Blog Commenting as another great way to promote your new blog or store.

After submitting the RSS feed using the list of Top RSS directories, the next step I take is to begin commenting on other blogs.

Of course, blog commenting is not new, but there is a right way and wrong way to go about it. I’ve seen so much bad advice regarding using this method that it makes me sick. So I am going to share with you my exact strategy of using this tactic. It is what works for me and hopefully, you will be able to walk away with a few tips for yourself.

The biggest mistake that I see people make is that they will just go out and blindly search for blogs in their niche and then comment on every one of them. This can work against you in many, many ways. Think about this for just a second. If you have already submitted your RSS feed and your blog to the directories I’ve recommended, you have completed your first campaign of up to 100 or more backlinks. If you immediately go out and comment on a hundred or five hundred plus blogs in your niche, do you really think this is going to look “natural” to Google or any other search engine? Of course not. Especially not with a brand new site.

Give those first backlinks a chance to get indexed and go to work for you for a few weeks. You do not want to build too many backlinks all at once. This is the voice of experience speaking, it will not work in your favor.

Simply put, what we are looking for at this point is traffic. And when done properly, blog commenting is truly one of the more powerful ways to get it.

What you want to do now is go out and find anywhere from 5-15 very popular, high traffic blogs in your niche that you can follow and comment on regularly. By popular and high traffic, I mean ones that are updated frequently and appear to have a steady following. By regularly, I mean ones that you will return to on at least a weekly basis and participate in a discussion or two. In essence, you are going to become a part of the community on these blogs – much like a forum. This is going to require some research.

There are several ways you can find blogs in your niche. One of the first places I look is Google Blog Search. Just type in your niche, hit the search blogs button and it will bring up results of many blogs and posts related to your field. You may have to broaden your search terms if your niche is a tightly narrowed one.

Now begin visiting some of these sites. Here are a few things you are looking for:

Blogs that have at least two to three new posts each week.
Blogs that have at least a few comments on most every post – some by the same commentors as this indicates it has a following.
Does it display the amount of RSS subscribers anywhere on the blog? If so, aim for blogs with as high a number as possible. Sometimes many people follow a blog, but never make a comment. This can work in your favor.
Do not let pagerank or the nofollow attribute influence you here as these items do not matter in what we are trying to accomplish here. You are looking for quality blogs in your niche which offer good information and that you feel comfortable following.

When you have found the first five, go find two or three posts on each that you can contribute to. By contribute, I mean offer something of quality to the discussion. Do you agree with what they are saying? If you do, say so as well as why. Do you disagree? Say so and tell them why. Do you have something you can add to what the author or another commentor said? Tell them. Again, you are going to be following this blog and commenting regularly so add quality comments to the discussion.

This is the point where you will start to see traffic. Your first visit will more than likely be from the blog authors and once your comment is approved, the community will become curious about you and begin visiting. The more you comment and participate, the more likely the visitors are to keep coming. Especially if you offer something of value on your own site.

Some authors will like what they see so much they will link to you in their blogroll. This happens often with the visitors in the community as well. It also gives you the ability to build some strong relationships in the niche. If you were ever to develop your own product, such as an ebook, you will already have people you can either give review copies to or who would be willing to promote it. This is POWERFUL for you.

One thing I do want to stress here – when you begin doing this, DO NOT link to your website in the text of your comment. The author more than likely will not approve your comment. For now, it is good enough to drop the link in the comment form where it asks for your website. The only time you should ever link to your site in the actual comment itself is if you might have a post on your site that may compliment the article you are commenting on. But you only want to do this once you have established yourself in the community.

If you use this method when you first begin commenting, you will be surprised at how quickly you will gain visitors as well as customers. You will also be gaining backlinks.

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One of the very first things I always do with a new blog is submit the feed to RSS directories. This is also called RSS Search Engine Marketing or RSSEM for short. These are not the same type of directories where you submit a regular site, such as a BANS site. RSS directories will be publishing your website information, your RSS feed and sometimes a snapshot of your home page.

I am going to explain why this method of promotion can and will be very powerful for you, but first I want to explain why submitting to RSS directories can fall into a somewhat gray area for some people. The reason is that there are people who scrape RSS feeds and post them to their own sites. Some people do not like this idea at all, but when looking at the bigger picture, do not let the people who might scrape your content bother you.

It is labeled content theft when someone does this and does not post a link back to your site. However, when they do leave a link to you, here is what you have to remember, you have placed your content into an RSS feed and in doing so, made it available for syndication. Almost the same as if you were submitting an article to article directories like EzineArticles or GoArticles, etc. You don’t have to like it, but that’s the way it is.

That being said, let me show you how submitting your RSS feed to RSS directories can be very powerful for your website.

First of all, when you submit and are accepted into a directory (some are instant), this is an automatic link back to your site and is the first step in your link building campaign. The bulk of these directories are constantly crawled by the search engines and the bots will be all over your site in a matter of hours, sometimes even minutes, and begin indexing your site.

Likewise, due to the age of some of the directories, many times your site will show up as a link in the directory for different keywords (from your feed) on the first page of Google results. What this means is that even if the site itself does not rank on the first page, it is possible your feed in one of the directories will. Visitors will click on the search engine result, be taken to the directory, which gives them the link to your site. You will be surprised how many visitors will arrive on your site from this alone. I will give you an example toward the end.

Believe it or not, many of the RSS directories are frequently visited by humans. If your content is interesting enough, you can get a lot of visitors to your site just by being listed in the proper category.

The last benefit to your site is the RSS content scrapers. I’m probably going to catch some heat for saying that, but it’s true. The majority of these people will leave the link back to your site intact which gives you a backlink that you did not have to ask for or even work for. Yes, most will be lower quality, but if there are enough people linking to you this way, it will work in your favor in Google’s eyes.

Think of it as I said above, it is like you have submitted an article to a directory and these people chose to reprint it on their site. Another thing to remember, Google will know that the content appeared on your site first. Don’t ask me how they know, but they do. And if you are worried about a duplicate content penalty, don’t. If anyone is going to be penalized for duplicate content with them, it will be the scraper sites.

Something else to note is that most scraper sites do not rank very well in the search engines and even if they do, it is usually only momentary. Most scraper sites are built for the short-term and when their rankings begin to fall, your site will still prevail. It will also be stronger and rank better than these sites due to the backlinks.

I will admit, there will still be those who will re-publish your content and not provide a link back. This is theft, but there is a way you can combat it. Try to see if you can link to any other post on your site in most of your posts. These people may remove the main link to your site, but in most cases will not take the time to remove the link in your content. Take advantage of this for deep links within your site.

Another way is to combat it is to use a plugin that puts a copyright notice in your feed. When most content scrapers see this, they will remove your feed.

My advice is to not worry so much about those who strip out your link. No, it’s not fair and yes, you’re going to be mad about it. However, the number of people who leave the link will outnumber these people and this is what makes it worth it.

The last thing to remember is that Google will not penalize you for the sites linking to you. Google realizes this is something you basically have no control over. In my opinion, when all is said and done, the benefits outweigh the negatives.