For a while I’ve been seeing a number of people looking to hire someone to do their dofollow blog commenting for them.

Commenting on dofollow blogs can be a tedious task, and I have considered hiring someone to do my commenting.  I have seen offers of around $70 to $100 for 100 comments, which seems to be a reasonable price.

Is it a good idea to free up your time to take care of more important things, by having someone building links by commenting on dofollow blogs?

It may be a good idea for you, but there are risks involved.  If you are going to have someone else represent you by commenting with links going to your site, you need to be clear on what you are expecting of that person.

I would be clear about how many comments I want per day.  You don’t want all 100 links done in one day, but rather have them spread out over 2-4 weeks.

You want to make sure your person for hire knows where you want those links placed.  Do you want them on blogs related to your niche?  Do you want them on blogs related to your niche, and they must be dofollow blogs?

Do you want them on dofollow blogs only, preferably related to your niche, but some may be in other niches?  What percentage could be in other niches?

Are there niches you don’t want your comments placed on?  Make sure to spell out where you don’t want them posted.

Do you have Google PR requirements?  For example 20% on PR 4 or above, 30% on PR2 and PR3 and the rest on PR1 and above.

Are you going to provide the blogs to comment on, or are you doing to ask your hire to do that?

Do you require the comments be a certain length?  Perhaps a minimum of 150 characters?

I would be clear that you expect those comments to be quality comments, related to the post.

I would also provide keywords that you want your person to use for the website title, and provide them with the actual links you want them to use.

How are you going to monitor, or spot check, that good comments are being created?  Are you going to ask your person for hire to provide a list of all posts they comment on?

Wow, that’s a lot to ask of someone to do blog commenting, for me anyway.  I really don’t know if I could find someone to do my commenting for around $1 per comment, with all my requirements.

I guess that’s why I’m not hiring out dofollow blog comments.  Plus, I don’t know that I could trust anyone to represent me and my business when it comes to commenting on blogs.  So, I’ll just continue doing it myself.

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Hiring Out DoFollow Blog Comments

The problem is people are hiring out their blog commenting, or using automated tools to post generic comments that don’t relate to the blog post, or add any value to the blog posts.

This has caused me to question whether I should continue to keep this blog dofollow.  Since this blog is all about dofollow, it would make sense to keep the comments dofollow.

But, there may come a point in time, and it may be soon, that I will have to go nofollow due to the time it takes to monitor and delete crappy comments.

Recently, one of my favorite blogs, Untwisted Vortex, went from dofollow back to nofollow due to people leaving garbage for comments.

I absolutely understand why he needed to do that, and I’m afraid more dofollow blog owners will go back to nofollow because they are starting to get more bad comments than good comments.

For now, I will leave this blog as a dofollow on comments.  But, I will no longer automatically post comments and then come back and delete those comments that are bad.  I will now leave comments in moderation and only publish those that are quality comments.

This may lead to a few day delay in approving good comments since I moderate comments about every other day.

If you are using commenting on blogs as a link building strategy, I will say it again - Please respect the blog owner and leave good, quality comments.  Good comments will also help you improve the chances of someone visiting your site.

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Should I Remain DoFollow?

As I read blogs, I see a lot of people linking from their content straight through to the product they are promoting, via their affiliate link.

If you have a small blog with little content, that’s okay.   But, if you are linking through to affiliate products on multiple blog posts, especially the same product on multiple blog posts, you are potentially setting yourself up for a lot of work.

What happens if the product you are promoting changes?  What if the affiliate program, or link changes?  What if the website shuts down?  You could be left with a lot of outgoing affiliate links that are worthless.

It’s happened to me.  I had links to a product I was promoting in several blog posts.  By following one of those links one day, I discovered the site was now being directed to a totally different and unrelated product.  I found a similar product to replace the original product, but had to review each blog post, find each link and change each link - what a pain that was!

I decided I would never do that again, and had to find a way to better manage my Wordpress links.

I knew I could create files on my domain that contained redirect code with my affiliate link.  Then, if I needed to make a product change I could just change the affiliate link in that redirect page.  I could just make one change in that file and not have to change each post.

But, since I was using Wordpress it seemed to make sense to find a solution within Wordpress instead of creating numerous redirect files.

I needed a good Wordpress link management plugin.  The great thing about Wordpress is you can find plugins for about anything you need to do.  I found a great, simple to use link management plugin - GoCodes.

Once the GoCodes plugin is installed, you give the link a name, and the URL you want it directed to.  Following is an example of a GoCodes link.

http://followlist.com/blog/go/bloggingtothebank

That link takes you to a how to make money blogging product.  If that product disappears, becomes obsolete, or if I just feel like promoting a different product, I change the URL in the GoCodes settings and those links point to the new product.

The GoCodes Wordpress link management plugin is slightly difficult to install because you have to add some code to your .htaccess file.  The GoCodes plugin ReadMe file explains how to make that change, and it’s not difficult.

The GoCodes Wordpress link manager also allows you to track clicks on your redirected links.  This can help you determine which products are converting well, and which products are not.  If a product is not converting, simply replace it with a new product in GoCodes.

There may also be another benefit to using a link management plugin like GoCodes.  Instead of the outgoing links in your content going to an outside affiliate site, the links are actually pointing back to your domain.  It would seem that this would benefit your blog in the eyes of the search engines.  I don’t have any evidence to support this, but I am sure it hasn’t hurt my search engine ranking.

I now use GoCodes on all of my outgoing links in my blog posts.  I have learned the hard way to manage my Wordpress links so that I can make link changes in one place within Wordpress instead of having to make changes in several blog posts.

I suggest you start using GoCodes, or some similar Wordpress link management plugin, today - before you create a ton of time consuming work for yourself somewhere do the road.

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Wordpress Link Management

In part one of dofollow backlink strategy, Robert was questioning whether his dofollow blog backlink strategy was working.  By looking at the Yahoo backlinks to Roberts site, I found a good number of links pointing back to his blog.

So, I have to question if Robert is thinking his backlink strategy is not working because he is not seeing the traffic he is expecting.

If a lack of traffic is Roberts gauge of success, there may be a few reasons Robert is not seeing a return on his dofollow blog backlink time investment.  Here are the suggestions I gave Robert, with some detail added.

1. Make sure you are using keywords you want to target in the comment title. First look at some comments on the blog to make sure the blog owner allows keywords. Some only approve proper names.  I tend to shy away from dofollow blogs that only allow me to use proper names.  If they allow keyword titles, or they use the KeywordLuv plugin, make sure you use the keywords you are wanting to target.

2. If you are targeting keywords that are too competitive, you are fighting a loosing battle.  For example, if Robert is using a generic keyword such as “politics” for his keywords, he will never rank well due to the amount of competition he will have to face.  He will need to use more targeted keywords that have less competition to get on the first page of Google.

4.  Use different keywords.  If you use the same exact keyword on all blog commenting you do, Google may get suspicious and it may hurt you.  Change up your keywords so you have a variety of related keywords going to your blog.

5.  Don’t always use your main blog for the Website.  Use individual post URLs for some of your comments.  This is often called deep linking, and will help Google find individual posts, and send traffic to them.  Spread those links around to several pages (posts) on your site.

6. Make sure you leave quality comments so your comments are approved.  I delete about half the comments left on my blog.  It’s usually because they are not related to the post being commented, so I know they never read the blog post.  Or, the comment is just a short comment that adds absolutely no value to the blog post.  Don’t waste your time commenting on blogs if you’re not going to do it right.  Make good comments that will get approved.

7. Don’t just comment on the same blogs. It’s okay to comment on the same blogs over and over, especially if they have a Top Commentors plugin installed.  But, you also need to spread your comments out over multiple blogs.

I would also give Robert one more suggestion.  If I were going to spend the time building a lot of backlinks to a website, I would want to do it to a website that I had total control over.  Robert has done a lot of work, created a lot of unique content on Blogger.com.

If it were me, I would move the content to a Wordpress blog on my own domain and web host.  You can get a domain for less than $10 per year and web hosting for less than $7 per month.  With your own domain, web host and Wordpress blog you have more control over your website and you can do more with it.

I hope Robert and Sally don’t mind me using their comments for this post about dofollow blog backlink strategy.  They do get a link back to their sites, so that should help

Your comments are always welcome, and who knows, your quality comments may lead me to do a post related to your comments and you may get a link back to your site in a blog post - another reason to leave good and related comments.

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

DoFollow Blog Backlink Strategy Part 2

The question had to do with the dofollow blog backlink strategy and if it really works.

As I started writing this post, it got to be pretty long, so I will have divided it into two parts.

This is part #1.

Robert from The Silent Majority asked the question below.
“I have been aggresively pursuing the do follow philosophy. As of yet I have not seen much of a return on my time investment. As I am new at this I assume that I am doing something wrong, any suggestions.”

Sally of Fast Flat Sale was good enough to respond to Robert’s question below.
“Answer to Robert, I too have been commenting on do-follow websites for nearly a month now. I have built up over 1500 backlink in yahoo but only 4 backlinks in Google. I’m not sure why but I know it won’t be an overnight thing, it does take abit of time.”

First of all, Sally is doing the right thing by monitoring the number of backlinks that she is getting.  She knows how many backlinks she is building by checking with Yahoo and Google.  How would you know if your backlink strategy is working, or not, if you aren’t looking at backlink numbers periodically.

Sally also notes a big difference between the number of backlinks Yahoo reports and the number Google reports.  I believe this is normal.  It’s my understanding that Yahoo is a better gauge of actual backlinks, because Google does not want to give too much backlink info away.

So, my suggestion to Robert is to first find out how many backlinks you have from Yahoo. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ Input your blog into the top Explore URL box.

In the Results you will see the number of pages Yahoo has indexed, and Inlinks, the number of sites pointing back to your site.

Click on the Inlinks button, then I like to select “Except from This Domain” in the Show Inlinks Box, and “Entire Site” in the To box.  This will give you the number of links Yahoo sees pointing to your site from all sites excluding links pointing to other pages on the same site.

When I do this to Robert’s site, I see he does have a good number of links pointing back to his site.  So, it could be Robert is not seeing the results of the backlinks, in terms of visitors, that he is expecting.

Tomorrow, I will finish with part #2 of this discussion on whether the dofollow blog backlink strategy really works.  I will detail what I suggest, to make sure you get the most out of your dofollow blog comments.

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Is Your DoFollow Backlink Strategy Working?

You do need to know that I monitor the comments closely, and I do delete comments that are not related to the post topic.

The reason I have to monitor comments closely, is there will always be people who try to cheat the system.

By reading comments posted to this blog, I recently discovered a new dofollow blog comment strategy.  If you have a dofollow blog, you need to know about this new strategy.  If you comment on dofollow blogs, I will have some advice for you.

I noticed an interesting comment on this blog.  The comment stated “Is generating dofollow blog backlink traffic really worth the time and effort that it takes to make quality comments on dofollow blogs? Does it really work? I am a strong advocate of dofollow blogs, which is why I blog about it, and I can tell you that my experience tells me that it does work.”

I thought, that sure sounds familiar.  Of course it was familiar, it was the first paragraph of a post I made on this very blog a few days ago - see  Dofollow Blog Backlink Traffic.

This comment was not left on the above post, it was left as a comment on a different blog post.

So, it appears someone is extracting the first paragraph of a post, then posting that as a comment on a different post of the same blog, to get a backlink that looks like a valid comment.

I am guessing this is an automated, or semi-automated process that was designed to post a lot of comments in a short period of time.  This is a very clever strategy, and would have gone unnoticed if I didn’t actually read my blog comments.

But, I did catch it and this person will not get a backlink from me because I consider this - blog comment spam.  This time I just deleted the comment, if I see it again from the same person, I will flag it as spam.  If I start seeing it used more often by different people, I will flag them all as spam.

If your blog is a dofollow blog, you really need to watch your comments closely and not let people take advantage of you giving them a backlink.  Don’t reward people who are trying to cheat the system.

If you comment on dofollow blogs and are tempted to try something similar, don’t do it.  Sooner or later you will be discovered, and your blog comments will be flagged as spam.  Then your blog comments will disappear, and you will only have yourself to blame.

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

New DoFollow Blog Comment Strategy

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Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Twitter Updates for Mike

I am a strong advocate of dofollow blogs, which is why I blog about it, and I can tell you that my experience tells me that it does work.  This blog is a perfect example.

Following are some of the dofollow blog keywords that this blog ranks for Google.

dofollow blogs (Ranks 5 out of 340,000 Results)
dofollow blog list (Ranks 3 out of 1,210,000 Results)
do follow blogs (Ranks 9 out of 80,400,000 Results)
do follow blog (Ranks 3 out of 60,200,000 Results)
do follow blog list (Ranks 4 out of 37,300,000 Results)
do follow blogs list (Ranks 2 out of 42,600,000 Results)
dofollow blog (Ranks 7 out of 460,000 Results)

Furthermore, my Alexa ranking has been dropping steadily and now stands at the 70,709th most popular site on all of the internet.  You need to take Alexa rankings with a grain of salt, but I have seen my blog traffic stats increase as my Alexa rank has dropped.

The great thing is, I haven’t really done anything special to obtain these rankings.  Here is all I have done.
1.  I made the blog dofollow.
2.  I submitted one article to Ezinearticles about dofollow blogging.
3.  I created one video, that is a spoof of the history of dofollow blogs.
4.  I submitted my site to my dofollow blog list.
5.  I have commented on other dofollow blogs.

I can’t tell you how many dofollow blogs I have commented on, because I haven’t tracked it. I can tell you it hasn’t been all that many - less than 30 I would guess.

There is no reason you shouldn’t me able to increase your blog traffic by following the simple steps above.

Here are a couple of more tips that should help you.
1.  Write good, unique content.
2.  When commenting on dofollow blogs, add quality comments.
3.  Vary your link text when commenting on dofollow blogs.
4.  Don’t always link to your main blog post.  Link to specific posts within your blog to get some deep links to individual posts.
5.  Comment on 3 dofollow blogs every day, or so.  That would give you 30 dofollow backlinks in one month, you could have 360 backlinks in a year.
6.  Comment on different dofollow blogs.  Commenting on the same dofollow blogs over and over will not do you as much good as commenting on different blogs on different domains.

Okay, get out there and start building your traffic by creating backlinks from dofollow blog comments.

Let me stress, as I always do, you must make quality comments, related to the post.  If you don’t, your comment will not be approved, or will be deleted.

Happy blogging!

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Dofollow Blog Backlink Traffic

For the first time ever, and for a limited time, I am offering private label rights to my Video Clip MiniSite Builder script.

This script allows you to create unlimited niche video clip websites, or to easily add niche related videos to your current websites. The script pulls the videos from YouTube, so you are not hosting the videos themselves, and don’t have to worry about hosting disk space and bandwidth issues.

This is not the PC based video site builder that you may have seen. This is a web based video site builder. The advantage of a web based video clip site builder is that you can easily modify settings, or add new targeted keywords in a flash, right from your browser.

No more running an exe program, and stepping through screen, after screen, after screen, hoping you don’t screw up and have to start over again.

Just FTP the PHP script to your host, run the setup program in your browser, answer a few questions on one screen, and you’re done.

Learn more about the Video Clip Site Builder

This offer includes the Lite version of the script, and the Full version of the script.

The Lite version of the script is a fully functioning scaled down version of the Full Version.

I have been offering the Lite version for free in order to build a list. Once subscribers get the Lite version and see how well it works, it’s not difficult to upsell them to the Full version of the script.

I am doing a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) for the Video Script PLR, that will be end on Feb. 11th.

If you don’t know what a WSO is, you really need to become part of the WarriorForum, which is THE internet marketing forum.

WSO’s are special deals offered only to Warrior Forum members.

You can find some great deals through WSO’s.
http://videoclipminisites.com/wo

This Video Script PLR WSO will provide you with a solid software product, that has had little exposure, ready for you to sell.

After this Video Software PLR WSO , I don’t know if I’ll offer the PLR to the script again, but if I do it will be priced much higher.

So, don’t delay, go get it right now before you get distracted :-}
http://videoclipminisites.com/wo

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Video Site Script PLR - Must Have WSO

Do you search through the thousands for free wp templates and find one you like?  Then use it hoping no too many other bloggers are using it?

Or, do you pay for a template that others may be using?  Surely fewer bloggers will pay for a template and your blog will be somewhat unique.

Or, do you pay someone to build a totally custom template for you?  This would probably be fairly expensive, but it would certainly make your blog unique.

I have been asked about creating custom blog template by some customers, and answered the wp template question on my Online Tech Guy blog.

My answer is, use a free template that has the look and features you want, and then modify it if necessary to fit your specific needs.

All of my blogs use free templates with changes I have made specific to my needs.

This blog is a free template with changes I have made to the side bar, header and main page.  These changes are not hard to make if you understand where to make the changes and know a little PHP and html.

My internet marketing blog is also a free wp template, with modifications made to suit my needs.

Many of the sidebar changes can be made using the Widgets in your WP admin area.  You can do a lot of great things using the “Text” widget, by adding html and Javascript.

Making changes within the actual template PHP files can be a little more tricky.  But, there are some really cool things you can do, and you can display any information that is in your WP database anywhere you want.

If you are not comfortable making those changes to the code of your template, I suggest you hire someone to do it.  Okay here is a selfish plug - you can hire me

Here are just a few examples of some of the blogs I have modified to make them look unique.

Get Back With Your Ex Blog

Pulsatile Tinnitus Blog

These two blogs use the same template, and look somewhat alike.  But if you look closely, you will see there are distinct differences between the two.

I am considering offering a blog customization service, where I will customize blogs for a fee.  What do you think?  It would be less expensive than a custom built blog, and would give free wp template blogs more of a custom look.

I would appreciate your thoughts.  Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.  In return, you will get a keyword targeted dofollow link back to your site.  Comments are moderated and a “I think that’s a great idea” comment will be removed.  So, please leave a comment that will add value to the discussion.

Mike

Post from: DoFollow Blogs

Modifying Free WP Templates