Does commenting on relevant articles positively impact our seo?
-
I have read conflicting perspectives on whether or not businesses should partake in relevant conversations on blogs' or articles' comments sections. Does anyone have insight on this?
-
My opinion - if you're posting on blogs/articles purely for SEO value, you're wasting your time.
- most comment sections provide only "nofollow" links
- most good comment sections have so many comments that even if the link is "dofollow" the share of influence passed will be negligible
However! If you're posting good, useful comments on blogs that are relevant to your business, you are contributing to the process of making yourself a subject matter expert/influential. Others will see your helpful contribution and perhaps follow you back to your own site/blog. If you're lucky, you may even be able to generate some interaction with the blog owner, resulting in new promotional opportunities (guest posting?) or social media interaction.
The one SEO side benefit that you do get from good blog commenting is your backlink profile will be more natural with quality nofollow backlinks to go with all your dofollow links. As we've just seen with the Penguin update, the best backlinks aren't just the ones made to "look" natural, but that actually "are" natural!
So - focusing your commenting efforts on a smaller number of relevant blogs and designed to help build your reputation (rather than a huge "spray and pray" approach) will be a better use of your time.
Paul
-
There are a couple of things to look for. Does the link in the comment area have a no follow or do follow attribute? Also how many links are in the comment area? Google factors this in when determining how much link juice it'll pass along. You might benefit regardless if potential clients of yours are looking at those blog posts and then click your link. Example, I have a real estate website and I also comment on the Trulia blog that has a no follow attribute but those looking for an Agent might see my comment on the trulia blog click my link and I now have a lead.
-
As long as the blogs are contextual relevant to what you are doing. I would not expect a big boost in organics by the majority of these, but could help in different ways.
An example may be a plumber commenting on a topic. A prospect may be researching on that topic, saw the post and goes to the plumber's site (that happens to be local) and hire them.
-
My feeling is that, when I am logged in using a commenting platform, like Wordpress or-- better yet-- Google, is that it does help.
Google hosts blogs. If you are logged in as a Google user and you write relevant comments on Google blogs, I would think you are demonstrating that you are an active member of Google's web, which is the kind of user they want. If your own websites are tied in with your actively-participating-in-Google, Google profile, I personally think it makes sense.
Other people will tell you that when you comment on blogs you get "no follow" links, which are worthless. This is not true. They are not worth as much, but they are not worthless by any means.
So Google and Wordpress accounts notwithstanding, I still think commenting on blogs is a good idea to create backlinks, even if they are no follow links. If no follow links were "no good" SEOmoz wouldn't measure them right?
So the short answer: Yes, commenting on blogs helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can piracy sites linking to you hurt your SEO?
Hello, Our website sells software that we have developed, but there are piracy websites that offer a crack/keygen to our software and are linking to our site. From an SEO perspective, are those sites hurtful to us if their spam score is below 30 and their DA is not 1? We'd like to understand if there is any action we need to take from an SEO point or if our site's SEO is not affected by it. Thank you!
Link Building | | marynau0 -
Are sites that "smell of SEO" being demoted?
I'm working with a site owner who recently hired an SEO to work on just one particular type of keyword. It seems like the more work the SEO did, the lower the keyword gradually dropped. Granted, the "work" is pretty low quality - anchor texted bookmarks, comments and low quality articles. We're doing an experiment where we are going to disavow those links and see if the previous rankings return. Another site that I am consulting with has a lot of good natural links and then some anchor texted links, but from decent sources - some guest posts (on good sites - not a spammy site that exists only for guest posts) and some places where decent websites have agreed to link to the site. The anchor texted links do not make up very much of the overall anchor text. There is good diversity and lots of brand and url anchored links. It seems like the more the SEO does for this site, the more the rankings drop. And it's not all about anchor text. The SEO placed a link in a relevant directory, using the url as anchor...rankings dropped a little. They obtained an expired domain with relevant and very natural links and 301'd it to the new domain...rankings dropped several places. And so on. Occasionally the rankings will pop up a little, but overall it's a downward spiral. Check out this post by Gary Taylor. He did an experiment where he took an established site that was ranking well and threw some spammy links at it. To quote the article, 'every day goes by my ranking for the term “domains” is getting harder to maintain.' He recently tweeted that he has been removing and disavowing links and the rankings are returning. I was looking at searches for real estate related terms in different cities. In some cities, the top sites are ones that have ZERO obvious SEO done to them. There are sites ranking on page 3 that have been SEO'd, and not all of them have poor SEO. Many are what I would consider really well done. Some of the sites ranking on page 1 have under 10 links. There was one with 2 followed links and they were not from super authoritative sites! To complicate matters though, if you look at searches like "Toronto Real Estate Agents" some of the top sites have lots of keyword anchor texted links. Perhaps this should be a blog post rather than a Q&A, but I would love to hear some of your thoughts. My personal thought is that Google's main goal with Penguin and the unnatural links warnings is to make it so that not only is it not profitable to try to manipulate the SERPS, but that every time you try to do so, you potentially do your rankings harm. I used to say that Penguin could only affect a site on the date of a Penguin refresh, but I am thinking now that Google has managed to roll Penguin into the algorithm to some extent so that it can demote the majority of any work that smells of SEO. Thoughts?
Link Building | | MarieHaynes0 -
Article with UTM source?
Hi all, I wish to publish an article and it contain url utm parameter inside the content. May i know google will treat it as quality backlink? i have set canonical tags on the my own site. Thanks
Link Building | | willy660 -
Are Blog Comments now useless?
Hello I see there is much debate on this issue of Blog Commenting. Is it still a useful way to get a backlink? Would you suggest only using 'No follow' blogs to leave comments? Many thanks
Link Building | | missy290 -
How to have a good position in Google bot ?
Hello,
Link Building | | Hamza9
my website is not appearing in the first positions in Google, it appears in the 1st position only if you type it address, but for example if you type a keyword that can lead to it, It will NOT appears, what can I do ?0 -
Please have a look at the SEO of our site
Hi, Could you look at nlpca(dot)com and give me feedback and hints about the on -page SEO of our site, as well as any suggestions of link building strategies to move us up to first for the head term "NLP" as well as the long tail Thank you, Bob
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Is a no follow comment section good or bad?
I have a photography blog that I'm really trying to promote solid commenting. What is everyone's opinion on nofollow vs do follow comments?
Link Building | | JBPhotography0