Links are widely recognised as one of the most important factors to your website’s improved search engine rankings. The more links you have (assuming they’re from good quality, relevant websites – and we can’t stress that enough) the more Google will look upon your website in the same manner as a father would look upon his child as he takes his first steps.
Sickly golden syrup analogy aside, the point still stands. If your website has loads of good quality links from similar websites, your website will perform better. With that in mind, one of the best ways to increase the number of links to your website is by commenting on the blog posts of other websites within your industry, adding a link to your own site within the URL field.
Now, this raises one or two important points – points that must first be made clear before you rush off and start spamming the bejesus out of your competitors.
Firstly, while the anchor text used within a link is important in SEO (the text used for the link itself), and the name you add when you post a comment becomes the actual link text, your name should NOT be added as a keyword. Nothing shouts ‘spam’ louder than a comment on a blog being posted by someone named ‘cheap laptops’ or ‘business cards Dublin’ – as we have noticed on a few blogs lately. The more discerning blog owners will not approve comments made by people who attempt to use keywords as their names, and the ones that will approve them aren’t worth being approved on in the first place.
Use your real name; it’s controversial, but you’ll stand a much better chance of the comment being approved – plus, most comments are ‘nofollowed’ anyway so the ‘link juice’ attributed to the anchor text wouldn’t apply.
Secondly, make sure your comment is both unique and relevant. If you run your own blog you will have noticed a succession of comments being posted on your blogs that all follow the same lines, and are often the same comment… something like:
“I like your site I will come back often”
Or the classic:
“Hey, this is my first comment on ur site. I’ve been reading it for a while in my RSS reader but haven’t commented before. 🙂 Anyways, thanks for the post.”
These are spam comments. They add nothing to the post, or the conversation that may have started in the comments below it, and the more knowledgeable blog owner would not publish them. Instead you should read the post, or at least part of it, and comment on the post itself. Offer some feedback, a comment on something you have read or even some advice on what has been posted. You do not have to write much, just a line or two, but the more specific your comment, the more chance it will be published and your link will be added.
This of course takes a little time – which is why, as with everything online, it’s better for your website in the long run. If the quick and easy path were better, we’d all be doing it and we’d all rank #1 in Google for every search. We don’t, and as it happens, it’s physically impossible – which is why the better quality websites, with the better content and the better links, rank above those with poor quality content and poor links.
Which one of those descriptions applies to your website?
- What are the nuts and bolts of digital marketing? - September 10, 2020
- What is Google RankBrain and how do you use it? - September 9, 2020
- Three dos (and three don’ts) of writing great content - September 4, 2020
