There are many webmasters, link building companies, and SEO companies who really put a lot of faith in blog commenting as a way to build links, traffic, and expert reputation. There are also quite a few of these individuals who are successful with this approach. In my opinion though, there are many more who are not successful with blog commenting.
Blog commenting strategies that fail are almost entirely driven by spammy keyword names. Even worse though are just plain useless or otherwise dumb comments. I think a good comment can overcome a spammy name, but combine a useless comment with a spammy name, and your blog commenting strategy is sure to fail.
Some of my favorite useless blog comments of recent months are:
1. "Good day! I just want to give an enormous thumbs up for the nice information you've gotten right here on this post. I might be coming again to your weblog for extra soon."
Ok, so why does this comment suck? It says nothing and promises nothing. Not one mention of the topic of the post being commented on. Oh, but the commenter "might" be coming again to my weblog. Did I mention that the commenter name/url were both spammy? (I think you probably assumed that). I guess someone might approve this comment or possibly have an auto-approve on comments, but most likely not. Chance of success for this comment: Slim to none.
2. "Most of the times blogs are the same but i think that your blog can be an exception. Bravo !" and "hi, new to the site, thanks."
Wow really? That's all you have to say and you want a link back to your site for that? One word No.
3. "Tired of obtaining low numbers of useless traffic for your site? Well i want to share with you a brand new underground tactic that produces me personally $900 each day on 100% AUTOPILOT."
So the person who posted this is not trying to really generate links per se. They are really thinking that I will somehow decide that their spam comment is really a great idea, and that I will act on it. I realize that the idea of spam is to blast out as much of something as possible in hopes that someone will take action. I just can't imagine the payback on this. My action is simple click the spam link/botton.
4. "http://xxxxxxxx.com - cialis" or my other fave, the comment with 20 spam links one after another.
Again I sit here incredulously reading this type of comment. A link to an obviously spammy site (I hid the url just because) with an obviously high-spam keyword. Maybe one day I will accidently approve a comment like this. Not.
5. "I just added your blog site to my blogroll, I pray you would give some thought to doing the same."
I guess if all else fails, then the simple comment with a prayer might work. You know, if the name/Url provided with this comment was even remotely related to the blog it was posted on, I might have approved it. I'm not above helping out a fellow blogger. However, this was posted by someone pushing links for the phrase "tax attorney", and it was posted on a cooking blog. I guess there is no need for another "really?" comment on my part; you can figure that out on your own.
So why have I taken the time to repeat a lot of the obvious?
If it was that obvious then my blogs would not be full of this kind of useless blog commenting. If you are trying to drive traffic and/or rankings to your sites with blog comments, take the time to put together a moderately thoughtful comment and don't use a name like "cialis deals" or "tax attorney" or even "DUI attorney". You will be far more successful. If the person/company you are paying is doing this with great promises to you, then you would be better off hiring a reputable SEO company to do your link building.You get what you pay for.