Blogs and forums have the best potential for leaving comments.

Blogs

In blogs, they usually ask for your name, email address, your web site address (URL), and your comment. When the comment is approved, they link your name to your web site, next to your comment.

If they do not ask for the website URL, they can’t link to it and you don’t get any goodness from the comment. Look at other comments on the site and check if any of them are linked to external sites.

It is possible to put your URL in the comment itself. Sometimes it automatically becomes an active link and sometimes it just sits there looking like text. At least someone could copy and paste it, but that’s 3 steps harder than a real link. Check other comments to see how it works.

If you just throw your URL in the comment, it looks kind of spammy, so I wouldn’t do that. If there was a legitimate reason to put your URL in there, you might get away with it.

In order of effectiveness: 1. a blog that links your name, 2. a good reason to put your URL in a comment that is linked, 3. a good reason to put your URL in a comment that is NOT linked, 4. no reason to put your URL in a comment that is linked, 5. no reason to put your URL in a comment that is linked, 6. writing your comment on a piece of paper and leaving it on the sidewalk.

The 10 for 10 Challenge

One thing you might be tempted to do, if you’ve read my SEO book, is use your keywords as your “Name”. The good thing is that your site gets the benefit of not only getting a link, but the link is for your keywords. The problem with this is that everyone knows you are playing the system if you say your name is “Handmade Jewelry”. You lose credibility with the readers and the blog owner probably won’t even approve that comment, so you’ve wasted your time and annoyed the owner.

If you are a FireFox user (and why wouldn’t you be?), there’s a plug named “easyComment”, for the browser that populates common blog comment forms automatically. Install it, fill out the preferences with your name and URL, then any time you are on a blog post with a comment form, click the button and your name and URL are put into the form.

easyComment can be downloaded from here: easyComment https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9095/

Forums

Forums are a bit different. Again, check to see what others are doing and how the links work. Usually, you will have to create a profile with a “signature”. The signature is a bit of text that is inserted at the bottom of each of your posts, like a signature. Put your URL in there. Link it using your keywords if possible.

It’s possible to put your URL into the body of your post, but again, don’t just throw it in there. Have a good reason for mentioning it. “I was just discussing that very issue yesterday on my blog. See my post here: http://www.yoursite.com/post.html”. That’s a reasonable thing to do.

Try to use your keywords, but not too blatantly. Make sure they are giving you a real, working link. Check the other comments and posts to make sure you understand how that site works. Be interesting, genuine, authoritive, humble, and helpful.

You do want links for their SEO goodness, but you also want real people to be interested enough to come check out your site and start a conversation. Write for real people first, then review for keywords for the search engines second.

Now, go out there and leave some comments!

The 10 for 10 Challenge

This does two things. First, it builds inbound links to your site, boosting your SEO and ultimately getting more traffic from search engines. Second, there’s an immediate effect of having the site owner, other readers, and commenters become aware of you, which might lead them to check out your site, using the link in the comment.

This works for both other blogs and for forums. It also works on Facebook and Twitter, but I’m not convinced that it works as effectively there. Maybe you can prove me wrong on that point. There are a lot of people who read this site that have Etsy shops. Their forums are a great place to post.

I want to help you out, my precious readers. I want you to have a direct benefit from reading this blog. So, here’s what I’m going to do.

The Challenge

I’m announcing the “10 for 10 Challenge”.

Post at least 10 comments on other people’s sites for 10 days in a row. That’s a total of at least 100 comments.

Document the number of visitors to your site on the day you start and at the end of the 10th day. That’s 10 full days of visitors.

The Prize

Whoever has the greatest increase in those 10 days will get a promotional article on my site, including an interview with you, a review of your site and your products, and a link in the sidebar on walton.com, (which is great for your SEO.)

The Rules

You need to have Google Analytics installed on your site, or another statistics program that can be verified.

The 10th and final day must be on or before July 12, which is 2 weeks from the day this article is published. That will give you a couple days to get the statistics program installed if you don’t have it already and you can do a little research for where you want to leave comments. If you want to start now and pick the best 10 days to get your maximum number, you can do that too.

Send me a screenshot of the statistics program, show the number of visits for each of 10 days in a row. The site with the greatest increase in the number of visits between the first day and the tenth day will win.

That’s not a percentage, it’s the number. It’s not the number of page views, it’s the number of visits. It’s not just the 10th day either. It’s the first day compared to any other day within 10 days. If you have a bump on the 7th day, then it declines, take the number on the 7th day. We’re looking for the greatest increase.

The actual comments that you leave are not verified. The only thing we’re counting to win is the increase in the number of visits.

Email me with your results. Show me a screenshot. The winner will be determined based solely on my judgement and my decision is final.

The Strategy

The way to make this work is to know your market. Research where they hang out. Search Google for your keyword and the term “forums” to find forums related to your product. Use your keyword and try searching for “best keyword blogs”. You can search for just your keyword, note the top 10 results, and see which are blogs or places that accept comments.

Once you have a good list of places to leave comments, hit them all, every day. See what people are talking about first. Don’t just jumps in with “Please visit my site”. No one cares about that. You need to be helpful. Answer questions. Be an authority. Give solid information. Ask great questions. Be that interesting person at the party that everyone wants to talk to.

The Benefits

If you are not using a stats application now, you should be, and this challenge might push you into doing that. Going through the process of looking for sites to leave comments, then actually leaving them, will get you into a great habit that will SEO your site for the long run.

If you leave 10 comments a day for 10 days, you WILL have more traffic, regardless of this challenge. You may not win this, but you will have more traffic. Everyone who attempts this challenge will have more traffic.

At the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about?

There are a lot of blogs out there that talk about how to build web site traffic but most of them are pitching an ebook or trying to get you to buy some elaborate Search Engine Optimization strategy that relies on complex (often under handed) strategies to accomplish something that is fundamentally easy, yet time consuming.

That’s right – building an online presence is actually one of the easiest things a person will ever do in the life time of business, much easier than building a web site or opening a retail location so why do so many people do it so badly? Fear, ignorance, uncertainty and shame.

Fear of the unknown, being ignorant of the unknown and being uncertain of where to start learning. It’s exactly the same reason I didn’t learn to cook until I was in my thirties or why I still don’t know how to change the gasket in my car.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.thisismyurl.com/4064/tutorials/marketing/the-secret-to-building-website-traffic/

The data was crystal clear: Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:

* 55% more visitors
* 97% more inbound links
* 434% more indexed pages

Read the entire article at:
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5014/Study-Shows-Small-Businesses-That-Blog-Get-55-More-Website-Visitors.aspx

Get an Evergreen for Your Blog This Holiday Season

These kinds of posts should be about what your site is about. They should show your expertise on the subject. They should be the kinds of posts that are so valuable, so informative or entertaining or insightful, that people will want to read them for years to come.

If you could write THE definitive guide or explanation to the subject of your site, there will be links and tweets and traffic.

Think about what your subject is, what keyword you want to be know for, and write a really good post about it.

You’ll see the traffic.

The evergreens we admire for their longevity

The most obvious way is to write about a topic that never gets old. These are cornerstone reference posts, like ‘10 Ways to Build a Better Blog.’ These posts are evergreen simply because people always need that information.

The good news is that evergreen reference posts are pretty straightforward to write. Do a step-by-step summary of how to do something from start to finish, and you’ve got yourself an evergreen post.

They’re also good for defining something that’s often mis-defined. For example, I have posts bookmarked in my ‘Evergreens’ folder on “What Marketing Really Is.” And I refer back to them often, because marketing is a slippery subject.

There are downsides to these types of evergreen posts. You’re up against a lot of competition, for one. There are already thousands of evergreen posts on building a better blog or providing better customer service. There’s probably an evergreen post on 10 Ways to Do Absolutely Any Topic Imaginable.

If you want your evergreen post to be the one that gets bookmarked, you’d better make it really, really good.

Which brings us to the second downside: Evergreen posts often require much more work than your standard post. You’ll probably wind up putting in at least 5 hours — and probably more like 15 — making sure everything is well-written, entertaining, compelling, and that you didn’t make any mistakes.

You might also be putting some extra hours into in-depth research if your evergreen post is on a topic that’s difficult to understand.

Read the entire article at:
http://feeds.copyblogger.com/~r/Copyblogger/~3/0GUusIszMsk/

But…

I did watch a couple videos that got me to thinking. They seemed to make sense and pass the smell test. I think they might actually be right about this stuff.

You want more traffic to your web site? This might help.

It doesn’t make sense to Google either, because, according this second video, they use a simpler method for calculating that all important page rank. This guy calls it “Referential Integrity”, which seems to be a made up name for it, since that term actually refers to a database management method and has nothing to do with search, but it’s as good as any other name.

He talks about “Topic”, which is the on page stuff, keyword density, etc., “Reputation”, which is the link text that points at that page, and “Confirmation”, which is the off site stuff, other sites linked to you.

So, the main point of this method is that Google looks at the way you link internally more than anything else. He talks about the concept of “whole truth”, which he defines as all of the truth about a page, but no more and no less. If something is always true about a page, then it’s part of the whole truth of that page.

Now, take that whole truth and use it in the links that you use to get to that page. His example is “chemicals” versus “pool chemicals”. This page is more specifically about “pool chemicals”, so you should use that whole term to link to it.

He also says that instead of messing up your nav bar, put links in the footer or in the body that use that whole term as link text.

This all makes sense to me and I’ll be using this technique on niche site of my own, as well as on a client’s site. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, watch the videos, but don’t buy anything! Enjoy.

http://www.stomperblog.com/warning-advanced-seo-technique-does-not-work/

http://www.stomperblog.com/a-top-ranking-hiding-in-your-site/