Yes, that’s what my mentor Alex says to do to get traffic to your blog. Oil rig hopping is his term for blog commenting. This week’s seminars are all about getting free traffic to your blog. With one seminar each night it’s been mind blowing so far and there is still more to come!
Alex likens blogs to oil rigs. Algae grows on the legs of the oil rigs which attracts shell fish. They attract little fish which in turn attracts the bigger fish. Your blog content is the algae and the people who comment on your posts are the fish.
Oil rig hopping is visiting other people’s blogs and leaving valuable comments on their posts. This activity has the effect of naturally driving traffic to your own blog if done correctly. Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog. You can offer your visitors free stuff to entice them to join your email list, send them to your website or affiliate products. This is how you can make money working online.
Leave valuable comments
Notice the word “valuable”. If you leave a useful comment people are more likely to take notice of you than if you just leave some mundane comment for the sake of it. I often see a comment like ” good post keep up the good work” I’m sure you’ve seen it too. Is that going to make people curious about you and click on your name to find out who you are? It’s much more effective to try and add something of value to the post.
Don’t forget that most blog owners set their blogs up so that comments have to be approved before they are posted. On my detox blog, if I get comments like that just for the sake of trying to get a link back to their site I don’t approve it. So the person has wasted their time. I approve comments that really add some information for my readers.
Make it easy for readers to leave a comment
While hopping around other blogs I notice that some blogs make you jump through hoops to leave a comment. Do I really want to register to be able log in to make a comment? Some give you a variety of ways to log in to comment but then you are linked to the account you use to log in with such as your Twitter account, Facebook or Open ID. That then links you to those accounts and not the blog you want to leave the URL for.
If you want to invite comments then I think it pays to make it as easy as possible. The spam catchers are pretty good at blocking the spammers so that’s not really a problem.
Be the first to comment on popular blogs
It pays to search out some popular blogs in your niche and be one of the first to comment on a post. That’s the way you will get noticed. It’s the first few comments that people are going to read not the 30th or more. Sign up to the blog to get notified of blog posts so you can get there first.
That brings me to the question of no follow blogs and do follow blogs but I think I will leave that for another post. Too much to go into now. The main point I want to make here is that there is oil rig hopping and oil rig hopping
It pays dividends to do it the right way. What are your tips on blog commenting?
Hey Sandy,
The pic of oil rig is beautiful!
I recently just made links on my blog do follow as I want to reward my visitors, Max made a really good post on his blog, about how to do it and gives a link to the plugin.
I noticed some sites do make you jump through hoops so I just jump right off their site to be honest, take care Sally 🙂
Yes, Sally, I see that there seems to be a trend now to make your blog do follow. It certainly encourages commenting.
If they make commenting difficult I don’t bother either!
Sandy
hey sandy, great post and thanks again for visiting my blog, im so pleased i visited and ready your post, it really has lots of great value and keep up the good work.
By the way great tip about being the first to comment on a popular blog
speak soon
jonny balfour
Hi Sandy, the post you just made was well written and to the point.
I commented on a blog and then I left notice that I wanted to be notified about any other comments made after mine. It was a good subject and I wanted to see other comments on it.
A link in the email I received which indicated someone made a comment on that post, was a link that brought me to this post. The title of the mentioned post was intriguing so I clicked on it and here I am.
Oil rig hopping in action.
Great job and keep it up.
Mike
Hi Mike, I pondered that title for a long time. Although most advice you hear is to make it keyword rich I know that some successful bloggers never write titles for search engines. It’s a pity you can’t split test post titles!
Sandy
Hi Sandy a very helpful blog,great tip about “getting your comments in first” I like it.
Thanks for comming over to my blog I do appreciate it and hope you come back for more.
I think writing without thinking to much about keywords is much more natural and makes the blog flow more easily.
Although half an eye on keywords seems cool enough!
To your success
Pete Burns
.-= Pete Burns´s last blog ..Determination, Passion, commitment and self improvement. =-.
Your mentor sounds like a very wise person. This was a great post! I will be using the term from here on out.
Good philosophy on blogging.