Blog commenting always has been, and most likely always will be, one of the most effective ways to generate traffic to your website. It’s so simple, and anybody can do it.

There’s a problem, though – many go about it in the wrong manner. Much like most things in life, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about it.

Luckily, though, it’s extremely easy to improve your strategy and create massive amounts of traffic with just a fraction of your time per week.

Effective Strategies

Create a List

When it comes to writing comments on blogs, you have two main purposes:

Whether digital or manually written, a list is a must!

• Implant yourself into the community
• Benefit from the community

To become a major part of a community, repetition is a major key – leaving just one comment on a blog in its life span most likely will not do you much good.

The truth about effectively commenting on blogs is to plaster yourself – without spamming – onto the blog. Your goal is to get the members of the community and blog owner to know you.

How can you repetitively comment on new posts of blogs? Build a list, of course!

At the time of this writing, my list of blogs that I comment on peaks at about 100. Checking them manually would be a pain. Luckily, however, there are tools to simplify the procedure:

• Google Reader
• Yahoo! Pipes

Engage With The Community Via Quality Comments

There’s a good reason why spam comments are so ineffective when it comes to a blog comment strategy – they lack the quality needed to be successful.

Whenever I comment on a blog, I spend three or four minutes reading the article, another three or four minutes writing my own comment, and then some more time replying to others.

Keep community-readers from becoming bored by engaging with them.

While writing “Great post!” might help the author’s self esteem, it won’t do a thing for your traffic.

Your comments should be viewed as an extension of the post. It should provide value to the reader, and furthermore encourage the community to visit your website.

In my original comment, I am sure to, in a nutshell, leave a direct reply to the author. This is the one-on-one time – it’s generally the most valuable.

These comments should be well structured, and generally will go over well with everybody.

I also reply to comments outside of the one-on-one conversation between the author and myself. A strong sense of community generally pulls over well.

Expand Your List

You create a list of ten blogs that you religiously comment on, carefully leaving powerful comments on a daily basis. Traffic soars as the community begins to fall in love with you.

Suddenly, your referral traffic flattens. What gives?

One blog can only supply so much referral traffic to you – eventually you will need to tap into more blogs. Thus, we need to expand our lists.

It’s really simple to expand your list – I generally add four or eight new blogs per day, allowing a huge growth over time. Luckily, it’s as easy as a few steps:

1. Use Google Analytics to track websites that refer traffic to your website.
2. Find your top referring blogs (I generally choose my top two).
3. Find referring blogs that result in very high time-on-site/low bound-rate factors.
4. Find commentators of the selected blogs in your niche and add them to your list.

Not every commentator of a blog you follow will be in your niche, but a considerable chunk will – make use of them and engage with their communities.

As your list grows, the incoming traffic does as well. It’s quiet magical.

What Commenting Strategies Do You Use?

Photo Credit: Thumbnail | List | Reader