Most blog SEO articles concentrate on the on-page or on-site SEO activities that can be undertaken to increase rankings and visitors. There are off-site activities that can also help.
One of the best tools for off-site blog SEO is Google’s very own Blog Search. You can use Blog Search to find other blogs that are ranking for the keywords you are using. Before going any further, there is a downside to using Blog Search. Don’t expect to enter a keyword and find a nice listing of blogs that rank for that search term. Blog search will often return web pages that are not from blogs so you will need to do a little filtering.
Find blogs with posts that are on similar topics to your own and work them. By working them I mean link to them where it will benefit your reader and comment on their posts.
There are two blog SEO effects of commenting. Comments can often (not always with auto nofollow of many comments) provide links to your pages. If you comment on enough blogs with comments that are meaningful and add to the conversation, you will find that other readers will come to recognise your name. They will get curious and follow back to your blog. If they like what they see they will start to comment on your posts and perhaps even link back. Visitors and Links – that is exactly what blog SEO is all about.
Commenting can be one of the most powerful off-site blog SEO strategies avaiable. The effect of commenting can far outweigh social marketing or social bookmarking especially if you do a time comparison on the two strategies.
