You’ve probably heard the age old ‘how to find readers for your blog’ advice that goes:
“Leave Comments on Other Blogs”
It was one of the first tips that I was given on how to find new readers for my blog five years ago and it’s one of the first pieces of advice that I hear most people giving still today. It’s so common in fact that I think that many of us gloss over it looking for a ‘sexier’ way to drive readers to our blogs.
But today as I analyzed the post featured in this video I saw something that drummed home to me the power of leaving relevant comments on blogs as a way of driving traffic.
The tool I’m using in this screencast video is CrazyEgg – a click tracking tool that creates a heatmap of where readers click when on your blog.
I do want to emphasize again – that the strategy of building traffic to your blog by leaving comments on other blogs only works when your comments ad value and are relevant to the post. If you don’t adhere to this you’ll just end up hurting your reputation.
See the Full Sized Video at YouTube, MySpace, Blip.tv and Viddler.
![How to Get Dreams Out of Your Head [And a Video of Me Wearing Tights]](https://problogger.com/wp-content/themes/problogger-redesign/build/placeholder.png)
I have noticed the same. However it has worked best for me when my comment was first. Also if you become a regular viewer and commenter for the blogs. This will help everyone.
Amylaine
http://www.ehow.com/how_2309804_work-home-paying-fees.html
When I first started blogging I had a very hard time finding user friendly and easy accessible statistics programs. Many I find out there are very misleading and do things such as count your own visits and page views thus over inflating the count.
I am for sure going to try Crazy Egg for myself! From watching the video I see that it is a very visual type of stat representation and for me will make organizing things much easier for me being a visual learner.
Thanks so much for the great suggestions!
I have found that leaving meaningful comments on post is an AWESOME way to drive new FREE traffic to my sites, as well as remind people about your site.
The numbers are never huge, but if you post comments on a continual basis on multiple post, your traffic will grow, as long as your site doesn’t suck.
Posting comments is just one tool in many that you can use.
Thanks Darren for the usual great post!
interesting, thanks a lot, I’m new to blogging, hopefully this will drive more traffic soon..
This software is a great idea. I am relatively new to the blogging world myself, so any new information is of value. Thanks for the post!
Yes, I’m not trying to do that on purpose but sometimes, I just wanted to recommend my link. Just started a new project, not a blog though, a marketing website for my country. Do have some visit. http://www.mysuperbrand.com . Learning to provide better comments.
Exactly how user friendly is CrazyEgg?
I find that I get more traffic from leaving comments on problogger than leaving comments for blogs that are more focused on my niche. Just goes to show how much traffic problogger gets.
nice article. will definitely start doing that… well I guess I just did. Have a good day blogging!
Thank you for your detailed explanation on how to leave the comment and why to do so? i am waiting for your next blog
How do people feel about others leaving links to their own sites in comments sections? I fear it will just come across as spam to most people.
I believe that is the best way to do SEO for your blog, also organic [natural link]. But please do not leave spam commens.
Problogger!!!,
I totally agree with you and this video, many other old time blogger also told the same story….
Why i said so?
Because myself also have been in this experience, 1 day, i have left a comment on the blog that receive thousand of visitors a day – tomorrow comes and i check my visitor statistic and got shock – i receive almost 200 visitor from that blog alone..
Imagine the power of commenting on others blog…
And i remind myself that don’t only left comment on the huge traffic blog but also left comment on what you like to read and interested to….
It make me have some blogging boost when someone left a comment on my blog….
I only comment when I have something relevant to say. Perhaps that hurts my immediate traffic, but I agree with your statement that commenting with no purpose will ultimately hurt your reputation.
Cheers!
Scott
Great Post,
Now I want to try out crazy egg, but I also have this urge to spam powerful blogs with comments. Since it works so well, I think I will.
Just realized that the above poster’s name is scott, and I put the wrong suffix on my domain. A double mistake.. ~_~
Heh, last month problogger was my biggest non-search-engine referrer for a comment on your post about people making a full time income from blogging. I fessed up to being in that category and got lots of peeps at my blog. Alas, your readers aren’t really my target audience, so I suppose it makes more sense to comment on blogs related to your own, but hey, I like to blather here, and I’m not going to send anyone who visits away. :)
Oh, and thanks for the video showing off the Crazy Egg features. I have heard of them before but never tried them or any other kind of stat tracking beyond awstats. I’m not what they call an early adopter. :P
I found out about commenting on blogs quite accidentally! I was new to blogging and just commented when I was interested in the post. I was surprised to find that it actually did bring traffic!
However, I think one of the reasons blog commenting works is that people see a sample of your writing, if they want more they will click through to your site. If you just leave a spammy comment I don’t think that would entice anyone to visit your blog!
Until I found this site, commenting on blogs is the only way I have generated traffic, that, and getting my site listed on 2 major newspapers. It did not get as much traffic as I had hoped though.
http://www.sweetredwines.info
Yes, commenting does seem to come back to being one of the number one ways to increase readership. After all, blogging is a dialogue, and what better way to give back to the networking community than through commenting.
Well this tutorial helped me out alot. I’m trying to get my blog off and running and right now its kind of hard to get traffic. Hopefully thhs will help me get a little more coming through and some comments down. Thanks again.
Well this tutorial helped me out alot. I’m trying to get my blog off and running and right now its kind of hard to get traffic. Hopefully thhs will help me get a little more coming through and some comments down. Thanks again.
trackfielduniversal.blogspot.com
Interesting program. I’ve been using Google Analytics, but it looks like compared to Crazy Egg, Google is in the dark ages LOL.
A great post. I’d like to add that people shouldn’t restrict themselves to just commenting on blogs that are hugely popular because I’ve seen that there are a lot of smaller blogs as well that can give out traffic over time if the comments posted are valuable enough.
Another great tool to review the traffic on the blog / website. Thanks for sharing the detailed analysis!
Thanks,
niksan
http://investsound.blogspot.com/
I’ve used crazy egg before and found that it brings back really interesting data for my blog (just like with this post), it’s also quite fun to use and funky!
You are right, I am getting around 25% of Traffic by commets in other blogs. I haven’t tested out crazy egg yet. I will test it and see whether its looks interesting or not?.
This is great, thanks for sharing the tool.
Bookmarked!
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
I just turned on my little dofollow link checker, and realized that problogger didn’t have dofollow turned on. I feel somewhat deceived, although i wasn’t of course. Is it wise to turn off no follow, or should I leave it on like you guys? A friend of mine says that leaving nofollow on helps to boost your pr.
That’s a great tool, I’m using it actually… Personally I think that leaving comments in other blogs are one of best strategies you can do to expand your network. Of course, only if your comment is useful, because there are many people who leave comments just to get a backlink, or just spamming a kind of promotion….
Thank you for demonstrate us again the importance of the comments in a blog.
thanks so much for this very wonderful video. I will try this one to improve also my traffic!
Though it took a painstaking time to download the videos given the slower connectivity at our area, the fruits of viewing these videos is just great. This is a great tool to review the traffic on any particular website.
CrazyEgg is a great tool, and I like Screencast too. Right now I’m using Camtasia studio to produce screenshot videos.
I would recommend Camtasia to anyone who wants to make educational or computer tutorial videos.
http://oscomputerworld.blogspot.com/
great post i always find useful tools.. i’ll have to check out the CrazyEgg tool… and thanks for the informative video!
A slightly cheaper option than crazyegg is http://www.clickdensity.com … their starter package is jsut $5/month. Ive used them for awhile and I LOVE the heat maps!
PPC Fool
http://www.ppcfool.com
Commenting definitely is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your own blog when done responsibly, the rule is quite simple:
comment = good? traffic = good
comment = trash? traffic = trash
Readers of comments are readers of blogs after all, it might not be your blog they’re reading at the moment but you should still treat them as such. Succeed in that and they might be intrigued by your comment and see what else you have to say.
I’ve watched that video a few times. I’ve only been blogging a month so I am for sure a newbie. Tons of articles talk about writing comments and linking back. My only concern is that everyone seems so much smarter on just about every subject.
I guess the point is to be real and authentic. So this is my first comment ever on any blog! I will test that theory here!
Thank you for the advice in the video and I will take it to heart.
God Bless
Wade
http://www.wadelowrey.com
Well I am Trying What Darren Said :
“Leave Comments on Other Blogs”
I love CrazyEgg but…. I often worry about how private your traffic data is. Same thing with services like SiteMeter. Somehow I can just picture people working there scouring over the top incoming searches. Am I too paranoid? :)
Money Manatee, what can they do whit your private date? I’m quite sure they have an EULA where are these privacy issues you can check. But why would be your traffic sources a confidential data? Do you leave comments on adult sites??? :) – just a joke, but you can take it seriously.
Darren, a good and capturing post, really that makes me convinced you’re right. But am I right you mentioned 5000 visitors to that popular blogpost, or did I hear it wrong? Well, if 200, 300 people clicked on links provided by your commenters I wonder what can be the impact on a blog that receives 60-100 visitors per a day, and 5-6 comments…
I’m still wondering. Yes, you say first you have to build that traffic and convince people leave comments.
Just a conversation in myself…
Barnabas Nagy
http://furlongdesign.com
Thomas Clausen, you mentioned http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html and I checked what it is able to do for me. Well, I logged into the demo and saw the heatmap of clicks, but that’s all. Did not see any number of clicks, visit source etc. that CrazyEgg all does. Am I right?
Barnabas Nagy
http://furlongdesign.com
Actually, was about to post on the advantages of making commenting just as important as consistent blogging while building a successful blog. Although I’m relatively new to blogging compared to you, I’m seeing great benefits in one of my blogs by commenting on other related blogs and including the url…
I did a post earlier today on another blogging tip and mentioned you in it Darren… thanks for the great advice. :)
-Ali
I perfectly agree. On the other side of the world, we are fighting spam comments. We should keep our blogs strongly protected from spam bots.
It is not only on the other side of the world : ) Use akismet if having WP that helped me out of spam.
That is some tip. I try commenting every day on blogs that I like reading. I had a blog I read about 80s music and left a link to my 80s music blog in the comments.
If you leave comments on a blogger blog without putting your link in the comments, if you use a picture for your profile, that picture shows up for all the comments you make. I think people are more drawn to comments when they have a picture on their profile. That is another small tip I read about long ago.
Thanks for the tip on CrazyEgg. I’ll check it out. I also use a dofollow WordPress plugin for comments to give people an incentive to comment. Have to delete a bit more spam because of it for the weenies that don’t know what relevant means, but it works for me.
Good Video. Never knew the real power of commenting. It really works. Just will boost my commenting spree. Starting from here.:D
I thing that commenting on blogs may or may not give you traffic at all.
It’s very depend on the type of readers that come to the blog.
If you site give solution to a problem that many people will read also the comment to know what other people thing about your solution.
But many niche blog have readers that some come to grab information quickly and will not even read the post through the end.
When commenting to other people blogs esp the high traffic ones, don’t put the first intention to get traffic from it. It’ll just cost your good reason to share thoughts and tips with other people. Even though people might not click your name to visit your blog, still the networking you create will help in the long run. This is what I believe. Being patient and persistent is important :D.
Thanks Darren on the advice and about CrazyEgg. Will try it out soon.
haha it looks like everybody want to comment when they realize the click that they might get from 12K visitor average per day. I would be lucky enough if I got ten (10) from here hhehe
Anyway, thanks darren for enlighten me aboutthe power of comment in other people’s blog.
thanks
lankapo
malaysia