There are dozens of different ways to get free traffic to your site. One of them is to leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your own site.

This by itself is a decent strategy. The quicker you comment on a new blog post, the more likely it is you’ll get some traffic to your blog.

Why?

Because many successful bloggers email their list after they publish a new post. If you are the first one to comment on a new blog post… then you’ll get to “ride the wave” of subscribers who visit that post.

But while this strategy works, I’ve found an even better way to generate traffic from blog comments.

Blog Comments as a Source of Traffic

Lest you think that commenting on blogs is a waste of time, let me share with you a little story.

A couple years ago, as I was researching new ways to drive traffic to my blog, I stumbled upon a simple idea. The idea was to find “do-follow” blogs that passed PageRank through their comment links.

In theory, by leaving comments on blogs like this (and perhaps even using your primary keyword phrase as your “name”), you could actually increase your search engine rankings.

In my case, the theory proved true. Here’s what I did.

First, I found a do-follow blog that had a post related to one of my posts. I then left a comment linking to a post on my site. I used the title of the post in the “name” field. In my comment, I referenced my post and said, “Click my name to read the post.”

This not only helped me get (and stay) ranked for that search phrase for years, it also sent a lot of traffic to my blog.

Not just hundreds of visitors.

Thousands.

In fact, this one blog comment has sent more traffic to my blog in the last year than any single guest post or web site other than Google, StumbleUpon, and Twitter.

In other words, this blog ranks #4 in terms of how much traffic it sends to my site.

And it was all because of one measly comment on one measly post.

Blogs that Rank Well Send Lots of Traffic

If you were to use this same strategy to drive traffic to your site, you’d want to do the following:

1. Search Google for a keyword phrase you’ve already written about in a blog post or article.

2. Go through the first page of search results to see if any of the sites are blogs.

3. If one of the sites is a blog, and comments are open, then leave a comment contributing to the conversation.

4. Do not link to your site’s home page in the URL field. Rather, link directly to the post or article that’s related to the one you’re commenting on.

5. Rather than typing your name into the name field, use your primary keyword phrase, or even the title of your post or article.

6. Finally, mention your related blog post or article in your comment and instruct readers to click your name if they’d like to read more.

While it’s no guarantee that your comment will produce thousands of visitors (or that it will even be published), there is a good chance you will get a steady stream of visitors to your site for weeks, months, and possibly years.

-Ryan M. Healy

{ 22 comments }