Blog Comments for SEO: Are they Worth it in 2020?

By jack123 | SEO | 16 Comments

Blog Comments for SEO: Are they Worth it in 2020?

Posting blog comments for SEO purposes used to be a highly popular technique back in the days. People used to receive thousands of spammy comments each week from people that just wanted to get some link juice out of their blogs. They were providing no intrinsic value, so they started being seen as a bad practice. 

That commenting explosion resulted in the birth of plugins like Akismet that can remove most spam. Although useful, such plugins don’t work all the time. So, blog owners started giving the “nofollow attribute” to comments to discourage this practice for link building.

The nofollow attribute tells the Google crawlers not to follow the URL it links to, providing not much value for SEO in result. However, people are still using blog comments as an SEO practice. The question remains, is it worth using this practice for link building in 2020?

Are they worth it?

As with many link building tactics, there’s a thin line between wasted time and actual return on investment. Even if you’re using the best practices, your results might still be lagging behind for unknown reasons. 

Sometimes, it might be more difficult to determine the impact of a given link or set of links. However, you should be able to grow if you’re getting links from high authority sites, generally speaking. But, the links from blog comments and all other sources break into two major categories: dofollow and nofollow. 

Dofollow Comment Links

These are the links that you want to get. Although they are harder to get, especially from blog comments, they can have a considerable effect on your SEO. However, the authority of the site matters a lot too. 

Dofollow links from high authority (Domain Rating – DR, Domain Authority – DA) blogs will generate the best results. Although Google can separate user-generated content (UGC) from native blog content, high DR dofollow comments will help your rankings. 

You can even get positive results by using comment links from domains with lower authority. They are not as powerful as the high DR ones but they are still better than nofollow links. But, you need to make sure that the comment links are coming from blogs that have a DR/DA of at least 20. Anything below won’t have much of an impact.

Nofollow Comment Links

Generally speaking, you want to strive for dofollow links. But, if you can’t get them, nofollow comment links from high-authority sites (DR/DA 40+) can still drive some results. They are better than no links, and sometimes they are good for delivering some variety to your link profile. 

Even if from high DA sites, the nofollow links will not be able to outrun the dofollow ones. But, if you have the time and resources, they can be worth it. However, make sure you get something above DR/DA 40 or otherwise, your efforts will be in vain. 

The benefits of commenting

Even if using blog comments for SEO purposes might have a bit of notoriety, this tactic can still generate lots of positive results that go beyond rankings.

Link Building: As mentioned above, if you can post a few blog comments linking to your site each day you will certainly enhance your link profile shortly. You can get hundreds of links in one year, and those will help you even if they are nofollow. 

Increased Traffic: If you’re posting helpful comments that are an addition to the community, you have a solid chance of gaining some free traffic. Make sure to only post comments on blogs from relevant niches that have lots of traffic. 

Perceived Authority: If you prove your experience in a certain niche by providing relevant replies and starting conversations, people will start perceiving you as an authority. But, you need to know your craft and be willing to help others to achieve this. 

Build Reputation: As long as you use a high-quality image of yourself and your real name, you can even build your brand by commenting. However, try to be cautious about the anchor text and keywords that you’re using for the links. 

More Conversions: One way or another, blog comments can increase your traffic, if done correctly. Any new visitors can potentially be converted into loyal readers or even clients that generate profits.

Tips for building blog comments for SEO

Although blog commenting, in general, can drive solid results, you still need to do it the right way. If you mess up one thing, you might end up looking spammy. 

Find Quality Blogs: you should only go for websites that have a DA/DR of above 40. You can find them by using a paid tool like Ahrefs. But, you can also search them in Google by using “title=” CommentLuv Enabled”” or “dofollow blogs” – this will only showcase blogs with dofollow links. 

Provide Value: Not all comments are created equal. If you want to generate links this way, you need to provide value. Try reading the article you’re planning to comment on and provide as much value as possible. Give your feedback and maybe even start a conversation if possible.

Try not to focus on your anchor text and link too much. Include it naturally in the comment as you don’t want to become a spammer. You should not comment just for the sake of getting a link tho. 

Be Relevant: Relevance might be the most important thing when commenting on blog posts. Find a website form your niche and an article that suits your topic. Make sure your comment and link are relevant to the article!

Conclusion

Blog commenting has been used for SEO purposes for a very long time now. Although it’s becoming less effective nowadays, especially that Google introduced new attributes such as UGC, comments can still improve your rankings. 

As a general rule, try to strive for high-quality blogs that enable dofollow links. They will drive the most results. However, your comments need to be relevant and of high quality. Focus more on the value you’re providing rather than on getting a free link. If you go ahead with this mentality, you should be good.