I mentioned yesterday that I am trying to do a lot of blog commenting. One of the biggest challenges can be finding blogs to comment on. Here’s how I do it.

Follow or No Follow?

I honestly don’t stress that much about follow versus no follow blogs. I focus on providing good comments so that people reading my comment might want to come on over. At the very least there’s a chance of attracting the blog owner, and that can have more benefits than just the traffic. It might be someone to develop an online relationship with, trade posts or comments with, for example.

Finding Blogs

I often start with some of the big, heavily commented blogs in the niche. Comments on these blogs may or may not get you a lot of traffic, depending on what you say and if people tend to follow your links there anyhow.

But I do follow the links other people leave. You see, these are people interested in the niche. They comment on blogs. If they have a link to their own, that’s a blog to comment on.

The chain can sometimes be followed through many blogs.

The advantage to this is that I can then comment on a range of blogs, not just the same few every time. Nothing wrong with building a reputation with your comments on a blog, it can be a big help in building your own reputation, but spreading things out is good also.

Comment Early, Comment Often

If you want to comment regularly on a particular blog, make sure it makes it into your feed reader. I’m currently using Google Reader, but there are many choices out there.

To catch posts early you may want to consider a tool I use – Comment Sniper. It’s from Duncan Carver, and it’s free.

Comment Sniper checks the feeds that you want to read at set intervals and pops up in the corner of your monitor every time that feed shows a new post. This makes it easier for you to get in on the commenting earlier.

The bad part is that it’s really easy to tune it out after a time. I can go most of the day without noticing it if I’m working hard. Of course, that’s also a good thing when you’re focused on a project.

Promote the Blog

I forget this a lot of the time, but one thing I like to do is tweet the blog posts that I comment on. It’s something I’ve found interesting enough to have something to say, and bringing them traffic brings my comment traffic which may just give me a little too. If not, I’ve still shared something I found interesting with my Twitter audience. That’s not a bad thing.

Giving the site a quick thumbs up on StumbleUpon can also work. Not necessarily well, as SU traffic isn’t always the best for clicking around, so don’t use up a lot of your valuable time. Similarly, if you have quick links for it you could add it to your delicious bookmarks, and so forth.

Any promotion you do of someone else’s site should be brief. It’s hard enough to promote your own site, but remember that those views of your comment on other sites can help you out too.

Will All This Bring Tons of Traffic?

Pfft! No. Probably not.

So why bother focusing on the people instead of the search engine value?

Because you don’t want to look like a comment spamming idiot, of course. Focus on the people and your comments last. Those who do click through to your site are more likely to stick around. And you’ll have a better chance of building a relationship with the blogger whose blog you’re commenting on, which can lead to links in posts or guest posting opportunities, and those can lead to more traffic.