Is Your Comment Name A Weak Link?

Discover a tiny change you can make to the public comments you leave on other blogs that will have a HUGE impact on your blog’s visibility.

It’s the simplest tweak in the world, but it will super-power your comments by helping you:

• build search engine visibility without costing you a single penny
• stand out from a scrolling list of Johns and Marys
• inspire more curiousity about your blog
• communicate exactly what you write about with every comment you leave
• automatically turn every hyperlink you create on another blog into a targeted brand-builder

The author of CGDotNet has given me permission to publish excerpts from our private, behind-the-screens Blog Marketing Critique. This is one author who truly gets the whole concept of authority blogging — her call-to-action, mission statement, and blog marketing goals are very much in-line for success. There’s so much Jessa does right and well — and so many specific strong examples she sets — that I’ve decided to break down some of my critique into a series of posts.

My discovery and exploration of CGDotNet inspired a true lightbulb moment — an idea for how to improve my own blog promotion — one that made me say “Doh!” and “Duh!” I implemented the change ASAP — only last week — but already I’ve observed significant boosts in incoming traffic. The best part of all — these first-time visitors are highly targeted before they even arrive.

Here’s what I wrote to the author of CGDotNet:
There’s a crucial suggestion I’ve been dying to make since I discovered your blog — consider how I found you — through comments on another blog.

I have a confession — I passed on the opportunity to visit your site about five times because of the cryptic name on the link in your public comments on one of my favorite blogs.

“CGdotNet” — who the hell is that?
The shortening of your link text on comments is perhaps one of your biggest opportunities to improve traffic to your site. Comments on other blogs continue to be one of the best sources of highly targeted traffic EVER. Ever. Period.

If you’re going to take the time to share a meaningful relevant comment on another blog, and leave a link back to your site — Make that link work for you!

The second time I saw “CGdotNet” — the third, the fourth — I kept thinking “Wonder who that could be…” But that name did nothing to influence my decision to check it out right then and there. I waited for another day.

Had the name of the commenter been the descriptive “Clairvoyant Guidance” I would’ve jumped on that hyperlink the first time I spotted it — knowing it was something that might interest me. I would’ve discovered, read, subscribed to, and started loving your blog a good month before I did…

How many other potential readers thought the same thing, and passed on finding your blog for the same reasons?

Who the hell is “Slade”?
I discussed this author name/branding issue in my blog critique of lovely KL Masina — to put myself in the hot seat, I’ll use my own name as an example this time:

Who the hell is “Slade”? Why would that link text inspire anyone to check me out? Okay, so my name might inspire a little more random curiosity than “John” or “Bob” — that’s hardly targeting potential new visitors based on the content of my blog!

It hit me — I have the opportunity with every public reply to name the link to my site something more descriptive and content specific than my first name. I’ve since started using alternates to my comment name, like:

• “Shift Your Spirits”
• “Spiritual Blogging”
• “Spiritual Blogging | Slade”
• “Slade @ Shift Your Spirits”

I’m also experimenting with mini headline variations such as “Publishing IS Spiritual” or “Your Spirit Guides” — depending on the context of the other blog, the post, the comment I’m making, of course. I haven’t changed anything about the actual content of my public replies or the reasons why, when, and where I choose to leave comments.

I don’t “fake” comments or link spam — I leave them with the best intentions for all involved. But since I’m already there — hopefully offering something valuable to the conversation — why not maximize the exposure?

Maybe you’ve noted my shift, or seen others doing something similar — it’s not like I invented it. Even automated pingback bots are ahead of the humans on this one, and always have been… Many people seem to be wise to this tactic, but it obviously hasn’t occurred to the VAST majority of Dicks and Harrys out there.

Why do you need to change your required name on comments?
CGdotNet is a problem because it’s also NOT the site URL — so even verbally sharing that shortened name — or using it in off-line marketing such as business cards or telling someone the name over the phone — is not even accurate.

URL’s are less relevant than the Link Text assigned to them!

I recognize that you may want to emphasize that you’re a .net and not a .com — but when I see that link online, I don’t stop and go to my browser address and type it in — I CLICK on it.

The URL is irrelevant in that context. The actual text “Clairvoyant Guidance” is an absolutely crucial attention getter.

“Click Here” died out a long time ago. For years now, web marketing experts and copywriters have been pointing out how useless and non-descriptive “click here” is for actually making anyone want to click. We’ve all been advised, with both Search Engine Optimization and the human reader in mind, to make our link text a specific, eye-catching promise or preview of the page on the other end.

Is it worth the trouble?
This blog is basically brand new — I migrated an existing list to this feed — but in terms of search engine traffic, I started from scratch about three months ago. Since implementing this tiny tweak, my conversion rate of first-time visitors to subscribers has quadrupled.

My incoming links from other sites is easily six times what it was before. These aren’t 100 Stumblers per day — it’s more like 40 visitors — BUT these visitors are targeted before they even arrive.

Perhaps most notably this leveraged my most descriptive keywords “Spiritual Blogging” combined with the higher pagerank of other blogs. A Google search for “spiritual blogging” doesn’t return this blog on the first page — but within 48 hours it pulled my comments on other blogs — with multiple links — straight up to first-page search returns.

Try it out, see what happens, and share YOUR results below. Start right here…

Taking my own advice,

Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.