As a blog owner you will no doubt want to generate as much traffic to your site as possible. After all, what is the point of having and maintaining a blog if nobody ever visits? The problem of course is the fact that you are competing with millions of people for traffic, and as you may well have discovered by now, it’s not an easy task.
While getting traffic to your site might not be easy, it also isn’t impossible. Of course SEO experience will make life a lot easier, but even if you don’t have much experience, you should still be able to get visitors by using a few tried and tested SEO tools, including blog posting.
Increasing Traffic through Blog Posting
Many beginners tend to focus all their attention on article marketing in a bid to get more traffic. Article marketing can be very effective, but it is not some sort of magic bullet. In fact, you may even find that it is easier and better to generate traffic using blog commenting.
Leaving comments with a link on other people’s blogs can generate a huge amount of traffic, but don’t expect this to be the case if you are only leaving comments on two or three different blog sites. Obviously you don’t want to spend too much time leaving comments on other people’s blogs, but you should definitely try to have around at least ten different blog sites on your list.
Think Quality, Not Quantity
If you leave comments like “Great post” or “Very helpful” on 100 different blogs every day, you’ll almost certainly get some traffic for your efforts, but it won’t be much.
It is far better to leave a well thought out comment which also clearly indicates that you have in fact actually read the blog before commenting. Yes, you really do have to read the blog in order to leave a “quality” comment. In short, generic blog comments are poor performers.
Your comments should also suggest that you are somewhat of an authority on whichever niche you have chosen, but only if your chosen niche is related to the blog you’re commenting on. Some people who have come to the site in search of information are going to see your comment, and if they get the impression that they may be able to learn something from you as well, they’ll click your link.
Commenting On Blog Posts You Have Written
As strange as it may seem, you can also generate traffic using blog commenting on posts which you yourself have written. Many blog site owners write guest posts for other websites as part of their link building strategy, and also to increase traffic.
From personal experience, I can tell you that you certainly can generate some traffic from guest posts, but most of these visitors tend to visit out of curiosity only. They arrive on your site; they take a quick look around, and then they leave.
A better strategy would be for you to wait for others to leave comments or questions on your guest posts, and then respond to those questions or comments. This technique tends to result in a much higher conversion rate.
Think of it like this: A person has taken the time to read your post, and then comment on it. This already suggests that your post made an impact on them. Now you respond to their comment or question, and instead of just reading it and forgetting it, the person takes it one step further, and they visit your site. If you are selling something, then at this point you can almost say that the cat is in the bag. After all, this visitor clearly needs something, and they already believe you might well have what they are looking for.
Leaving comments on blogs to increase traffic can certainly bring a lot more visitors to your site, but don’t expect it to have a huge impact on your search engine rankings. Depending on how much more traffic you get, you may see a small improvement in search engine ranking, but don’t count on it. In short, blog commenting is primarily a traffic generating tool.