looking for?

The Google+ ProjectIn my opinion yes, just like Google Chrome did with Internet Explorer it will provide a breath of fresh air to the social networking industry and I think will be a very realistic competitor to Facebook.

It seems like it is made with much more quality and with far more enhanced features than Facebook, which has many problems, technically and pragmatically.

So I for one am really looking forward to joining it and setting up my profile when it becomes open to the public.

Google gives users malware warnings

Yes you read right, Google is now giving users alerts if it believes that their system is infected with malware.

Over the last week, millions of users will have logged on to Google, only to find a warning telling them that Google believes that their computer ‘appears to be infected’.

Here is an image of that very message:


A Google warning telling users that their computer appears to be infected

Okay my PC isn't infected so I couldn't show you an actual message, but a clever bit of Photoshopping can help me to show you 😉

Google says that it is trying to improve the web for users, and in doing so, it believes that it can enhance users experience, and keep them safer online.

Malware can send users to ‘virus’ pages when they search Google, one of the main reasons why Google wants to help users fight it. The other is that often malware can send tonnes of spammy traffic towards Google. This is not very good for their servers, and could potentially become very costly.

Sometimes Google needs to turn some of its servers off for maintenance, meaning they need to redirect the traffic. However certain malware can keep ‘spamming’ these servers with unwanted traffic, causing the guys at Google a bit of a problem!

Google says that the main cause of malware infection is users downloading face anti-viruses when instructed to by bogus warnings on false websites.

The search giant does currently offer warnings to users on some websites that it knows could potentially infect their computer. Here is an example of the text it may put below a potentially dangerous search result:

This site may harm your computer

An example of the "This site may harm your computer." text that features below some search results in Google

Keeping safe online is a challenge, so it’s good to know that along with our anti-virus software, Google is also watching our back.

To find out more you can read the official blog post on Google’s blog 🙂