I Agree with all these good tips, now a days many people are utilizing comments medium for the sake of SEO & Backlinks this leads to bad customer experience.

Commentators should concentrate on high quality & useful websites rather than commenting on every post without having any subject knowledge.

Please treat ‘Comments’ medium as knowledge sharing & doubt clarification Medium.

Thanks,
-Narendra.

Great post really and feeling glad to learn some quality tips for commenting.

One of the most annoying behaviour of commentors I come across everyday on my blog is using the targeted keywords which compells me to mark their comments as spam. So I too would agree with your #5 of using one’s real name.

Because I think the purpose of commenting should not be only backlinks, traffic, SEO or anything else like these. A better idea would be to treat commenting as interacting with a knowledgeable like minded people and expressing your views.

Thanks !

Just to clarify on that point, Karen, it’s fine to use a pen name or pseudonym (and some prominent bloggers do — James Chartrand of Men with Pens and Johnny B Truant of the self-publishing podcast) are using pseudonyms. What’s important is you use something that sounds like an actual name when commenting, not a keyword.

I agree with you that the culture is shifting a bit, though some bloggers do still need to be careful due to their day jobs or professions.

But from now i will use real name instead of keywords.

Although I didn’t want my real identity out on the web, I would introduce myself at social events to the people I was writing about and it was always fun to see their shock when I did. But I believed people in the public had a right to know who was writing about them, especially if it was critical, so I eventually outed myself and took the risk. For me, it was the right thing to do.

I think with the increase in social media the environment has changed today and more employers are comfortable with their workers writing blogs and comments as long as the employees use common sense. So, there’s less reason for anonymity.

I don´t think it´s hard to write a “good” and “meaningful” comment. Just add you personal feelings regarding this topic to the comment. And I´m sure, the most of us feel more than only “great post” or “good article”

Long-time DBT reader, but first time commenting.

Very nice post. I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years now, but I’m sad to say for much of that time I did not take commenting as seriously as I should have taken it. Like with DBT, I would read many blogs, but I wouldn’t COMMENT on them. And as your post points out, commenting on other blogs is a fine way to build your own readership (provided you do it properly).

These are all great tips. One I would add is:

If given the option, sign up for email notifications whenever someone responds to your comment.

Whether it’s the owner of the blog telling you “thanks for commenting” or another reader responding to something you wrote, knowing when someone has responded to you so you can go back and respond to THEM is incredibly beneficial for all parties involved.

Thanks again for the great tips, Ali.

It is also a valid point that Google also takes account of legth of comment, while giving weightage for the link in the comment.

Thank you for your informative article.

Although search engines (specially Google) have been smart enough to distinguish the difference of spamming and proper marketing methods, some people still try to promote their products through spamming, and that’s why Akismet is still the busiest plugin.

Before, the number of comments was used to be a factor for the ranking of a post. But it seems it is not the case for Google anymore, because I deleted the comments in one of my blog’s posts and they still have the same ranking on Google.

Asking proper and relevant questions, and adding some useful tips to what the article writer has outlined, are the best ways of commenting.

Good luck.

#1 – Excellent post.

#2 – Raspal, I love your style.

Treat comments like content. I do my best to personalize, engage, share my insight and create a mini-guest post each time I comment on a blog.

1 idea to add; comment on authority blogs to make the greatest impact. Think of your blog’s theme, then comment where you can reach as many folks as possible who’d dig your theme, to change the most lives and make the most friends.

I made the mistake of doing a volume approach for a minute there, then I changed my tactic to my old skool, in depth, thoughtful commenting style. It makes more sense. Drive-by comments are ignored, and of course, Google will treat some blog receiving hundreds of backlinks in days with supreme suspicion.

Build friendships through commenting. I think about DBT’s audience Ali for sure, when I comment here, but I think about building friendship with you based on the value I’d adding to this post through my comment. I can help you, and even though I may nail down a few sweet clickthroughs in return, I do not care about what I’m getting.

My intent is to add value, to help, to share my views and to make an impact, all while building bonds with authority bloggers.

Well said Ali. Love all of these points. As a suggestion, worried or impatient commentators can set a stop watch up to go off 5 minutes after you begin crafting your comment. This inspires you to stick around, share your thoughts and to make a quality impact wherever you comment.

Tweeting in a few. Thanks for the powerful share.

Ryan

I’ve seen some people overdo #3. Like, at a paid computer solution forum, many people would jump and reply within seconds of someone posting a question. They’d try to make money, like greedy dogs jump for a piece of bone. Does that sound good? Then, we shouldn’t have such an attitude. Remember – slow and steady wins the race, not the fast and speedy. 🙂

Surely a bad thing to use another word instead of your real name. These days I’m seeing spam comments from people using Google as their name.

BTW, I don’t even have to see comment names in the spam folder, before deleting them. No avatar means a spam comment, 99.99% of the time. The rest 0.01% are legit comments but still useless ones. In the latest version, comment luv doesn’t accept comments from someone not having a gravatar. No avatars at DBT is a different thing, though.