While optimizing your site for keywords and search engine traffic is important, another aspect that few have taken advantage of is generating traffic through comments left on forums and blogs. By leaving comments on blogs and forums, you are not only building a relationship with the blog author or forum community, but you are essentially leaving your ‘business card’ with them.

Just how networking is essential in business, ‘networking’ with other bloggers and communities is important in generating interest and traffic to your website.

Why You Should Comment

In regards to the question of “why you should comment on blogs and forums,” the best way to answer this is to put yourself in their position. As a blogger, feedback on your blog and work is extremely important. In essence, comments can validate the hard-work that one puts into writing articles. For the most part, bloggers and forums are not created with the intention of selling a product or service, but rather to create a community. By commenting, you are joining that community and becoming an active participant.

As mentioned earlier, by commenting you are leaving your business card. When you leave a comment on a blog or forum, your profile is attached to it. Aside from including your name or handle on the comment, you are given the opportunity to leave your website and contact information as well. Imagine if networking in person was this easy?

Be Effective, Be Efficient

Although commenting on a blog or forum and getting traffic may sound easy, it is important to always be effective and efficient. Just how there are certain ‘best practices’ when it comes to writing a letter, commenting on a blogs should be effective and efficient.

The first is to always be relevant. By this, it means to choose blogs and forums that you can build a relationship with. If you decide to comment on blogs with the sole intention of driving traffic back to your blog, you are doing it for the wrong reason. A good strategy when commenting on blogs is to pick blogs or forums that write about similar topics as your own, or that you have a genuine interest in. Just how you wouldn’t take a class in school you didn’t like, don’t pick blogs you don’t enjoy.

Aside from choosing blogs and forums that are relevant, the second is to actually build the relationship. Your comment already has a link-back to your site as well as your contact information. There is no need to repeat it again in the actual comment. The more value that you can provide to the author or forum, the more likely they are to check out your site.

Optimize Your Own Site

Just as important as it is to participate in blog communities and forums, be sure to optimize your own site for others. Here are some key elements that are helpful in creating a great experience for your visitors:

1. Clearly defined “add comment” section on your articles
2. Ability to share content on social network sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg
3. Contact information: Be sure to always be accessible to your readers/visitors by having your “Contact Me” information clearly marked on your site