Quickly find quality blogs to comment on [ 3:07 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Blog commenting can be an effective way to generate back links and attract traffic to your site. Previously, I have discussed using a feed reader to find on topic blogs to do that and then taking part in the conversation. You can read about that in a previous post at “Finding blogs to comment on“.

Sometimes it can be hard to find quality blogs that are on topic to comment on.

Here is another way to find great blogs to interact with that doesn’t need to take all of your time. Before we continue first this warning.

Smart bloggers are active on Twitter and tend to share other bloggers quality posts. You can use this to your advantage to find great new blogs to take part in the conversation.

Here is how you can add this to your arsenal of tools and not take all of your time. After all we all have limited time.

First you should be using a Twitter app that allows you to create filters like Tweet Deck does. (At least as long as Twitter keeps allowing it, but that is another topic.)

When you find a quality blog, follow that person on Twitter and put them in a special column so it is easy to see what they are mentioning.

Take a few minutes a couple of times a day to go visit the blogs they are mentioning if the title interests you.

If you like the post and can add to, take the time to comment on it. Retweet it to your followers. Add that person to your Twitter followers and to your special column.

Now you can see what that person is retweeting and if they point you to quality posts you keep them in your special column. If not or if they are posting crap (it happens) just remove them.

Do this on a regular basis and you will gradually expand your reach and be surprised at some of the things you will find and how rapidly you can expand your reach.

As long as you are adding value with your comments, this can be a very effective way to attract more readers and find people to network with that are in your niche.

A few minutes a day can greatly expand your reach.

How do you find blogs to comment on? Leave a comment and let me know.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog commenting, bloggers, blogs, traffic, twitter

There is a lot to do when you run a blog. You need to be coming up with ideas and you need to be working on building up your traffic and back links. The 3 techniques below will help you do both at the same time.

This is a rare case where you can kill two birds with one stone. Normally I am about focusing on one thing at a time but this is one of the exceptions where you can effectively do two things at once.

Use A Reader To Stay Current

The first is one I have blogged about regularly and that is using a reader to keep current on what is going on in your niche. You can get instructions here on using a feed reader.

Keeping track of what is hot in your niche by following what is new in Google News and various high quality blogs and sites will allow you to keep up. This will give you blogs to read and comment on regularly.

A great way to get ideas from what others are talking about.

Be Active In Forums

The second way is visiting the forums in your niche. Being active in forums on your topic is a good way to keep track of what is hot. If you are active you can build your authority and while doing that drive traffic to your blog through your signature if it is allowed.

Yahoo Answers

Going through the questions asked in Yahoo Answers regularly and answering them can be a good way to come up with ideas for your posts. Leaving an occasional link will help your back linking. You don’t want to leave a link until you have answered a few questions and should not be done every time.

Using these three techniques will help you generate ideas for your blog posts. Have a way to write them down so you remember them when the time comes to actually sit down at the keyboard and you will find it easier to blog regularly.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, blog commenting, blogs, drive traffic, google, Google Reader, niche, yahoo answers

3 Advantages To Blog Commenting [ 2:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Blog commenting can help you in a number of way and today I will discuss 3 specific ways. Before I do though a bit of a caveat.

Always make sure that you are adding value to the blog where you comment and please none of this “Gee I really like your blog” crap. Take the time to actually get involved in the conversation and show that you are not just trying to grab a quick backlink.

Here are 3 of the advantages to taking your time to comment on blogs.

1. Back link to your site
2. Direct traffic to your site
3. Exposure to your audience

Now lets look at these one at a time.

Back link to your site

When you are commenting you get to add your site into the registration box and this will create a back link to your site. Now be careful and use a name for registering because most of the better blogs will mark you as spam if you try and use anchor text instead of a name. (I will for sure on my blogs.)

Some will be using plugins like comment luv where you will get an additional link to your last post. (Like here.)

Direct traffic to your site

Some people will click through directly to your site. The better the comment you are leaving the more likely this is to happen. So the rule is add real value to the site you are commenting on and it will improve the chance you will get people checking you out.

Exposure to your audience

You should be commenting on the topics you cover on your blog and this gets you exposure to other readers that are interested in what you blog about. The more you are seen the more likely people are to see you as someone that know the topic and you are on your way to becoming a trusted resource.

So there are 3 advantages to commenting on blogs. Done right as part of your normal marketing plan blog commenting can help you build a following for your blog.

Let me know what other advantages you have found by leaving a comment below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog comment, blog commenting, direct traffic, get back link, increase exposure

One of the big things people need to understand is the little things done regularly that make a huge difference in your blogging efforts. None of the individual items tends to make a huge difference but combined they make a huge difference.

You can create back links in many ways. Three of the most common are to write articles, comment on other blogs and bookmark regularly.

Article writing takes a bit of effort but the other two are quite easy to make a regular part of your daily routine. After all if you are active in a niche that your blog resides you will be interacting through comments regularly as a natural part of your day.

Social bookmarking is just a habit that needs to be fostered. Do make sure that you are bookmarking more than just your posts. Again if you are active in your niche this is easy because you will find quality information from others regularly.

That leaves writing articles which can be extremely powerful but is not easy to make part of your regular routine. It does not have to be because if you have done a two part blog post it is fairly simple to use that as a basis for an article. You just need to be aware and use the content you are already creating by repurposing it. Adding an article submission each week should take you less than 30 minutes but at the end of the year you now have 50 articles out and around the net drawing visitors and creating links to your blog.

Want to take it up a level and you can use a service like Article Marketer where you can submit the article and they will distribute it for you to hundreds of directories.

Now an article, a comment or a bookmark won’t make a huge difference in your blog traffic but adding all of those regularly will make a huge difference in the traffic your blog gets.

To attend the free call on the 23rd at 7 pm on WordPress SEO sign up at WordPress SEO Call. Hope to see you there.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: article-submission, backlinks, blog commenting, social bookmarking, wordpress

Blog Commenting - A Great Traffic Strategy [ 2:55 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Blog Commenting – A Great Traffic Strategy

by Mike Paetzold – Copyright 2009 – All rights reserved

Blog commenting is a great way to generate traffic and back links to your blog. Though most people know this they tend not to do this because it seems like it may be a bit of that 4 letter word – WORK.

Because of that you see lots of services that will sell you commenting or PLR packages that come with pre-written blog comments. Not some of my favorite things.

Blog commenting does not have to be hard but you do need to provide value to others to generate value for your blog.

There are two ways that blog commenting helps your blog.

The first is the back link from leaving your comment.

The second is from people clicking through on your signature because of the comment you left.

Now there are plugins like do follow and comment luv that can make your comments more powerful. If you find blogs that do follow and use comment luv keep a list of them or add them to your feed reader as they will be more valuable links.

You still can and should add comments to other blogs even if they do not use those plugins. The reason is if you are participating and adding value to other blogs on your topic you will get traffic from your commenting efforts whether they do or do not.

The key is to be adding value and being on topic.

As an example commenting on a blog about horse training and linking to my WordPress blog will probably not get a lot of that blogs readers to be interested and follow to my blog. These are not the targeted readers I am looking to attract. If I had left a comment on another blog that was about blogging it would have much more power and the people clicking through would be my targeted audience.

It is easy to find blogs on your topic. Here is an easy 4 step way to find them.

1. Write a blog post on a specific topic
2. Go to Google news,
3. Search your topic
4. Click on the blog link on the left hand side.

You will see the most recent blog posts on that topic. (It is better to comment on newer posts and you are more likely to be approved.) Go read the post and add your comment.

Do this on a regular basis and you will increase the targeted traffic to your blog.

Mike Paetzold is a long time blogger and WordPress expert who has created 15 Minute Blog Traffic to help you generate more traffic to your blog easily.

You may use this article as long as it is unchanged (including the resource box) and all links are maintained.

Technorati Tags: blog comment, blog commenting, blog traffic, targeted traffic, traffic

3 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

By Mike Paetzold
Copyright 2009 All rights reserved

Traffic is the life blood of your blog. No matter the topic of you blog every blog needs more traffic. Below are 3 easy to implement ways to get more traffic to your blog.

1. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great way to do this. Contact other bloggers in your niche and ask if they would like to have you write a guest post for their blog. This allows you to go provide quality content to another audience and you can link back to your blog. The owner gets quality content.

It is even better when you guest for each other. This way you can share audiences and increase the reach of each of your blogs.

2. Pillar Posts

Pillar posts are posts that are usually a bit longer and very detailed with instructions or lists. Do a detailed how to on a topic and you are likely to get people linking to it because of how useful it is. These can include lists of resources that are helpful or good instructional posts.

3. Blog Commenting

Taking part in the conversation on other blogs is a great way to generate backlinks and draw visitors from the links on the comments. The key, as with all of these tips, is adding quality content in your comments. People will follow your signature link and check you out ONLY when you are adding to the conversation they are already involved on.

So there are 3 easy to implement ways to increase your traffic and back links to your blog. The key is to start applying them today.

Mike Paetzold is a long time blogger and WordPress expert who has created 15 Minute Blog Traffic to help you generate more traffic to your blog easily.

Technorati Tags: blog commenting, blog traffic, guest blogging, pillar post, wordpress

This will be the end of the series on getting the most from MyBlogLog and there is a caveat on this particular topic. This is not to spam others and send out your pitches. This is for networking with others and building relationships. Because you can misuse this I almost did not address this topic. Nuff said I hope .

You can message people in your contact list easily and it never hurts to welcome new contacts. Click on their profile and you can leave a message. This can be a great way to welcome them and thank them for following you.

Don’t use this as a promotion of your stuff or sites. Check out their profile and comment on what they are doing if it is complimentary to what you do. Now my blog is about WordPress and if what they are doing is about tattoos there is not any synergy there. That is not someone that you will want to be cross commenting with regularly. If it isn’t a fit you may just want to leave a quick thank you for following.

Rarely does anyone do this including me but when I have it tends to help me find people that are active on my blog and I tend to be an active participant on theirs. The key is for it to be a win win.

It is all about finding like minded complimentary people and the more of those you find and interact with the better for both of you.

Hope you have found this series helpful and welcome your comments.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog commenting, mybloglog, networking

Today is day 4 of the 5 steps to a profitable blog. We have already covered finding your niche, setting up your blog and how to post your blog. Today we will work on generating visitors.

The first thing I do with any new blog is to submit my feed to as many RSS directories as I can. To do this I use a FireFox plugin called Submit Em Now. It is easy to use and the payback for the hour or so of effort is huge as it is one time effort.

Start bookmarking your posts to various bookmarking sites. I use a service called OnlyWire which allows me to bookmark once and have it submitted to various services.

Now while on the subject of bookmarking make sure that you bookmark other sites too. If all you ever bookmark is your own sites you stand the chance of losing your account at some sites. Bookmarking is supposed to help others find quality information. When you find it bookmark it.

Comment on blog posts. This allows you to generate not only links back to your site if they allow do follow it allows you to get traffic from others if…

Here is the big if on commenting on blog posts. Take part in the conversation. Add value to the blog where you comment. Don’t just go in and say “I agree” or “I like your post”.

If you like it say why and what it has done for you. If you don’t agree make a cogent argument for why you feel the way you do. Now that adds value.

A couple more items that will help you generate traffic. Submit articles to the directories especially two part articles where part one goes in the directory and part two is on your blog.

Use your blog link in forums where you are active. Note don’t spam forums to get your link in any more than you spam blog comments.

For more details on generating blog traffic check out 15 Minute Blog Traffic.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Saturday at 2pm edt I will have a free teleseminar on Step One that will expand what has been offered here. You can call in or listen on the web. Details are available at Profitable Blogging – Step One.

Technorati Tags: blog commenting, onlywire, rss directories, traffic