Positive Real Estate Professionals

Over my years of blogging, one of the things that I see people fail the most at is commenting. Whether it is responding to comments on their own blogs or commenting on others’ blogs, they fail. It may seem like it is a painstaking task to do either, yet if people really knew how much it impacted their blogsite, I wonder if they would change their ways. Before we go much deeper in this subject, I have to admit that I was one of the “comment slackers” myself. I used to think that as long as I wrote posts on a daily basis, that was good enough. Well, I am here to tell you that commenting really does matter. So, without further delay, let’s dive in and see what the lack of commenting does to our blogs.

Why should I comment on your blog? You never take the time to acknowledge the comment.

This might be one of the single worst things that a blogger can do. Totally ignoring comments that are left on your site can kill a blog. First off, you typically will piss off the person that took the time to read your blog and then write a response to your article. Secondly, you are loosing out on the search engines that see these comments as being new content. That fact alone makes this a cardinal sin. Eventually the commenter will quit reading your articles because they see how much they DO NOT mean to you. In a nutshell, if you have someone that takes the time to comment on an article that you took the time to write, show them respect and appreciation by responding to their comment.

Why should I comment on your blog? You never comment on mine.

Reciprocal commenting is basically one of the golden rules of blogging. If you want to see your comments increase, then interact with the people that comment on your articles. Take the time to visit their site and read an article or two. Make a comment and create an interaction. You might actually be surprised what it can do for you. You really never know what commenter might be your next client or referral source. If you are not willing to open dialogue with them now, what is going to make them think that you will open dialogue with them when it comes to business?

What good does commenting do for my site?

Believe it or not, I had a potential client ask me this very question. The first thing that I have to stress is that commenting encourages interaction. When you run a blog that is directed and designed to help you generate leads and/or business, then interaction is key. If you do not have it, you can not gain clients. Commenting can have an impact to your SEO as well as to your site’s ranking. What? Commenting can affect my rankings? Believe it or not, the answer is yes. I have watched a website/blogsite lose their Alexa ranking over a three month period for the very fact that they quit commenting. Now, they have decided to start commenting again and all of a sudden, their rankings are back on the rise. Imagine that, the lack of commenting coinciding with a declining ranking. Who would have thunk it?

In closing, how can commenting help you and your blogsite? If that is still the question, then you might want to start reading this article again. Ultimately, you control your destiny when it comes to commenting. Engage your readers and the comments will come. Respond to their comments as well as visiting their blogs and they will stick with you. Ultimately, they will help drive your site’s rankings to another level and that is what will eventually help your SEO rankings.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Links to your site from other sites are an important indicator in the eyes of many search engines of the popularity of a site. If your site has hundreds or thousands of pages that link to it this can be an important factor in high placement in search engine results. With that said there are numerous caveats when it comes to linking.

Sites that are relevant to yours who link to you carry more weight than some random site. I appreciate an incoming link from my sister Kristi’s blog although it is more of a personal observations/journal type blog. Because of the nature of her blog, it has little relevance to real estate so it doesn’t carry as much weight as say a link from The Mortgage And More Blog which is directly related to the real estate industry. With that said, I am happy to have most incoming links and in the end I have only the illusion of control over those who link to me.

Here are some do’s:

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  While one way links do carry a bit more weight than reciprocal links do not discount the benefit of reciprocal links. In many instances a bu siness partner who you want to link to you will agree to do so if you link to them. This is a perfectly appropriate example of reciprocal linking. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by turning away a relevant reciprocal link because it isn’t a one way link!

• Link to yourself from all of the social medias you participate in. Most of the social media systems have some method that will allow you to link to your website from that system. These are FREE and easy links!
• Use the comment section in blogs that you frequent to build links. With this said there are two things that you should look for when commenting to be assured that your link will achieve maximum benefit. First you want to make sure that where you are commenting has a place for you to put your website’s URL. This is the only way a link can be generated from the comment section. Second you want to right click on the linked name of a previous commentor and look at the properties. This will let you see if the links that are generated in the comment section are ‘no follow’ or ‘do follow’. There is a bit of controversy as to whether ‘no follow’ links are beneficial. I believe that ‘no follow’ links may have some benefit as a link while the site’s Google juice provides no benefit to your site. Here are several posts on this very topic:

Using Comments to Build Links and Drive Traffic – Part 1

Using Comments to Build Links and Drive Traffic – Part 2

Do Follow v. No Follow

Here are some don’ts:

• Don’t participate in any type of link farming. Link farming is basically using ‘dummy’ domains to generate links to your site with the hope of increasing its popularity in the eyes of the search engines. This is considered a ‘black hat’ tactic and though it can be quite successful in creating links, search engines have developed algorithms to detect this type of deception. If detected the penalty can be quite severe and may result in your site be dropped to the bottom of search results for a specified period of time. Here is a great article with an with an explanatory video of what link farming is:

Link Farming is just another form of Spam

• Don’t fall for the promises of getting thousands of links to your site in a matter of days or hours. While the methods of generating these types of links can vary, many employ link farming or require a link exchange with a third party site. A link exchange may not sound like a bad idea but in many instances you have little to no control over the type of site you will be asked to link to. Thankfully many of these link exchanges do allow you to exclude pornographic sites but you may still be required to link to sites that are ideologically opposite or otherwise offensive to you. *NOTE: This is not the same as submitting your site to FREE directories like Open Directory Project.*
• Don’t pay for links; there is no reason to. Ask your business associates and partners that you deal with who have websites to link to your site. Not only will this allow visitors to your business partners’ sites to visit your site easily, it creates a FREE link. If you are going to pay for a link, I really believe it should be as part of an integrated marketing strategy that utilizes some type of pay per click or pay per impression system, along with your website, your blog, and various social media. *NOTE: Paying for links is different from submitting your site to paid directories like Yahoo! Directory, About.com, and Business.com. In my opinion however, if your site is properly optimized you will get all the juice you need without paying to be in directories.*
  

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

For those of you that missed the first part of this series, you might want to read Using Comments to Build Links and Drive Traffic – Part 1 first. For those of you who read that article, then let’s jump right into this section of the article.

Commenting to generate traffic:

Most people do not realize that you can use commenting to drive relevant traffic to your site. Time after time, I seem to have to go over this topic as a refresher course. With that said, it seems that people take off on the practice of commenting like a well trained race horse with an even better trained jockey riding their way to a Preakness victory. However, the problem is, most people do not make it to the finish line. They quit commenting because they do not see the ultimate return quickly. *As a side note, we all need to quit looking for the quick fix and work at what will make us successful in the long run. If a web developer tells you that they can take you to the top of Google in 24 hours, don’t walk away, run. Side note done, now back to your regular article.* Commenting on other blog articles can actually drive more readers to your site. This can be done by a few different ways, or by using all of these.

The first thing that you have to do is comment with consistency. If you manage to run 6 out of 7 days leaving a comment on a site, then you have done well. As a word of warning, make sure that your comment adds to the article, not detracts from it or leaves the author feeling like someone dropped off a “canned” answer. Readers of the sites that you are commenting on will also start mulling over your comments and if it is intriguing enough, they may take a look at your site. The evil in this is that most commentors seem to think they only need to leave one comment and people will start flocking their way. This is not true for the most part. It takes time to build a rapport with a blog owner as well as their readers.

Another path to take is to find a blog that employs the plugin . In doing this, you are able to leave a link for your site as well as a link to the latest article that you have written. This in turn can be used to drive traffic back to your site, but once again it has to be titled right and also be something that will draw interest from the readers of the site that you are commenting on. Having this plugin will encourage interaction from your readers as well. Ultimately, having the interaction is just one step that you want to achieve.

As I said before, there are many paths that one can use to drive more and more traffic to their site. Another plugin that centers around comments is the Top Commentors Widget and this can be used with both WordPress and Blogger platforms. This comment widget is designed to show the top commentors on your site in the sidebar. This gives yet another link to the commentors of your site, thereby encouraging them to interact with you and your articles.

While there are other tricks of the trade available  to build links and draw traffic to your site, the ones listed above are pure. These are not black hat tactics. With that said, one of the ultimate ways to drive traffic to your site using comments is belonging to a network like our online real estate network. Commenting on each others’ sites will draw relevant links as well as relevant traffic. This is the ultimate way to cash in on all three of these procedures.

Over the years, I seem to asked a lot about building quality links as well as how to drive quality traffic to sites. Once that can of worms is opened, I refer the person asking this question to using comments to build links and drive traffic to their site. This practice might be the easiest thing that you will ever do and get great results from it. The problem is, most people are just not dedicated to doing it. With that said, most people are not dedicated to responding to questions on their on posts either. You might as well take the proverbial gun and shoot yourself in the foot. Before you do that, let’s take a look at how each of these can help you. We will do this over the next 2 days in a 2 part article. Today we will look at how commenting will and can help build links.

Commenting to build links:

One of the great things about commenting is most websites allow you to link your website to your name. This is a great way to get a backlink from another site to yours. The bigger benefit here is for the people that actually visit relevant sites and make comments there. A great example of this would be for a Realtor to visit a website that pertains to the real estate industry and comment on a regular basis. This will create a link. The portion of commenting on a regular basis is that once you establish yourself as a regular commenter, your link will continue to stay active. However, the benefits do not stop there. As a matter-of-fact, this will lead me right into the next benefit of commenting. But, before I jump to that, let me talk a little bit about sites that utilize a plugin called CommentLuv. This particular plugin allows for you to achieve a second link on blogs as well. When you come across sites that use this plugin, it can actually pull a link to your last written article on your blog. This will in turn give you added benefit in traffic as well and we will talk about that in just a minute. Another thing that this plugin does, and something the is often overlooked, is that it can increase your SERPs. For those of you that are unfamiliar with SERPs, it stands for search engine results page.

In tomorrow’s article, we will look at how commenting can help to drive traffic to your site. Hope to see you then.

The people that know me or that have followed me over the last year and 8 months know the answer to this question when it pertains to me. I am a firm believer in being socially active, whether it is in person or electronically. The bottom line to being socially active is that in the long run, it makes you more visible to the community, but personally and professionally. Over the time span mentioned above, I have written several articles about this very topic . They range from discovering The mystery of gaining and sustaining blog traffic to asking if you Are you a social butterfly?. Ultimately, they are both things that you have to consider if you are going to be in the electronic phase of being socially active. The biggest though is when I thought to ask the question Internet Presence; What is yours?. It is this question that has spawned this post.

Social networking has become the backbone to networking as a professional and personally. Sites like digg, reddit, stumble upon, mixx, and many more like it have blossomed into places where people can gather and share sites and articles with each other that they find interesting. Websites like twitter, facebook , and myspace are places where you can go be the social butterfly that I mentioned before. These are just a few that I use to stay socially active. However, it does not stop here.

One of the biggest places that people fail when it comes to being socially active is commenting. Too many times I have seen people go about their blogging lives never commenting on other peoples sites much less responding to the comments on their own. This is what we call a social snafu. It is one of the biggest cardinal sins in the social networking world. When you do not take the time to respond to people that comment on your own post, you are basically telling them that their comment means nothing to you. This is worst than not commenting on other peoples articles. However, I consider both of these to be equally dangerous for a professional.

The reason that it is equally dangerous is that we are in the business to engage our consumers. If we are not out engaging these potential consumers daily, someone else is. The only way to do this is by commenting regularly. The question is simply put “Are in social active”?