Effective blog commenting is one way to increase your own blog’s readers and search engine ranking.  Consider these five basic points that any novice internet marketer can implement when commenting on their favorite blogs.

Icon: Using the right comment icon does matter.  Preferably use a memorable, bright and inviting headshot of you that adds a personal touch to your comment itself.  Blog readers are drawn to these qualities which in turn increases your click-through rate.  Register with the most commonly used commenting services such as gravatar and disqus.  Remain signed in with these services so that they can automatically retrieve your saved picture.

Niche: what’s the value of traffic if it’s not targeted to your subject matter?  Targeted traffic is more likely to click through to your blog, stay on your blog longer, and buy what you have to offer.  The first two points positively contribute to a higher Alexa score while the third is the bottom line for many full-time bloggers.  Identify the two or three niches your blog content encompasses and research the most read relevant blogs.

Order: Most blog comments are listed in chronological order with the first comment shown immediately below the post.  This is a golden position to obtain given the potential permanence for high visibility.  Subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed will not only keep you abreast of niche-related information for your own blog posts but will give you ample opportunities to routinely comment.  Make it a habit to peruse your RSS readers’ latest updates so you can be first in line.

Influencers: Compile a list of the top 10 blogs in your niche.  These will contain the majority of avid blog readers who have potential interest in your content.  The cliché about “working smart instead of working hard” applies here.  By only focusing on the more read blogs you’re seeking to direct some of that traffic to your site.   Given identical comments, a highly read blog will contribute more traffic to your site than a seldom read blog for obvious reasons.  You can guage a blogs influence or readership by noting the site’s Alexa Score, the RSS subscriber number, or the average daily visitors.

Backlinks: This is a separate point from the previous ones related to networking, however, it bares mentioning given the search engine optimization implications.  Search Engines quantify a site’s off-site optimization based on the quantity and quality of its backlinks.  A single blog comment counts as one backlink since clicking on it forwards readers to your website.  One way to significantly increase the quality is to comment on government and education blogs, ending in .gov and edu, respectively.  Search engines place these categories in a high regard than a .com or .net blog.

Secondly, backlinks can be nofollow or dofollow in nature , based on the html code used on the commented blog.  Comments containing the nofollow tag (in the code) push no “link juice” to your site and are effectively useless for SEO purposes since Google will not recognize the backlink when ranking your site.  You can easily avoid the nofollow blogs by using the Search Status Firefox add-on to highlight a page’s nofollow links or viewing the code (control-[U]) to identify “nofollow” within the current comments.

You now should have a better appreciation for the value of blog commenting as a powerful networking and SEO activity.  With the potential to attract hundreds of fresh new visitors to your website each day, blog commenting should play a foundational role in your blog promotion.

Related posts:

Social Bookmarking with Onlywire

How to Use .Edu Blogs for Backlinks.

How to use Ping.fm for Social Networking Auto-posting.

After writing or recording a great blog post the next step is to promote it using social bookmarking.  These accounts include digg, propeller, furl, bebo, delicious and tumblr, among many others.  The problem is finding time to bookmark your content across dozens of accounts.  Fortunately, Onlywire is a service that automates social bookmarking to twenty of the leading websites.  These videos below will show you how to install the Onlywire button for Wordpress.com users and the plugin for Wordpress.org (self-hosted) users.  In addition to blog posts, Onlywire allows for bookmarking virtually any webpage page by installing a Firefox add-on..

How to make a Wordpress.com sidebar widget:

How to make a Wordpress.org plugin

Onlywire is the leading online software for syndicating media to the major social bookmarking sites.  Professional bloggers, publishers and webmasters rely on it for marketing their and their clients online businesses.  Best of all the service is very cost-effective for paid users (2.99/month), and easy to implement for promoting users.  Follow the step by step directions in these videos to promote Onlywire on your Wordpress blog and capture the same benefits of paid users.

Some helpful bookmarking tips:

1) Make it easy! I prefer using larger icons for buttons and plugins for increase visibility.  If you’re sticking to the button only, try to place it above the fold for viewers don’t have to scroll down your sidebar to find it. This enhances the likelihood for reader participation amid all the clutter that fills blog pages.

2) Create awesome content. This should go without saying since quality content is the cornerstone when contributing to social networks.  Only the best content will get bookmarked by others so work at going above the norm in your market.  It will also spur viral bookmarking where friends or follows were further spread it among their social networks.

3) Give instructions and directions. Automated social bookmarking services are relatively new.  Encouraging bookmarking in your post is acceptable as long as it doesn’t sound desperate.  However, showing your readers ‘how’ to bookmark in a stepwise manner is far more effective since they will need bookmarking accounts to start.  Current onlywire users who follow and like your blog posts are like gold!

4) Bookmark other content. I highly recommend this for a few reasons.  For one, social bookmarking websites like Digg are searching for spammers who merely bookmark their only content.  Many marketers risk account termination if each bookmark is a different blog post from their one domain name.  Strive for a 3 to 1 balance where your bookmarking other people’s content (or at the very least, your other domains such as articles or press releases) in addition to your own blog.  Forming an advocacy group based on reciprocal promoting will benefit everyone.

Also check out my video tutorial on using the Onlywire firefox add-on for bookmarking capability with ANY webpage you’re visiting.  Please contact me at dan@doctordubli.com if you want to join my bookmarking group of friends.  Leave questions or suggestions in the comment section below.

Related posts:

How to Use Ping.fm For Social Bookmarking Backlinks.

How to Use .Gov Blogs for Backlinks.

Why Long Tail Keywords Improve SEO.