Checking your feed reader first thing in the morning is counterproductive.

That’s what most bloggers say. Although there is some truth to it, if you use it the way I’m going to show you now, you will have no worries about productivity. In fact, it will (in most cases) boost your productivity.

Side note: This is NOT the only known productive way of checking blog feeds. This is the method I follow and it works for me. And I’m guessing it will work for you too.

For this guide, I’m going to use Google reader for explaining. But I’m sure you can follow this method on most feed readers. I use Google reader for its simplicity. I have used a feed reader called snarfer before which is also pretty good. Anyway, which feed reader you use doesn’t matter as long as there are options to do what I’m explaining in this post.

When you get up and decide to go through your feeds as soon as you turn on your computer, you cannot spend a lot time on it. Obviously, you have got other higher priority jobs that need to be finished. So it isn’t easy to check your reader first thing in the morning and yet stay productive throughout the day. BUT it can be done and here’s how:

Organize

1. Remove the Clutter

That’s right. If you want to be productive, you have to remove the clutter. Clutter, in your feed reader, indicates the unwanted feeds. They are the ones which you rarely read. Or sometimes never. It occupies extra space. So remove them from your subscription list.

One of the best ways to manage online information overload is by subscribing to less blogs. Take some time and go through all the blogs you have subscribed to. Unsubscribe from blogs you no longer read.

I used to subscribe to many blogs (over 150). But the main problem with subscribing to so many blogs is that you will miss important information in the bulk of not so important ones. Whenever I used to take a holiday and return home, I had 300+ items unread. It is not humanly possible to go through all the feeds quickly and yet not miss any information. That is the reason why you should remove the clutter.

Right now, I’m subscribed to 45 blogs (which is still quite a lot). Most of these blogs publish one blog post every two days. So I never end up with many unread items.

2. Group the Feeds into Folders

Google reader has an option to group the feeds into folders. Snarfer (feed reader) also has that option. This is very useful and many of you have would have probably already done it.

This makes it easy to save your blogs under different labels. It’s just like how you store games, music, books and movies separately. You are simply organizing all the blogs under different labels for easier reading. I group the blogs according to the niche. I have folders named blogging, social media, productivity, copywriting, technology and brand monitoring. Brand monitoring is not blogs but the feed of searches for my name, my blog name etc.

By grouping, you can choose to read the content you want. When I feel down or stressed, I browse through the productivity folder. Depending on your mood, you can read the content you want at that particular time.

Read

Image Source: love read by luis de bethencourt

3. Go through Each Folder

As soon as you open your feed reader, go through each folder separately. Don’t use the “all items” option. You will a hard time understanding the post from their headline. When you go through each folder separately, you can easily find out what the post is about by just reading the headline. This saves you lot of time.

4. Read the Headlines

As you go through each folder, read only the headlines. If you are going to read each post, you will never finish your important works. Read the headline and understand what the post is about.

Once you know what the post is about and if the headline is very enticing, click on the link.

5. Skim

You liked the headline and you have clicked on it. Now it’s time to read/skim. Learn how to skim effectively. Skimming is quite a hard process. At first, you might miss some main points but as you keep doing it, you will get better at it.

There are many tutorials that teach you how to skim. I normally read the bolded parts, opening lines of paragraphs and quotes. If the opening line is interesting, I’ll read the paragraph further.

6. Star

This is the most important part. Once you skim the post and find it useful, “star” the post. Google reader has this option. It works the same way as the star option in gmail. When you click on the star like button to the left of the headline, it will get starred.

This is normally done for future reading. Since you are checking your feed reader first thing in the morning, you will not have time to read it completely. You star it for future reading.

You can find all the posts under the option called “starred items”.

How do all these increase productivity?

I’ll get there in a moment.

7. Brainstorm

At mid day or whenever you have free time, open your feed reader. Do you remember that we have starred the posts that are informative? Go to that list and read the posts.

Now when you are reading these posts, have a notebook and pen to jot down all the important points you come across. These points can be very helpful when you are writing a post. Some points could actually start up a debate and you can write a series of blog posts about it.

Read the posts in other niches also. As Chris Brogan says, you can get ideas for blog posts by reading things that have nothing to do with your niche.

Increase Productivity

As I promised, here are few ways how it increases productivity.

1. Less posts to read

When you organize and star the posts that interest you to read later, you significantly reduce the number of posts you have to go through. By having lesser posts, you can concentrate on each post for a longer time.

2. Early inspiration

You could actually do the skimming and starring part even in the evening instead of first thing in the morning but why do I insist on doing it as soon as you wake up? And how does that increase your productivity?

It gives you inspiration. The posts in the productivity folder will give you the much needed motivation for the day. Skimming a post quickly can provide this inspiration.

Ideas for blog post. You might start a day with some ideas for a blog post to write that day. When you skim through your feed reader in the morning, it will give more ideas on how you can improve your blog post which you are going to write that day. You might even find something relevant to what you are going to write on that particular day.

3. Lesser distractions

Since you have already checked your feeds, you won’t have the urge to check it at the middle of work. How many times have you opened your feed reader when you were working on something very important? I know I have done a couple of times. But when you check feeds as soon as you get up, you are not going to get distracted in between.

This is the way I use Google feed reader and increase my productivity by checking it first thing in the morning.

This might not be for you. But it is surely worth giving a try.

P.S: I don’t recommend checking feeds as soon as you get up if you easily get affected by what you read. Sometimes people read about a new application and they quickly jump over to that instead of completing their work. Follow this method only if you think you have a control over your mind.

If you are blogger, I’m sure you would have come across the word “duplicate content”.

Image Source: Fight Club by Polina Sergeeva

You are either a blogger who is writing informational blog posts or one of the very few who scrapes content from other blogs. There are only those two categories. You can’t be in between.

As long as you belong to number one, you don’t have to worry about Google penalty. Of course, there is another problem for you. You have to worry at the nights about those who scrape your content and make money while you are writing quality original information and still waiting for the huge paychecks to arrive.

You have the choice. You can ignore them and let Google handle them or you can take a step forward and do what you can to get the site down. The choice is yours. There is no wrong in letting Google handle it but there is going to be more and more blogs stealing your content if you don’t take action.

Now let me take you to the world where bloggers steal content. I’m talking about bloggers who are doing it on purpose. I’m not targeting the bloggers who have writers that scrape content without their knowledge. Although I should warn you to do a test for most of your articles at Copyscape soon else you are risking your brand.

Side Note: If you are a Kumbaya blogger, you won’t steal content.

Mighty Google

First we’ll start with why you should not let the giants of the search, Google, handle content thieves.

Though Google say that they will penalize the sites or blogs that has duplicate content within or across domains, you can see many blogs doing it and escaping from the penalty.

There are about thousands of websites that has the same article going.

Ever heard about article directories? That is one of the biggest examples of duplicate content. I’m not blaming the article directory owners or the article marketers who do it the right way. But there are always people who try to game the system.

Pick up an article that is doing very well in a particular article directory and put it at copyscape. What do you find? Duplicate content. Or go to Problogger and copy a headline of one of the posts and search for it in Google. You’ll find all the blogs stealing every single post written at Problogger. Darren Rowse has written about duplicate content before. His blog is very popular and is naturally a target for blog scrapers. I have had my content copied before. Kevin of Blogging Tips has written about content theft a few times before like: Social Rank – The New Breed Of Blog Scraping and Don’t Get Stressed About Blog Scrapers Stealing Your Content.

The worst part is, these scrapers still get their blog posts indexed in search engines and receive traffic. The main reason is there are millions of sites that have duplicate content and Google cannot take action on everyone of them.

So I don’t think Google can do much about duplicate content, at least not till they come with a new idea to stop this.

For the bloggers who work their sweat off to write articles only to find it in some other blog word for word copied using RSS feed of your blog, here is a way to stop RSS feed scrapers from stealing your content. I don’t know of a way to stop copy-paste method using a plugin. Let me know if you have a solution for it. If you don’t like to take action, at least get something out of their work. Install RSS footer plugin and get a backlink from them. This will at least let Google know that your content is the original one (Thanks to Daniel for this tip).

I personally don’t like people who do it and normally advice everyone not to do it. But when Google cannot stop people, I don’t expect the world to change by listening to me.

Now comes the best part…

What YOU And I Can Do About It?

You have every right for your content and you cannot let others use it as their own.

Most people steal content to earn money from AdSense or sell affiliate products. Report to the owner of the product which these scrapers are promoting and get their affiliate link invalid. That way they won’t earn money. If they use AdSense, you can get their account banned by contacting Google. But still your content remains in their blog. Now what you can do is, report to the hosting provider where the blog is hosted. You can find where the blog is hosted using this site – WhoIsHostingThis.

Once you find the host, go and complain to the host. Show them the proof. Most likely they will bring the site down. You can also follow any of these 10 ways to fight back content thieves.

I can’t believe why people are not using social media sites like twitter for this. Seriously, all it takes is one tweet. Everyone is ready to help you if you need it. (Side Note: I like how Jonathan Fields starts his day in twitter every morning saying “Morning, great people. Who can I help today?”)

If you take a moment to get help from your followers to bring down the site, you can pull down the site faster. I’m sure Darren Rowse can get all the sites that steals his content in a single tweet. Think about it. Almost every hosting provider is there in twitter. If someone can tweet something like “@hostprovider This blog at Loser.com is scraping my blog’s content at Rockstar.Com” and many people retweet the message, you can instantly get in touch with the host provider. Sometimes you don’t even need your followers to retweet. Now all you need to do it prove them that you are the real owner of the content.

It only takes a minute to do this. Don’t let others to steal your content.

Have you had your blog content scraped? What did you do about it? Please share your views in the comments.

Thanks to pettre (no link) from Authority Blogger forum for the idea for this post.

If you found this post to be useful, please share it with your friends and tweet it to your followers.

Many bloggers miss out small touches to their blogs. This may cost a lot. In this post, I have summed up 5 small(and often overlooked) things that can improve your blog a lot:

Image Source: Bright Angel Point by Wolfgang Staudt

1. Adding Subscription Options

When readers comment, they expect a reply from you. Subscribe to Comments is a great WordPress plugin that can add this option below your blog’s comment form. This will increase reader participation. After all, getting a mail saying “A new reply” is much better than making someone check your blog again and again in hope of a reply! (But hey, isn’t it great way to increase Page Views? )

RSS subscription is another things bloggers tend to overlook often. Make sure that you add a RSS Subscription link/image at a visible spot. Some great areas are top of sidebar (like ProBlogger) or Top Right Corner of page (like Daily Blog Tips).

2. Participating In Community

No one likes to comment on a dead blog. If you do not reply to comments and participate in discussions, no one will bother to come and comment. You should try to reply to every comment on your blog. If you do not have time, make sure that you reply to at least all the questions asked in comments section.

Note that this applies specifically to small blogs. Many other factors(traffic, exposure and SEO) come in to play when people comment on bigger blogs like ProBlogger.

Image Source: Happy Our Birthday by Hamed Saber

3. Adding Social Bookmarking Icons

Bookmarking sites like Delicious, Stumble Upon and Digg are a great source of traffic. But hey, you will not get any traffic if you do not give readers the options/tools to share your posts.

You can use Share This Widget below your posts or add custom social bookmarking icons so that it becomes easy for readers to share your content. You should enable Feed Flare in your Feedburner feeds so that RSS readers can also share the posts.

Image Source: 50 Social Media Icons by Ivan Walsh

4. Proofreading Your Posts

No one likes half baked posts that many bloggers churn out! If you want readers to take notice, you should spend some time proofreading your posts. If you use WordPress, After the Deadline plugin is great for spotting spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Note: Remember that no plugin or dictionary can make up for human editing. Spell checker can not catch many small grammatical mistakes(e.g. their in place of there).

5. Including Calls To Action

So, you are doing everything right but not getting results! Not including “Calls To Action” may be the reason.

Even a small call can do wonders. Just try including “If you liked this post, please consider subscribing via RSS” or something similar after your post. You will yourself see results.

If you are using WordPress, here’s how to add a call to action to bottom of all your posts:

Go to Appearance -> Editor. Select “single.php” from the right menu. Look for the following line of code:
<?php the_content() ?>

Enter the desired message(using HTML) after this line. Note that the tag may not be same for every theme. If you can not find it in single.php and need help, just leave a comment here.

Referrer Detector plugin is another good option that you can use for you calls.

These were just 5 small things that can improve your blog a lot. I am sure there are many more. Please share your tips/suggestions in comments.

This is a guest post by Ishan from Blogging With Success. Liked this post? Check out his post How To Sell A Dead Horse For $500.

I had a busy day today after coming from college at 4PM finishing the last exam of fourth semester.

My Experience

As I have set myself a challenge to write everyday, I wrote a ‘how to’ post. Now you are probably wondering where the ‘how to’ post is. That’s is where I did a mistake.

I completed writing a post and took a screen shot of what one has to do to make the ‘how to’ trick work. But I didn’t take a screen shot of the result. It took me nearly 30 minutes to write the post and 10 minutes to take screen shot, edit and upload to Flickr.

Just before hitting the publish button, I wanted to verify if the ‘how to’ worked properly. To my surprise, I found it not working. Maybe there was a temporary problem with the site I was going to write about.

So lesson learned

Always check before you post a ‘how to’ post. Check if you get the desired result. Why waste time writing the post only to find that the trick no longer works?

Value your time. Check before you post a ‘how to’.

Image Source: Jog by AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker

I am a huge fan of cardio and love to run a 5k. But I am no where near it. I started running only to reduce weight. Surprisingly it helped me improve blogging. I could easily brainstorm blog posts by running few minutes a day.

You don’t necessarily have to try for a 5k run but there is no reason why you shouldn’t. If you are new to running, I recommend you to read this blog post on Beginner’s guide to running by Leo at Zen Habits, which encouraged me to run.

Without further ado, let’s discuss the benefits of running and how it will improve your blogging skills:

1. No More Blogger’s Block

Blogger’s block is a term which you would have heard very often in the blogosphere. It is something that people always find it tough to avoid. But the truth is that there is no such thing called blogger’s block. It is just a mental perception. You are imagining things. To prove my point, let me give you an example:

Would you not write a post if Darren Rowse went for a holiday and requested a guest post from you?

How is that you are able to write now? It is only your attitude towards blogging. But I accept I’m also a victim of it. I tend to imagine things that are not real. I have had days when I cannot sit down and write a blog post. Things have changed now. One of the reasons for it is running. Let me make it clear for you:

When you start running, you will never have blogger’s block.

As Will Smith says in this video called “Key To Life”

When you’re running, there is an inner person that talks to you, which says “Oh I’m tired. My lungs are about to pop off. There is no way I could possibly continue.” You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that inner person, you’ll learn how to not quit when things get hard in your life (I haven’t transcribed that perfectly).

Watch the video here.

2. Spend Time Off from Your Computer

If you are like ‘previous me’, you would spend most of the time in front of computer. Let me tell you, it isn’t good for health. It is also not good for blogging. When you are always sitting in front of computer, you cannot think to your full capabilities. You have to give your mind some rest and getting off from your computer for a run will help you a lot. You will become more creative and your posts will have much better impact.

3. Brainstorm Topic Ideas

I can tell you frankly that most of my articles are brainstormed when I am either running or walking. I rarely get a blog post idea when I am sitting in front of computer. As Robin Sharma says in his book called Greatness Guide: The best thing you could do is, spend time thinking. Spend time brainstorming blog posts. You could do this effectively when you are running. When I am running, I think about blog post ideas or a social media plan.

4. Things around You Helps

When you are running or jogging, look around you. Take a quick note of things around you, in your mind. Come home and write everything you saw in a real notebook or Google notebook. Write down everything, from a baby playing with a ball to a dog chasing someone. Don’t leave out anything that you saw. This increases your memory power and also helps you create more blog posts. How does this help? It’s very simple logic. You should try to relate everything you see outside with blogging. You could write “Why blogging is as awesome as seeing a baby smile” or “Why you should run away from (something here) as if a dog is chasing you”. These are just small examples. You can brainstorm at least five blog post ideas everyday.

Have you ever had the feeling that you can not post on a specific day because you don’t have the mood for it? If you are already running, have you felt an increase in your blogging skill? Please share your views in the comments.

P.S: Connect with on twitter and friendfeed so we can carry the conversation there

Liz Strauss made a post few days back on breakthrough. It was a short post but it had a strong message. You can get tons of ideas when you go out and relax for a while. You will also become a lot productive by going out.

What you can do outside?
I know it can be boring outside sometimes. But to make every single visit to the outside world a worthy experience, take a camera or just your mobile phone outside and capture everything that you think is beautiful or worth a click.

What to do with it?
You can make these pictures your wallpaper or create a screen saver. Every time you feel unproductive, you can take a look at them and try to gain back your blogging confidence. You could also use these pictures in your blog posts and be very proud of that.

Will you be going out and enjoying the nature? Will you be taking pictures of the beautiful sights in the outside world? Share your views or even pictures you have taken before and I will write about it in the blog.

I always suggest people and my friends to comment on other blogs when they have no traffic or when they feel bored out. To make the best out of the comments you post, try to post one of these types of comments, which ever will suit the post.

1. Emotional
2. Negative
3. Praising

These types of comments will get more views and also reads. Your comment will be read by many people. After all, that is our primary aim, to get our comments read. So read the post CAREFULLY first. Then choose which type of comment to post.

1. Emotional

When I say emotional, you don’t need to tell sad stories. Just tell your normal story or what you have experienced in your life. Don’t tell it just for the sake of getting your comment read. Tell it only if it has really happened to you. Emotional comments will also get you more targeted readers for your blog.

Image Source: Starbug

2. Negative

Don’t be afraid to disagree with the point the author makes. You have to tell your opinion in the comments. If I get a negative comment, I will be happier. The reason? Simple. When you have all your readers agreeing to your point, then you will never know that you are making a mistake at times. If I get a negative comment in my blog, I will take time to read the post in his/her (the commentator’s) point of view. If he is right, I will surely appreciate him and also make sure to visit his blog.

3. Praising

Many bloggers like praising comments. Limit the praising to certain level. You cannot tell something that really isn’t true. Just tell what the author deserves. If you think he deserves a 100% praising comment, post it without any further thinking. Praising comments will boost up the author and also will let him/her to visit your blog.

If you haven’t tried any of the above types of comments, I suggest you to use them wherever necessary and wherever possible. What type of comments do you post? Do you agree with me on this post?

1. Targeted traffic
2. More chances of visitors to become your blog subscriber
3. Good Impression on you and a lot more.

You can comment in any blog, but to achieve the above three, you will have to choose the best blogs. So here are 5 things that you should keep in mind before you choose blogs for commenting:

1. The Niche Of The blog

You can comment on any niche blog and I suggest you to do so. But considering the main aim of the series, which is to get traffic from comments, you should expect good traffic from the comment in the blog of your niche. The niche of the blog in which you make the comment matters most. The people who come to your blog after reading your comments from the blog, which is your blog’s niche, will tend to take actions like subscribing to your blog, commenting on your blog, or even buy what you sell in your blog. These visitors will be more reactive than any other visitors to your blog. It is better to get 10 visitors from a blog of your niche than 25 from a blog of a different niche.

Image Source: extranoise

2. The Traffic

Second factor which plays a key role is traffic. The more traffic the blog receives, the more people will tend to visit your blog through your comment. If you can make the first comment in a blog post which receives 1000+ visitors, then you can expect good amount of visitors to your blog. When you consider the traffic from that one comment alone, it will be less. But these add up to a big amount when you make more comments. I, once made a comment in a blog post in a popular blog and surprisingly that post made to the front page of Digg. This got me over 30 visitors from that single comment.

3. Number Of Comments

When you make a comment on a blog post which has already received hundreds of comments, then you can’t expect much traffic. Still, I suggest you make the comment if the post is really good because you are commenting to tell your views and you cannot expect traffic every time you comment. You have to enjoy commenting and should not do it for the sake of traffic. If you find a really good post, then go forward and be the first to tell you honest opinion. The first comment on every post gets noticed more. Don’t hurry when commenting and don’t make mistakes. Comment with care.

4. Quality Of The Content

Both big blogs and small blogs come up with top notch content at times. Posts like “A comprehensive guide to StumbleUpon” from DoshDosh, “43 web design mistakes you should avoid” from Daily Blog Tips are few examples of top notch articles. They get visitors everyday and they will receive comments now and then. If you read a post which you think will become popular then make sure you are the first one to comment.

I, once again, tell you that these tips are just to get more traffic from your comments. But I suggest you not to use it in wrong manner and spam the comments or leave the small blogs without commenting. You can easily make a comment in 2 minutes. So make comments in blogs other which don’t qualify the above things because traffic is not all you get from commenting. There are much more valuable things other than traffic to your blog. Read this post on what you can get by commenting on other blogs.

This is the third post on the ‘Blog Commenting’ series. Make sure you subscribe to the blog so that you won’t miss any single post.

Winners and losers do the same thing. But what winners do at first, losers do at last.

So whatever you do, do it quick and do it in a creative way to that you will get noticed.

Image Source: MegElizabeth_

1. Kick Off the Comments

Being first to comment has its own advantages. If you stay at the top of all the commentators, yours will be seen by every other commentator and also by the blog author. When a reader reads the post, he will also look at the comments. He will read the first few comments without missing a single word. He will skim the next few comments and the comments after that won’t get read. If 80 people see your comment, then surely 4 people will come to your blog, assuming there would be a 5% conversion rate. Darren wrote a post on 10 ways to hurt your blog’s brand by commenting where one of the points he mentions is “Always Being First To Comment”. But if you read the point fully, you will see that your blog’s brand will be hurt only if you hurry to make the first comment and post useless info in the comment.

2. Make A Lengthy Comment

This is just to get the attraction of the comment readers. If your comment is big, they will read it thinking that you have something very useful to say. You have to satisfy their expectations. When you make lengthy comments, you should have good info in it. Lengthy comments don’t mean writing an essay or a blog post in the comment. Maybe a couple more lines than normal comments would be best.

3. Make It Easy To Read

If you are going to follow the above point, then you have to make your comment easy to read. Don’t express your views in one single big paragraph. Split it into two or more paragraphs or make a list of points and post it. This will make it easy for others to read your comment. After all they are going to read your comment only if it is readable. One more reason to split the comment into two or more paragraphs is to get 90% people’s attention to your comment.

4. Add Points To The Post

Almost every blogger posts list posts. These posts get huge attention and the comments also get significantly more attention. If you read the post thoroughly, you will be able to add points to the list. Say you read a post titled “10 reasons why you should try blog commenting”, you can add the 11^th, 12^th and so on. Read the comments and see if anyone has already added points to the list. If Yes, continue from the number where they have left. If there isn’t any comment adding points to the post, you kick start it. I have tried this method and yes, it has worked for me.

Image Source: deanj

5. Humor And Controversy

Using humor and controversies are the one of the best ways to get attention to your comment. But first to get your comment read, use on of the above method. To keep the comment reader to continue reading your comment, you can either add humor or controversy. But I suggest you not to you the later (controversy) unless you know how to do it.

6. Present The Comment With Quotes

Adding quotes to the comments you make can be really worth. While many bloggers advice you to add quotes to the post, adding quotes to comments can be equally good. Read books that have quotes and present it in your comment. If you are good in creating your own, then don’t feel shy and give your quote related to the post. Maybe you will become famous for your quotes in the comments.

7. Unique Avatar

This single tip does not suit for all the blogs but it will produce great result in many blogs. Many popular blogs show your MyBlogLog avatar near your name in the comment. Create a very unique or interesting avatar. Though this may not really get more readers, it is still a good technique. If you have your own picture in the avatar, it is well and good. If you don’t want to have your picture, try to select a funny and interesting avatar. You can also try using an avatar that reads your blog name. This can also be very effective. The reader might type your blog url manually later and visit your blog. If you are not there in MyBlogLog, I suggest you to register there with your blog. This creates a community around your blog, a bunch of regular readers.

One more basic tip is to read the content and then comment. Without reading, please don’t comment because it will show very well that you have not read the post.

I have tried every above technique and have found it to be working. As I said, it is not what you do that matters but how you do matters. Be unique. Be creative. Try your best to come up with new ideas to get your comments noticed. Every click you get from the comments on other blogs has a great conversion rate. You can convert many of those one time visitors to subscribers. Install the What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin and also subscribe remind plugin to have much more conversion rate. What do you do to get your comments noticed by others?

This is the second post in the Blog Commenting Series. To know more about the series, see here.

Commenting in blogs has its own advantages. It has been used by many bloggers to get things done. Commenting in blogs is not only followed for getting traffic but also for various other reasons which will be discussed in this post. When you go to a blog and read a post, the best way to tell the author what you feel is by using comments. By telling your views, you get traffic and a couple more things. So without any delay, let me take you to the post and explain you what the 5 reasons are to comment in blogs.

Image Source: 708718

1. Quality Traffic

You get quality traffic when you leave a good comment. When commenting on other blogs, make sure you give your best in the comment. Just don’t say “Good post” unless and other wise you are out of words and yet you want to encourage the author for the post. Add value to the post using the comment. A thought provoking comment or at least a meaningful comment will get you good traffic than the two word comments. Also don’t be controversial when it is not needed, else you will get negative impact. But that doesn’t mean you should not tell your views. Just tell it in a polite way because everyone is going to read it. So make a good valuable comment in a blog post on any blog, be it a famous one or not, you will get quality visitors to your blog and surely at least one of them is to subscribe to your blog.

2. Popularity

When you post a comment, you get your name seen by many other bloggers across the word. You get popularity and your blog gets it too. As I said above, if your comment is very valuable, then the chances of getting popular among other bloggers are more. This is the main reason why I don’t recommend you to comment with a keyword in your name. It doesn’t show the world who you are. Also It is a good idea to comment with new blog urls than you old ones, because it is the new ones which need more exposure.

3. More Comments In Your Blog

When you take the initiative to post valuable comments in your blog, then you will receive valuable comments in your blog. More the number of blogs you comment in, more is the number of comments in your blog. To tell it in a more technical way,

Number of comments you make in other blogs is directly proportional to the number of comments you get in your blog

So try to make more valuable comments in other blog, and you will start to receive comments.

4. Back Links

Few blogs have Top commentators list and this will help you a lot in getting back links. Most blogs refresh the Top commentators list every week. So the chances are more for you to top the Top commentators list. You back links increase easily. You get a higher technorati ranking. Also when you comment with your blog name and get into the top commentators list, you will have more chances of appearing in the front page of Google results for your name. But please don’t spam other blogs which have top commentators list by posting unwanted or unimportant comments. There are also bloggers who link back to their regular commentators every month. So you might be one of them for few blogs and you might get a link back.

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5. Improve Relationship

By commenting on other blogs, you can improve relationship with the author of the blog. By commenting regularly in famous blogs, you can even form good relationship with the A-list bloggers. Though it is a little tough, you can get to know them well by commenting in their posts. As I said before, make thought provoking or useful comments, and the author or the A-list blogger would be happy to reply to your comment and hence form a relationship. Once you get yourself known to the author, then you can send a mail to them saying a HI or appreciating their new post.

Blog commenting can prove to be really worth if you can make valuable comments. It is better to make 5 valuable comments than to make 25 unimportant comments. How do you comment in blogs? Do you add value to the blog post by commenting? Share it in the comments.

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