Everyone wants to bring in more traffic to their website.  A simple way is though other blogs -  making comments on other blogs,  especially those in your niche.

How does this work?

Commenting gives you backlinks to your site. Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. Most blogsites have you enter your name, email and website link to post a comment, this allows other readers to click on your name and link and they will be directed to your website. Backlinks can also help your own SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Your ranking in search engines is increased with the more backlinks to your site. Better rankings, means better chances of being found in an internet search.

Making these comments also allows you to showcase your expertise on the topic to others reading the blog and comments.  It offers and opportunity to get exposed you to an audience you may not otherwise have a connection to.

Choose wisely when picking what blogs to comment on.  Go for a niche connected to your type of business and choose well ranked and respected sites. Making comments on sites like this means your name and backlink will also be published within another high ranking website.  This helps your own online visibility. Finding blogs can be as easy as following main ones in your niche or setting up Google alerts for specific terms and watching for good blogs to comment on from these alert results.

In most cases the first person to comment will get the most clicks to their site. People tend to follow on the first few then the most valuable… so make it a good comment and one that people will remember.

For your own blog you should encourage readers to engage and post comments on your posts, and when they do; reply and acknowledge that they took the time to:

1. Read your post
2. Make a comment

Their comments are also an opportunity for you to go deeper when providing an answer – help them out by providing links to your services or products. Take what you posted in the blog and based on what their comment is, go into more detail to help them.  Taking the time to do this will build your reputation and someone who is willing top lend a hand and go one step further when people ask questions. This helps build that KLT factor – Know, Like and Trust – so that people can visibly see why people do business with you and want to do the same.

Always have the option for blog readers to get blog updates via email or an RSS reader.  If they can sign up it means they get an email every time you publish a new blog post, creating an opportunity for them to directly read your blog and make a comment.

How often do you look for other blogs to comment on?  Is it a regular task you schedule in your weekly work – or simply a chance happening?

Here’s a challenge:

1. Do a Google search on your name and see how many results are online.
2. Setup a blog commenting time regularly over the next month.
3. After the month is up, check your name search again and look at the results.  Is there an increase in hits on your name?

I started this practice in late 2008, at that time there were about 1400 search results for my name (and they tend to all be me *benefits of a unique last name*).  If I do a search today there are over 32,000 results.  Yes all the social media content I do helps, but the blog commenting does as well.

Technorati Tags: blogging for business, increase website traffic, Small business