Increasing Blog Traffic by Using HTML in Comments of Other Blogs.
- 17 Comment
Hello! I am Jennifer from The Life of a School Bus Driver. I am a guest contributor appearing here today and maybe some more in the future.
Today, I want to talk with you about gaining blog traffic by commenting on other blogs using available HTML to make your comments stand out among the other comments. When your comments stand out, viewers are drawn to them and tend to click through to your site over the other guys. So, using HTML in comments gives you an advantage in the more popular, highly commented on, sites.
As an example of NOT using any extra code in a comment, take a look at the post It’s Comment Friday with Lee!. As of this writing, that post has 33 comments, including one of mine, without any HTML in it. Go and see if you would pick my site to click on. I bet that you wouldn’t have paid any special attention to mine until now that I have made you look.
Now, go look at this other comment from me. It is comment 11 on 5 Must-read Blogs for Creative Writers. I just used a non-breaking comment like the other one. But this time, I put a link in it and I made two sections bold and another italic. I think you will agree that this comment stands out much more than the others and is likely to get more attention and therefore bring more traffic to my site.
Now, if you know HTML code, you can stop reading here and skip down to the bullet points before you go skipping off, testing your commenting skills, out there in the blogosphere.
For the rest of us, without further ado:
The code for bold is simply n. The code for italics is simply iĀ. The code for underline is, you guessed it, simply uĀ. Each of these codes is used in exactly the same way: <code> before the text you want to alter, and </code> after the text you want to alter.
So, for example if, I want to make my name bold, like this, Jennifer, I simply type “< b>Jennifer < /b>” without those extra spaces, and my name will appear in bold in that spot of the comment.
You would do the same for the italics with < i> or underline with < u>. There are not any blank spaces between the < and the >! I have to type it with those extra spaces here so you can SEE the code, otherwise it would disappear. If you really use spaces in between those pointy brackets then you will end up actually seeing the code instead of the desired effect of the code.
Now, last but not least. If you want to make the name of your site a hyperlink, or any other text, for that matter, click-able this is all you need to do! Type in:
< a href=”http://www.blogaboutyourblog.com/”>Terrific Site< /a>
where URL equals the complete URL you are hyperlinking to; make sure to keep those quote marks. And where Terrific Site is what you want to make click-able. Oh, and make sure to get rid of that extra space before the < > that I had to stick in so the code wouldn’t become invisible to you in this post.
Note: This effect is less likely to be accepted by the blog host than the other techniques and having links in a comment is also more likely to get it into the spam file.
Now, before you get all excited commenting yourself to the top using HTML, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- You shouldn’t make your comments too long.
- You shouldn’t even hint away from the topic of the conversation.
- You shouldn’t just spam the site leaving something like “Great Post”.
- You should think about your comments.
Almost all sites including WordPress & Blogger will allow the code that makes for bold, italics, & underline. These are simple codes to include in your comments and they will get you results. (By the way, since so little code is actually allowed in comments, even people with only these simple codes under their belts are on an equal footing with those people who know a lot of HTML.)
Okay, that’s it for today: a small technique, bound to give you big results. Try it! I want to hear about what you think and the results that you get using HTML in your comments. Let me know how it goes!
Jennifer from The Life of a School Bus Driver, signing off for the first time, wishing you all the best in your commenting journeys.
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17 Comments on this post
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Jennifer said:
This is a great post. Thanks so much for the advice. I’m going to use it to promote my blog.
I’m wondering if the hyperlink also works in blogger or is it just bold, italics and underline that work?
May 27th, 2007 at 12:30 pm -
Matt said:
hyperlink should work in blogger
when leaving a comment you should see above the comment box
” You can use some HTML tags, such as , , ”
that means u can use hyperlink
May 27th, 2007 at 12:37 pm -
pearl said:
that is such a great idea – thanks for the tip.
Jennifer I recently discovered your blog and just love it.. š thanks
May 27th, 2007 at 2:26 pm -
pearl said:
okay the link to my site didn’t work, but worked to your site š
May 27th, 2007 at 2:28 pm -
Matt said:
you had one too many ” marks on your link
fixed it
May 27th, 2007 at 2:36 pm -
Jennifer said:
There are ways for webmasters to turn off the HTML they don’t want to show in there comments in all the different web hosting sites that I know of, so by default Blogger and WordPress and most allow links and HTML.
It is possible to run into sites where that option has been disabled by the webmaster or blogger. Though, so each site will have it’s own commenting policies.
May 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm -
Villager said:
Excellent post and hopefully, it is something that I can use on the Electronic Village!
peace,
VillagerMay 27th, 2007 at 4:59 pm -
pearl said:
thank you Matt..
May 28th, 2007 at 4:42 am -
Nia said:
Oh, remember your name is already hyper-linked, to your URL just above your comment anyway so you might want to make sure your comment content is rich before you add yet another hyperlink leading back to your site. š Why not hyper-link to another resource that elaborates on some word or concept in your comment?
This post has already gotten 29 diggs! Way to go Jennifer! So when is the next installment?
(I hope all my practice HTML worked!)
May 28th, 2007 at 9:56 am -
Rob O'Daniel said:
When building hyperlinks – either in posts themselves or comments to
others’ posts, don’t forget to add the TITLE tag to your link code like
so:Supplying the TITLE tag gives the search bots more to chew on and also
generates a little tool tip that appears when hovering over the link
with the cursor, providing the user a bit more info about the link you’re
suggesting he should click.And of course the SEO gurus always stress the importance of the “anchor
text” (the visible, clickable text within the hyperlink code) to
provide more relevant search results.Hope you find this helpful…
May 28th, 2007 at 7:01 pm -
Jennifer said:
Nia, yeah I agree with you. You shouldn’t put a link to your own site in your comments. It appears spammy even though it may not be intended that way.
I also agree with you Rob, but only about 1/2 way. When leaving links in comments the HTML should be as simple as possible with SEO out of your mind in my opinion.
Yes, SEO is important and should be used properly on a site, so your suggestion of using a Title is very appropriate of on an actual blog site for the writer.
In comments though, some people get a feed read of comments and in the feed all that code is spelled out and having to much will confuse the reader of the feed, so by including all the proper code which you refer to you may actually turn off a potential great reader and upgrade your spam status.
I actually suggest not using links as much as bold, italics, and underlines in comments. Links need to be very essential information and it is good to know that you can leave them when you have a very informative link that is on topic with a post, but don’t spam comments with links all over and tons of code.
Your advise is great for a blog owner though and I think there are a ton of blog owners that don’t know basic HTML because of the ease of using software to create their posts. It is a great policy to alway have a title for SEO purposes and that little tag window. I admit to not always using this tag in my site…mostly because of laziness.
Thanks for reading and commenting. It is wonderful to get such a good response on someone elses turf.
May 29th, 2007 at 7:34 pm -
Bev Schweigert said:
Wow! Great post! I never thought of making my comments stand out! From now on, every comment I leave on other blogs will use HTML code. Thanks so much for the info!
Bev
May 30th, 2007 at 12:11 pm -
Jennifer said:
I like your site Bev. I am glad you will be able to use this post. I hope you get all the crafters around to visit. That is probably a fairly hard audience to target with a computer, I know a lot of crafters and most hide from computers. LOL…
May 30th, 2007 at 7:35 pm -
Steve Yu said:
I never know that this simple tricks can send traffic . I should try this too. WOW! Traffic, traffic come to my blog!
June 7th, 2007 at 2:55 am
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