Do blog comments really help SEO? The answer is of course varied. It depends on the blog and it depends on the comment. There are companies out there who promise links back to their site by commenting on blogs. This is a flawed approach to SEO for a few reasons. Not all of those blogs have “do follow” links anyway. Leaving bad blog comments can wind up doing more harm than good. Here is why blog comments do not always help your SEO efforts.

The owner of the blog may blacklist you as spam – the problem is that if you are just commenting with “nice post” or “great tips” and your name is “Quality Cheap Mattresses” your comment may get bounced just because your name is not a human name. Most bloggers have some kind of anti-spam filter that catches names like that. Okay, so you do the same comment but with a real name. You may bypass the spam filter that way, but are you adding anything to the conversation? The other side of this is of course, having a too common name (for example John Smith) and leaving a comment that shows that English is not your first language. Your comment probably got flagged for spam with those misspelled words.

You put a link in your comment without permission – Most blog owners do not like when a reader posts a link in a comment. The only exception is if you are already known and liked by that blogger. This is the biggest thing that many companies try to do, and it does not work. No blogger wants you to come and drop a link in a comment uninvited. Stop doing that. You will wind up on the permanent spam list that way. If you piss enough people off, then your goals of better page ranking is really not going to happen.

The blog owner has “no-follow” links – Sometimes you can comment on a blog, but it passes no juice. The blog owner probably has no-follow clicked on their choices for comments. This means you can comment, but it will be an exercise in getting nowhere fast. Many blogs that have ‘do-follow” links such as plug-in like Comment-Luv or LiveFyre often require you to pass a spam filter. Then you can even choose which recent post you want to highlight.

If you really want a link, develop a good relationship first – Most bloggers are more than happy to help out another blogger so long as the blogger in question is a decent person and not pushy. Don’t push for links right away. Get to know people and let them see that you are not there to spam them. Link to them first, and they will be much more likely to reciprocate. Remember, we are not here to get pushy. Getting links means having relationships with bloggers and webmasters. These things take time. Do not rush this. Do it right and you can have a friend for life who will be happy to link to you. Do it wrong and create an enemy. The choice is yours.