Blog Commenting For SEO: Backlink Benefits & What To Avoid (2022)

Blog commenting is one of the easiest ways to build relationships with other bloggers and people in your industry, with an opportunity to link back to your website.

Participating in discussions on other bloggers’ posts will give you an opportunity for backlinking. This simultaneously enhances your brand’s visibility. Yes, this is a technique for building links.

How effective is it? Is it good for SEO?

I want to point out that the primary goal here isn’t merely to boost your site’s SEO domain authority through link acquisition.

Typically, links from blog comments are set to “nofollow,” limiting their direct SEO value.

Instead, the focus should be on cultivating your online presence and, as a byproduct, improve your website’s authority.

Remember, as we’re in 2025, there are no shortcuts to establishing online credibility and authority okay?

What is blog commenting?

Blog commenting is the action of leaving a comment on a blog post. It allows for content curation between the blog author, bloggers, and blog readers.

This is a great way to exchange ideas and opinions about a topic, clarify, and ask questions about the blog post. Blog comments improve SEO, attract traffic, and build social proof.

Anyone can leave a comment in the comments section of a blog post.

Leaving insightful comments on a blog is an intentional effort to engage in a topic and build relationships.

At the start of my blogging journey, I used to spend 2-3 hours per week commenting on blogs.

The benefit of blog comments is that they provide a link from an external website to your own. As mentioned earlier, blog comment links are by default nofollow.

So, no SEO link value has been passed to increase the domain authority of the website.

But when you comment on high authority websites and niche blogs, this exposes you to a wider audience and potentially attracts new readers to your site. It also increases your reputation in your niche. Because now people know about your website and opinions. This is what we pay attention to.

Blog comments are part of off-page SEO

Commenting on blogs with a link to your website is a natural part of blogging. It is part of off-page SEO because when you comment on another blog, you can add your website URL in that comment.

This is a link placement on another domain to your own. 

At the end of a blog post, there is a form where you can fill in your personal details and post a comment. In the ‘Website’ field option, you can enter your website URL.

Voila! A backlink was built. You have built a link from another blog post back to your website. 

Easy.

Building links from commenting on third-party blogs is an easy to increase your website’s exposure online.

You just need your name, email address, website URL, and a short message to comment.

Blog commenting best practices:

• Use your real name when leaving a comment. Google’s Matt Cutts advised using your real name rather than a keyword-rich anchor text as a link back to your website.
• Don’t focus too much on blog commenting to build backlinks. It is bad if your backlink portfolio has a high percentage of blog comment links with no natural backlinks from real people.
• Don’t abuse it. Don’t treat it as a link scheme. Remember, you are commenting on another blog because you have something to say and you actually care about the topic.

See how when I dropped a comment on another blog, I did not add any URLs in the text? The backlink is just my name, which is where I link to my homepage. It is natural.

Blog comments are NoFollow backlinks

As mentioned earlier, backlinks from blog comments are NoFollow links. They have the Nofollow attribute or the nofollow tag.

This means they don’t pass ‘link juice’ that will boost your domain authority (DA) and SEO rankings.

But they DO contribute to your overall domain authority profile. A natural and healthy backlink profile has a mix of DoFollow backlinks and NoFollow backlinks such as from comments, forums, and YouTube.

Neil Patel did a case study on whether blog comments help with rankings. The experiment found that building links through blog comments did help with SEO rankings. Despite blog comments being user-generated content (UGC).

He found that NoFollow links from high DA websites helped a bit with rankings, compared to the control group which had no link building.

So despite the nofollow attribute, blog comment backlinks from high DA websites seemed to have a positive impact on higher keyword rankings on Google.

But of course, DoFollow links from high authority websites helped more with rankings most because of the DoFollow attribute. This was expected.

Blog comment backlinks work but make sure they are quality links from authoritative websites.

So it is always a good idea to build relationships and connect with high-quality and relevant blogs.

The majority of your backlinks should be from DoFollow Blogs

Most of your off-page SEO efforts should be building links from DoFollow blogs and websites. These are natural links from real people who hyperlink to your website.

DoFollow backlinks increase your domain authority and search engine rankings. Learn more about Google PageRank.

The higher the authority of the referring page linking to you, the more valuable the backlink. High-quality backlinks are an important factor to increase organic traffic from Google.

Avoid keyword-optimized anchor text

Google advised against keyword-optimized anchor text that links to your website.

Use your real name

Use your real name when commenting on blogs with a link back to your website.

Avoid publishing low-quality comments

Low-quality comments tend to have little value to the blog post content. They are usually considered as spam and would be deleted by the website owner.

The best way to comment on blogs is to read the content first and leave a thoughtful response. This can take a lot of time but it is the right way to do it.

High-quality comments

A high-quality comment is thoughtful.

• You have a question about the blog post
• You have feedback about the blog post
• You have something to add to the blog post topic
• You want to exchange opinions or ideas
• You want to share your thoughts or feelings about the topic

Always read the blog post first and leave a comment with at least 2 sentences that add to the conversation.

Blog owners usually moderate comments on their blogs and would either approve your comment or move it to trash.

So if you’re using blog comments to build backlinks for SEO, you want to get your comments approved.

Why is blog commenting important?

Blog commenting is beneficial for SEO and traffic. It builds inbound links to your website and this has positive results for ranking on Google search results.

It doesn’t cost anything, except your time.

If you’re new to SEO, this can be a great way to kickstart your link-building efforts and increase search traffic.

Besides SEO benefits, blog commenting plays a major role in driving referral traffic and networking with the right people in your niche.

As this process takes a long time, it is best to prioritize blog commenting on high-authority blogs.

Increase traffic and new visitors

When you comment on relevant blog posts, you are also putting your website out there and getting your brand more visible. Valuable comments are topically relevant to the blog post and add to the conversation.

Quality third-party blogs already have an audience and their blog posts have a good number of views.

You can potentially tap on that readership if the author and their readers notice your comment.

They might click through to your profile which contains your website URL if your comment was meaningful. I know I do!

I try to reply to every legitimate comment on the blog and tend to check out their profile’s website if their comment stands out.

To allow blog comments on your website or not?

Now, if you are the website owner and have a blog, should you allow blog comments or not?

The answer is: YES!

Google’s John Mueller said that Google factors comments into the ranking of web pages.

Google sees comments as part of the page’s content. Removing comments on a page will impact its search engine rankings.

“If a comment contains information a searcher is looking for then it can help a page get surfaced in search results.”

Blog comments are a good thing

Keyword-rich comments contribute to a page’s content and would therefore help with rankings. Though this would be a lower-priority SEO factor.

Because the actual content on the page influences SEO rankings the most. But the extra content from comments wouldn’t hurt.

Over the last 3 years, I have accumulated about 1,857 comments on the blog.

A good amount of high-quality comments are related to my niche and marketing expertise. This does increase the richness of specific keywords and topics on my articles.

I find blog commenting a necessary part of the blogging experience. It is a natural and intuitive way to connect with my audience.

People who leave a comment on my blog post found it compelling enough to write something.

Most are leaving clues to the content and solutions they are looking for. This becomes an important source of primary data about my target audience.

I am also able to drop links to my SEO courses and services as a reply to their comments. So it is an opportunity to promote your products and services organically.

Prevent spam comments

You want a comment moderation plugin to approve and delete comments on your own blog.

This is important. Spammy comments are penalized by Google.

On WordPress, Akismet is a good plugin to moderate comments and protect against spam.

Most website owners have a comment moderation system to approve or delete comments. This prevents comment spam which is really important in search engine optimization.

Spam comments are usually part of a link scheme. They could be automated bots publishing low-value comments for the sake of building links only. Usually, a spam site does these things.

They could also be manual. People can be purposely leaving comments without meaning but for the sole purpose of earning a backlink to their website. You want to prevent spam comments on your blog comment sections.

Social proof

Blog comments are a sign of social proof. It is a great thing to have lots of comments on your blog posts.

The number of comments shows that people have read and engaged with your content.

And it demonstrates the value of your blog posts and your subject expertise.

High-quality content naturally attracts comments, feedback, and social media shares.

How to get more comments on your blog posts

You can get more blog comments on your articles by asking people to comment.

Send an email to your subscribers to check out your blog post and ask them to leave a comment.

Write a sentence at the end of your blog post asking for their thoughts.

Adding a call to action can easily attract 5-6 comments on a blog post. Don’t ask, don’t get, right?

High-quality content attracts relevant comments naturally

A better idea is to get comments naturally. High-quality content tends to attract engagement on its own.

A good post is at least 1,200 words and can hold someone’s attention.

A great post tends to be long-form content and is packed full of valuable information. Pillar articles with 3,000 words do this well. Great content can bring about a small transformation to readers and compel people to take action.

I consider quality content as information that is able to help someone. Good content is inherently helpful.

When someone visits your blog for the first time, the only thing to do is to convince and convert with beneficial content.

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