Using blog comments to generate back links to your site is becoming more and more prevalent.

There are a lot of people out there that will tell you don’t bother to use blog comments because all the blogs have no follow tags now and the search engines don’t record the links.

This is both true and not true at the same time. Yes, a vast majority of the blogs you find will have the no follow tag on the comments. But there are some that don’t have no follow tags.

The default installation of WordPress automatically adds the no follow tags to the comments but if you know what you are doing you can find blogs that don’t have the no follow tag or will remove the no follow tag in return for you making a certain number of posts.

Before I get into what to look for to find blogs without the no follow tag I want to cover comment etiquette.

If you are going to leave a comment on the blog MAKE SURE the comment is relevant to the post.

For example if the post is on blog comments your comment should be related to that post and have something to do with the content of the post. Don’t leave a comment talking about how to conquer the newest MLM offering.

Don’t put links in the body of your comment. This is very bad etiquette unless the link is to a resource that expands on your comment. This doesn’t mean if you have a site on sports fishing you can put a link to your site in the comment body but if the post is on a new way to string a leader you can put a link to a page (on your site or another) that shows how to do this.

I personally have my comments set up so that if you put links in the body of the comment it will go to moderation and not be posted until I get around to reviewing the links. This might be done quickly or it might take me a week to get to it. Remember, some people never check the comment moderation.

Now your name or I should say the form field where you enter your name. This should be your name or your moniker. For example I will use Randy The Hermit because more people know me that way than by my normal last name. Your moniker can have keywords in it (only helps if there are not any no follow tags) but it should be related to you or what you do. For example if you teach people how to blog you could use the moniker Blog Boy or Blogging Teacher but your moniker should stay the same no matter what you use for a link.

That pretty much covers the etiquette but I can hear a lot of you out there screaming, “Why should I bother if it is going to have the no follow tag on the back link?”

There are a number of reasons why you should do this:

1. It is still a link to your site that people will see and possibly follow. If you leave 5 blog comments per day that is 1,500 links in a year that might catch the eye of the reader and could get you traffic.
2. If you are posting relevant comments people will remember your name and you will start to build a reputation for yourself, especially if you only used one name.
3. If you post an interesting comment people will click on your link to see what else you have to offer.
4. Some of the ad services and search engines, like Ask (the last time I checked) don’t read the no follow tag. With the ad services this means that you site will look more relevant and it could lead to higher pay outs on your ads.

Now how to tell if the comments have the no follow tag applied to them.

One way is to go to the blog and find a post with comments and look at the page source, find the comment and see if it has no follow tag on the link. This is a pain but it works.

An easier way is to use FireFox or Flock browser (If you are not using one these you should be) and get the SEO for FireFox addon (It works in FireFox and Flock) you can find it as SEOTools.com or just search for it in Google.

Once this is installed all no follow links will be highlighted in red so they are easy to notice. If the link (the name) in the blog comment isn’t highlighted that mean the no follow is shut off for the comments on that blog.

Then there is another plugin that some people add to their WordPress blogs that will reward the frequent commenter. It is called Lucia’s Linky Love.

How it works it the owner of the blog can set the plugin so that after so many posts the no follow tag is removed from the comments of that person.

It does require that you use the same name and the same email address for every comment (I believe I mentioned using the same name above).

The owner of the site can set the limit from 3 to whatever they feel like but most of the time if they are using the plugin it is set from 3 to 5. This means you will have to leave a relevant comment 3 to 5 times before the no follow tag is removed but when it is removed it is removed from any comments you make from there on.

You might now be wondering how you find blogs that are using Lucia’s Linky Love, the easiest way to do this is to go to Google’s Blogsearch and search for your keywords in quotes plus Lucia’s Linky in quotes (it should look like this “keyword phrase”+”Lucia’s Linky” ) and you should find some posts for your keywords that this will apply to.

I use this on my blogs and I have it set at three. Because I read the comments and if they are spammy I delete them manual link spammers never get the three links they need for the no follow tags to be removed. This encourages better comments and more comments.

Blog Content Prison

Everybody is always saying that they don’t know what to write about for their blog hopefully this will change that and improve your search engine rankings at the same time.

When you created your blog you should have done some keyword research to find the keywords that you want your blog to rank for. If you didn’t do any keyword research then now is the time to do it.

Now I am going to assume you have done your keyword research and have a list of keywords that you want to rank for in the search engines. Hopefully you have a list of at least 10 keyword phrases if not go back to your keyword research and dig up some more.

List your ten best keyword phrases and this will be the first part of the title of your post.

For example, some of my keywords are:

Blogging Instructions
How To Blog
Blog Site
Blog Themes
Blog Hosting
Blog Content
WordPress

Now look at my posts. You will see that I have a post with a title that starts with almost all of these keyword phrases. (The How To Blog and Blog site are actually taken care of by the domain name and an html insert I have at the beginning of the page.)

What does this do?

Simple it gets my keywords in a prominent position on the website and I since I have all my post titles set to H1 this gives them as much weight as you can for on site optimization.

Now go to one of the pages, here is a link to the blog theme page Blog Themes it will open in a new window.

By the way the post above is a post on the theme that let’s me easily change my post titles to H1 without editing the CSS files, just a couple of clicks of the mouse.

Look at the URL in the address bar of your browser you will see that the URL contains the term Blog Theme twice.

Now look at title for the page again I have my main keywords first in the title to give them more weight.

This is what you want to do with your keyword phrases. Now take those ten keyword phrases you have and you have ideas for ten posts to write or to have written for you.

Once you have these ten articles done that doesn’t mean you have to stop using that keyword phrase at the beginning of your post titles. You can write as many post as you can think of on that topic, in fact I recommend you write numerous post on the topic to get more coverage in your longtail keyword phrases.

If you have been setting the correct way you should now have a place to start when it comes to writing an article. Keywords are the soul of your blog, use them, use them often and try to get them in positions that will help you with your search engine optimization (SEO).

As far as the rest of the blog configuration goes that is way too much to put in one post, you can get complete instructions at Blogging Beginners with the benefit of being able to ask the questions you want the answer to. Or you can search through the post here because sooner or later almost everything will be addressed.