Having a community in your blog is one of the best ways to promote. Besides that people in your community are active readers, they are also active promoters. This post is about what are the people in your community, what are the positive effects and how you can build a vibrant community.

What are the People in Your Community

Most of the active people in your community are also bloggers like you. By active people, I mean the people that tweet your posts and comment on your blog entries. The amount of bloggers in your community varies a lot between niches, but you can rest assured that at least 50% of the active people are bloggers. On some sites, like this,  nearly all active people are also bloggers.

Positive Effects

Tweets on Twitter
Active readers tweet your posts a lot. By this you get more visitors, which is course great.

General Promotion
Active people promote your site to their friends. They send emails to their friends and talk to them avout your blog.

Getting Back Links
As I said before, most people in your community are bloggers. They have a blog and these people tend to link back to your articles. Back links effect your ranking in search engines a lot.  More back links you get the better.

Community Building for Beginners

To get a community, you need returning readers. Returning readers need that you have good content and a good first impression of your site. To get started read these articles:

• How to get loyal blog readers with interaction
• How to get loyal blog readers with content

After you have read those two articles, you have noticed that blog commenting is a big part of having a successful blog. To do blog commenting successfully, you should read these article:

• Get traffic with blog comments – The professional way
• How to get more blog comments

If you have understood the concepts from these articles and start applying them you are on your way to building a vibrant community. Just have fun with your readers and interact with them. That’s the way to build a good community.

Conclusion

Community building takes a lot of time. There is no way to rush it. You can blow up your whole community by not being reactive and interactive. Most blog readers are bloggers them self. These guys can help a lot with link building so value them. Every person who is in your blog community is valuable. Treat them accordingly.

Many people have been wondering whether to have nofollow or dofollow blog comments. If you do not know what they are then read  difference with dofollow and nofollow links first. This post will tell you why dofollow links were implemented and how you can benefit from having dofollow blog comments.

Nofollow vs. Dofollow

Nofollow links do not provide link juice to the page you are linking to. This means that the only reason why you should use nofollow links is not pass link juice to sites that do not deserve it. Google implemented the whole nofollow attribute for links, so that they people could prevent link juice flowing to spam sites.

The first implementation was blogs and blog comments in blogger, so that users could easily prevent people using blog comments to link to bad sites.

How nofollow links work with PageRank

Let’s think of it this way. There are two cases where you have a page that has a value of 100 ranking points. First, your page has 10 outbound links. If all of the links are dofollow, then all of the linked pages will get 10 points of value.

What if 5 of the links are nofollow and 5 dofollow? Does it mean that the five dofollow links get 20 points of value? – It does not. These five dofollow links still get only ten points and the nofollow links get zero points.

The reason for this was that hardcore SEO guys were taking an advantage of this, and increasing the rank of their inner pages by having all the outbound links nofollow. Now you know that by having nofollow comments, you will not get any more link value for your inner pages.

There is an excellent article from Matt Cutss from Google, where he describes how the nofollow links work nowadays. Read it to find out more.

Pros and Cons of Dofollow Blog Comments

Pros

• You get more comments, because people comment more to get the backlink
• Your inner pages will either way loose the value, so why not just spread the wealth
• You can reward the people who actively comment

Cons

• You may accidentally link to bad pages, if you do not pay attention
• You will get more spam comments and have to do more comment moderation
• Setup takes a bit of time, because comments bu default are nofollow

Conclusion

In my opinion the Pros greatly overweight the Cons. Even if the only thing you get is more comments, then dofollow comments are well worth it. Just remeber to moderate your comments and make sure that you do not link to bad sites. By bad sites, I mean spammy or very low quality sites.

I often get asked about blog commenting, how does it work and other similar stuff.  Some people even argue, that blog commenting is worth nothing. But the truth is that blog comments can drive traffic to your blog like you would not believe. The only thing required is, that you have time and devotion to do it the right way. Here is my guide on the professional way to use blog comments for traffic.

1. Find Blogs that have similar content that you have

You should not just start to comment on any blog you like. You must select the blogs carefully and make sure that the blog has similar content as your site. Reason for this is, that people visiting a similar site are likely to also visit your site.

Find as many of these sites as you possibly can, but try to focus on the sites that actually get a lot of traffic.

2. Subscribe to the blogs RSS feed

This is a vital point for you to do. Use an RSS reader to stay in touch with the blog. I use google reader to track all the feeds that I follow. Reason for subscribing to the feeds is, that you can pretty simply check for new posts on the blogs of your choosing. It would take a lot more time to visit these sites manually.

Use your reader to check often for new blog posts. I would suggest that you keep the reader always open in one tab of your browser. It makes it really easy to keep track of  new posts.

3. Be the first or second to comment

The people that get most traffic from other blogs are the first or the second ones, that get their comment published. This means that after reading the new post you should comment at once. Do not let your commenting wait and simmer. Do it right away.

Traffic wise, I’d say that only the first five comments get some traffic. If there are more comments, then you are doomed traffic wise. On the other hand if the blog is a dofollow blog, then you can comment just to get the back link. You can read more here about the difference with dofollow and nofollow links.

4. Provide real value in the comment to get it approved

Write real comments and read the blog post before commenting.  Never comment and say, “great post”. Provide real value in the comment and your comment will get published. Read more here from how to get blog comments approved.

5. SEO: Use keywords as your name

Normally, your name is used as the anchor text for the link. This link is used as a vote for the page you have used and if the blog is dofollow, then the back link will be recognised. This is a good reason to use anchor texts as your name.

6.  SEO: Vary the URL of your link

Do not always link to the main page of your blog. Use sometimes some of your inner pages, so that the links seem more natural. Links to inner pages will boost your search engine rankings a lot.

Conclusion

• The first one wins the traffic, strive to be the first.
• If the blog is a dofollow blog you should also use the SEO tips of using keywords as your name and varying the URL of your link.

Feel free to hit me with a comment. What do you think about blog commenting for traffic?

This is a community effort to write down all the ways there are to increase comments on blog posts. This post is going to live just as long as people keep writing helpful comments. Feel free to start writing your comments right now. Be brave and be the first!

I am starting this list pretty short so I do not fill it only with my own ideas. Your efforts are the key here.

Million Ways to Get People Commenting More on Blog Posts

1. Ask a questions at the end
Ask what do your readers think of the ideas presented. A simple “what do you think?” may do the trick.

2. Answer people’s comments
People do not like to write comments on blogs where nobody answers. When you answer to other people, they feel special and appreciated. People that feel appreciated will probably comment again.

3. Comment on other people’s blogs
People get interested in you personally when you comment on their blogs. These people probably visit your site and if they find something interesting, they just might return the favour. (Thank you @BLOGitse from blogitse blog)

4. Networking with your readers
Tweet with your readers and ask them how are they doing. It’s bound to get people interested in your blog. ( Thank you @DaneBlogger from Money Making Blog )

5. Having a dofollow blog
When your site passes link juice and in essence PageRank, people are more keen to write comments to your blog. Many people find dofollow blog commenting even a good SEO technique. ( Thank you @DaneBlogger from Money Making Blog )

6. Create a personal story that people can relate to
When people can relate to your story, they probably will have something to comment. Give your readers feelings instead of just simple ideas. ( Thank you @TheInfoPreneur from The Info Preneur Blog )

7. Having a list of top commenters
Listing the top commentators of your blog can give a bit of fame to the people who deserve it. It will inspire some people to be more active. On the downside, the value of the comments may go down, because people just chase for the top ranking.  ( Thank you Gordon from Knowledge Reactor’s Blog )

8. Contests and Free offerings
Have a contest where all commenters have a chance of winning something. Offer something free for all people that comment, for example a free template, free hosting, free coupon on a vector graphics store. Same downside applies with item number 7. ( Thank you Gordon from Knowledge Reactor’s Blog )

What do you think? What are in your opinion the best ways to get people commenting?  Thanks a lot in advance all you great people!

Blog commenting is an easy way to get readers and visitors to your blog. You can only get a small amount of visitors directly with your comments, but the amount of indirect visitors can be quite huge. This happens when you comment on dofollow blogs, that pass on link juice.

How it Works

When you write comments on blogs, you are often allowed to set the URL of your blog on the comment-form. The name field is normally used as the anchor text for your URL. When your comment is visible, your “name” is displayed with a link back to your site.

Getting Started

First, you need to find blogs where to comment

These blogs should be related to the content of your own site, to maximise the possible gains from the links. When the other blogs content is close to yours, it means that readers clicking through to your site will probably be also interested in your content. The other upside is that google rates relevant backlinks higher, than unrelated ones.

Second, start commenting like a madman

Blog comments are often moderated, so make only relevant comments. Do not spam. Think beforehand what your anchor text will be, to maximise the gains in search result rankings. Use an anchor text, you presume people to use ,when they search for content in your site.

Vital Points to Remember

Staying organised

Write down all the blogs that you find, so you can check back on them, and write even more relevant comments. I use google docs to store my list of blogs I comment on. It is the best way, because I use several computers, and therefore I hate storing files locally.

Comment only on dofollow blogs

Dofollow blogs carry on link juice and you should maximise the amount of comments on these blogs. Firefox with the nodofollow plugin will help you a lot when spotting which links are dofollow. The plugin shows with colors which links are dofollow and which are nofollow.

Finding Dofollow blogs

To tell you the truth, finding a good amount of dofollow blogs will take some time. I suggest that you manually find all the blogs where to comment. If you use lists that other people have made, there is a great possibility,  these blogs are already overrun with comments, and they will lessen the impact of your own comments. Only way to be the first one commenting is to find the blogs first. You can use any search engine to find dofollow blogs, here is a simple tutorial with using technorati

Step by Step Guide with Technorati

1. Go to technorati and try to find other blogs that have the same content as your blog.
2. Visit these blogs with the firefox plugin nodofollow active.
3. Find a page that has comments.
4. Verify if the comments are dofollow with the plugin.
5. Write down the blog if it is a dofollow blog. If not find another one.

Conclusion

• Try to find the blogs yourself.
• Do not use other people’s dofollow blog lists, because blogs listed are often spammy.
• Comment often to get a lot of backlinks
• Finding dofollow blogs requires a lot of effort, but it is worth it.