10 tips for traffic generating comments

So, like everyone and his neighbour, you comment on blogs to get links and traffic. So, like everyone and his cousin, where is the traffic?

The following list contains some tips to get the most traffic from your comments (and perhaps a few links too)

• Make meaningful comments: I thought I'd get this one out of the way. Its sound, and everyone knows it. Yet, what is a meaningful comment? I'd say, its a comment that enhances what is on the page. Add to the post, disagree with it, support and supplement the perspective of another commenter, ATTACK another commenter, sensitively, if an opportunity arises..... become a part of the story of that page.
• Be real. Have emotions, show uncertainty, have ideas you are enthusiastic about..... share experience not just for authority, but for sharing yourself as a person in related circumstances.
  
• Which blogs to comment on, which posts to comment on: Naturally, you want blogs that are relevant. You want posts that you can comment on with authority and enthusiasm. It works better to comment on posts with a few comments so that you are closer to the original post, and have less competition. Arun Bansi Lal suggests subscribing to blogs to find new comments that you can quickly post on.
  
• Subscribe to comments: This is often overlooked. You make an awesome comment, and the blogger or another person responds to it. If you are in the loop enough to pick up and create a conversation - you have succeeded in creating curiosity around yourself - guess how curious people will try to find out more about you? Click!
• Where to link to? Home page? heh. And you are building links! What you want to do is link to a page that is relevant to that post, or your comment. Who knows, the blogger may simply choose to link to it, if s/he finds value......
• The flip side of where to link to: Sometimes I have a post I'd like to bring people to. So then, I will hunt for blog posts that are relevant to that post, comment and link to that post. For example, I have written this list. Now, I can go around looking for who else has written about effective commenting for traffic, and comment there and agree/disagree/contribute.... and link to here.
• Be generous: Don't hoard your knowledge for your site and comment teasers everywhere. It works sometimes, but it gets old real fast. Be generous in your appreciation when you find something appreciateworthy, be generous in your responses to differing perspectives. Mostly, be generous with links, ideas, contributions..... and not just with some payoff in mind. People are more interested in what they can get, and if both of you think that way, there is no bridge. If you can be generous, the gap is bridged, and then you have a relationship you can take ahead.
• Link to blogs you comment on at times. Its not always about getting your link on their real estate. It often is about you putting your money where your mouth is - all the efforts in the world are not going to build you anything, if you enjoy someone's hospitality for their links, and refuse/forget to acknowledge them when on your own territory.

I think each person has their own ideas of what works best for them.

What works best for you?

How many backlinks do I really have?

Was just checking the back links for my blog Footprints on the mountainside, which is about my expereinces and reflections about my work in the outdoors and training. This was inspired by my recent problems with Technorati indexing my blog....

The more I looked into this, the more confused I got. Apparently, not only every system has its own ways of counting the links, but things differ within them as well. I tried different ways of looking at this. Each one had its own results and led me to different understandings on what these resources looked at, but little understanding on how many backlinks I really  had.

Not even going to speak about Alexa here, since it has nothing to do with links....

Outside tools like backlinkwatch show about 263 links to this page. When I login to my wordpress dashboard, the Technorati Incoming Links Plugin finds links to me on Technorati (never mind that they have stopped indexing my blog), while google blog search shows no links to this blog...... My dear old wordpress thinks me linking to another post on my own blog is a link too and shows it as a trackback...... while this is misleading, I like the feel of something being happy to index absolutely every link I have that it finds....

Then for the Google thing..... The "External Links" in my Webmaster Tools thingy says I have 463 links pointing to my blog, but the index stats show one link.

Searching for my link on the net excluding my blog gives me these results-->

So now, I am just wondering when everyone will agree about how many links people have......

In the meanwhile, I have decided to let them do their job, and I will do mine.