Commenting with the Comment Luv Plugin Increases Traffic to your Site

Do you want more traffic? Better still, do you want more traffic from readers who leave a comment?

Lots of bloggers out there, perhaps even yourself, have spent hours (too many to talk about without feeling a little embarassed) making their blog beautiful, adding great content and ranking well in search engines BUT it looks and feels like a ghost town.

If this sounds like your site, then you need more commenters. Here’s how…

Commenters and Commenting

There are two sure-fire ways to get more comments on your blog:

• Offer incentives to readers who leave a comment
• Comment at other people’s sites to encourage them to check you out and hopefully leave a comment or few at your place.

Share the Link Love

The biggest incentive you can offer to a commenter is a link back to their site. Not just any old link, but one that search engines follow. This shares your site’s ranking with the sites that outgoing links point to.  Also known as sharing the link love, sharing the Google juice and other funny sounding phrases.

For those of you who don’t know, many WordPress sites have a default of ‘nofollow’ for all links. That means, when a link to somebody’s site appears in a comment, the link is active (that is, people can click on it and leave your site) but search engines are not going to “follow it” to the site. Therefore, no link love takes place.

Many WordPress site owners install and activate a ‘dofollow’ plugin that makes sure the search engines follow the link out to that site. WordPress sites that use such a plugin are called ‘dofollow’ sites.

To find out more about Dofollow plugins for WordPress, visit the dofollow plugin page at WordPress.

CommentLuv Power

The CommentLuv plugin by Andy Bailey provides a free service of providing a site visitor who has registered as a CommentLuv user with the opportunity to display the heading of one of their last posts, including a link to it, at the bottom of their comment on CommentLuv powered sites. That means, the site has to have the CommentLuv plugin installed and activated.

To find out more about CommentLuv, visit their site.

Summary of incentives for your readers: If you install and activate both a dofollow plugin and the CommentLuv plugin, the reader who leaves a comment will receive, free of charge, the appearance of one of their recent post titles with a dofollow link to their site, directly underneath their article.  Why wouldn’t they want to leave a comment?

What You Get When You Leave a Comment Here @ Thesis Theme HQ

Thesis Theme HQ is a dofollow site with the CommentLuv plugin enabled.

When you leave a comment you get a valuable link from a PR4 site (hopefully heading into PR5 territory soon) every time you leave a comment.

Suggested Strategy:
If you comment on one of our posts every time you write a post that relates to one of our main topics ~ blogging, Thesis Theme, WordPress, web design, make money online ~ you can choose to list your latest post about one of those topics (preferable to a post about your pet snake) along with its link.

You don’t have to do anything but register for free at CommentLuv first so they know what your posts are.

• You could end up with several high-quality and unique backlinks from my site to yours.
• You also get the traffic that comes with it from potentially NEW READERS who are interested in these topics.
• They may even become your subscribers.
• They might even buy the products you recommend, including your own products and services, and make you affiliate commissions.

So, make sure you leave a comment!

Leave Home & Leave Comments at ‘Their Place’

If you want to maximise the value of your comments, comment at WordPress sites that are ‘dofollow’ AND CommentLuv enbabled.

Visit a WordPress site that you haven’t been to before – preferably with CommentLuv enabled so that you can get a public display of one of your recent post headlines and a link back to your site.

Use the CommentLuv global search engine to search for CommentLuv enbabled sites about topics you are interested in/blog about.

I’ve listed 80+ WordPress blogs at the end of this post that are most likely Thesis Theme sites. Some blog about blogging but many do not.

3 FOR 3 Commenting Strategy

I recommend you leave three (3) quality comments at the same  site in quick succession (during the same visit). More if you want to but only if they are very good comments and you are enjoying your time at the blog.

Find three posts on the one website that interest you.

• Read each post thoroughly – start to finish. Don’t just skim over it.
• Respect the time the author has put into it – the research, the writing, finding images and hopefully proof-reading it.
• Then, provide a quality comment.

Using CommentLuv

For each comment you leave, select a different post from your website using the CommentLuv drop-down selection.

You have now visited a new site, left quality comments and obtained at least 3 different links back to your site, four if you include your home page.

Reading several posts at a new site – or a favourite site that you visit regularly – will help you get a feel for the site, see if the posts offer you something of value and help you to make a decision as to whether you will return.

Record the Best Sites to Visit and Comment At

If you do want to return, copy the URL of the site and make a list.

I use Excel so I can sort and remove duplicates. You might want to have a comment column so you can add a comment that may include keywords, topics or other comments like “Definitely go back again.”

If you do find a site that you really like, visit regularly and leave lots of relevant and helpful comments.

If the blog owner promotes the most frequent commenters, you might even get your avatar and link to your site in the sidebar or footer for others to see. They may be more inclined to visit your site given the credibility you have on a site they already visit.

The Best Sites

If you do find a site that has two or more of the following attributes, then you should consider it a priority to visit and support.

• Has CommentLuv
• Is dofollow enabled
• Promotes frequent commenters
• Writes about information similar to your own site and therefore may share common keywords – which is good for SEO.

Remember, you don’t have to comment publicly. You can use their contact form and:

• send them suggestions for improvement
• requests for help and advice
• say “Hello. I like your site. ” Make sure you tell them why you like their site!

Why Leaving 3 Comments Works

• Leaving multiple comments will bring you to the attention of the blogger.
• You are more likely to be considered worthy of approving (and getting your comment through moderation) than somebody who just leaves a quick comment like “Great post! Thanks for sharing. ”
• Once you clear moderation, you’ll probably get your comment approved automatically next time.

If you want to maximise the value of your comments, comment at WordPress sites that are ‘dofollow’ AND CommentLuv enbabled.

To find out more about CommentLuv, visit their site.

80+ Comment Luv enabled sites that are probably Thesis Theme sites

Here is a brief list of sites that came up after I searched the CommentLuv Global Search engine for the term “thesis”. Most of the time they appeared to be Thesis sites – I may have gotten a few wrong. Feel free to let me know of any sites that aren’t Thesis powered and/or aren’t appropriate to link to. I have only had the chance to visit a handful prior to publishing this post and would rather get the list out as soon as possible. Some blog about blogging – some don’t.

Is your blog CommentLuv enabled AND powered by Thesis?

If your blog is a powered by Thesis Theme AND you also use the CommentLuv plugin, leave your site url in a comment and I will check it out / add it to the list.

More Resources & DoFollow Lists

Learn more about …

• DoFollow Lists of Blogs
• Social Networking Sites and Forums
• DoFollow Search Tool
• Understanding Do Follow
• No Follow…

at GrowMap. They have maintained a huge article with hundreds of links to more information and thousands of DoFollow sites.

** Update - Thesis Theme HQ disabled the CommentLuv plugin on 15 March 2011 – to assess the impact of turning CommentLuv off.**