Over the past five years, I’ve thought little about building links to Financial Samurai. I couldn’t be bothered after I got rejected from my first blog carnival in 2009. I was bummed because I knew I had written a good article, but it was clear the carnival host had her own little clique and based her choices on who she knew rather than quality of article. After getting rejected, I focused all my effort on writing better content and connecting with the community instead.
I love commenting around the blogosphere because first and foremost, I’m a huge fan of blogging. Blogging is one of those jobs I’d do for free, partly because that’s exactly what I did for the first couple of years and loved it! Reading people’s viewpoints and interacting with authors is a joy. It feels weird not to leave a comment on a well-written post since the author put so much time into writing. I always appreciate it when a commenter picks out some line in my post that is a little quirky. It shows they are reading and not simply reading the title and skipping down to the questions.
The main benefit of commenting is building relationships that may last forever. I’m much more willing to let a regular commenter guest post on my site rather than someone who e-mails me out of the blue for example. I’m sure all of you feel the same way. I’ve also developed deeper relationships over e-mail that first started with comments because either I reached out to the commenter, or the commenter reached out to me privately. Finally, I’ve made plenty of new blogging clients and personal finance clients that first started off as commenters as well.
The funny thing I didn’t realize until a couple years after starting blogging is that one of the other benefits of commenting is you also get to build your back link profile, despite all the links being no follow. It seems obvious that despite the links being no follow, ranking metrics still include no follow links to determine the overall authority of your site. I received an e-mail just last week from an end client (not an SEO) asking me if I could remove her comment from 2011 because her site got manually penalized by Google! From 2011! It makes me think perhaps commenting does have some link power.
I’m pretty anti-SEO as you’ve read in posts such as: Is SEO A Waste Of Time? and Thin Content Is Out, Thick Content Is In. Beyond basic SEO that should be naturally incorporated in your posts, there’s nothing much else to do. We only have so much energy in the day. To spend time with SEO is to not spend time building relationships and writing good content. The search algorithms are efficient and sooner or later any inefficiency you are exploiting will be closed, which results in wasting all your time.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we should definitely be spending much more time thinking about SEO strategies. After all, there are actually services out there that make money by commenting on other blogs on your behalf! I thought this was pretty silly at first, but I’m ever so slightly thinking there’s some efficacy to such a strategy. Let me share a recent dialogue I had.
DIALOGUE EXCHANGE TO HIGHLIGHT NEW COMMENT LINK BUILDING STRATEGY
I mainly always sign off as “Financial Samurai” in the name column because that’s my site. Pretty straight forward.
The following comment was left on a post about a travel blogger’s declaration of being “homeless” and not wanting to buy a house because it would prevent him from traveling:
I was pretty lost at 25 years old, feeling not much purpose to work. It was only until I got a mortgage at age 26 did my motivation return since I had something to work for instead of just counting my savings. This was in 2003 and it turned out to be one of my best investments that is now producing some nice cash flow.
I think I’m just lazy in general and don’t need much to survive. Debt ironically has helped me become financially free.
Sam
Pretty decent comment right? Better than one of those, “Great job!” comments I don’t mind. I empathized with the blogger, but then shared a reason why taking on a mortgage wouldn’t preclude him from traveling, which was his main argument. I detail more about my 20s in this post if you’re interested in knowing more.
I could have continued commenting that I was currently in Hawaii for a month on a company offsite after spending six weeks traveling in Europe and NYC this summer to emphasize my point that you can still travel with a mortgage. But I thought it would start sounding defensive or braggy, so I left my comment as is.
In about three minutes I get the following e-mail:
Hi Sam,
Thanks for the comment. I don’t allow brands or keyworded names in my comments – you’re a person after all – but I’m happy to keep it if you’re happy for me to change the name to “Sam” (or whatever you prefer). Just let me know.
Cheers,
Travel Blogger
I’ve never once received such a request since I started in 2009. This is an example where someone spends too much time worrying about SEO, and not enough time on their community. I didn’t leave a simple comment. I spent time sharing my situation and addressing his. Here’s my e-mail response:
Hi Travel Blogger,
Feel free to change to whatever. I leave comments to share thoughts. I’m curious to know about your comment policy as I’ve never heard of this or have had anybody email me to change.
Take a look at some of my most commented posts with hundreds of comments. So long as there’s a real comment, folks can link to their site’s name no problem.
Sincerely curious.
Thanks,
Sam
And here’s his response:
Thanks Sam.
I’m far from the only person in the world with this policy – in fact, it’s specifically recommended by Matt Cutts, Head of Search at Google. (http://searchenginewatch.com/
article/2307497/Matt-Cutts-on- ). I’ve come across several others that state it explicitly above the comment form, although unfortunately don’t have time to go and hunt them out right now.Blog-Comments-Links-Spam-Use- Your-Name-Not-Keywords For me, leaving your company name or a bunch of keywords says “I’m leaving this comment to promote myself rather than to enhance the discussion”. You may not feel the same way but hey, differences are what keeps the world interesting. :)
Cheers,
Travel Blogger
I was offended the travel blogger said my comment was only about promoting myself given I left a reasonably substantial comment. I’m a PF blogger trying to connect with a travel blogger for fun. It would be great to have him and other people with different perspectives come visit, but my primary reason for leaving a comment was to connect, thank, and share some thoughts.
Leaving the name “Financial Samurai” is standard. He can take out my link in the URL as well, I don’t care. To have this travel blogger’s mentality is severely debilitating for growth. His blog is around 1/30th the size of Financial Samurai. I’m not going to gain much even if he decides to profile my site to his readers. If a blogger 30X larger than FS stopped by and wanted to have a conversation, I’d be pretty happy to build a relationship. But maybe I’m just weird.
My main message to him was this, “Once you let go of the small stuff, things start taking off.” Just like how a lot about building wealth is having a good mental framework, the same can be said for growing a website.
NEW LINK BUILDING STRATEGY
I currently rank #1 for the term, “Financial Samurai” in search and it’s unlikely anybody will outrank me so long as I still have my site. Therefore, it would be absolutely stupid of me to leave comments with Financial Samurai in the name for the sake of boosting or maintaining my position in the keyword “Financial Samurai!” It would also be stupid for anybody to try and outrank me for “Financial Samurai” by leaving comments under my name, although I’ve had several incidents where I have been impersonated before. Time is better spent elsewhere folks.
I’m always looking for a positive angle to conflict, and the positive angle I’ve found is that maybe I SHOULD focus on SEO when commenting more from now on. Instead of leaving “Financial Samurai” in the name box, I should leave “Sam” or “Amazing Financial Blog” or “Sexy Stud” to help boost my rankings in these anchor texts!
So for all of you who are being normal and leaving your blog’s name in the name box, time to make a change. For good practice, let’s start with commenting on this post to see how you do before our strategy gets unleashed! So long as you write a legit comment, you can sign off as whatever you please!
Readers, why do smaller bloggers still focus so much on the SEO minutia of blogging after we’ve repeatedly encouraged people not to sweat the small stuff? Why do bloggers spend so much time trying to game SEO when Google algorithm after algorithm punishes bloggers? What are your thoughts on signing off as a name other than your blog’s name?
Also, any particular SEO tool you like the best e.g. SEMRush, Moz, MajesticSEO?
Regards,
Sam
I think small timers focus on SEO because when you’re small time, you’re looking for any kind of edge to move up the rankings. Sure you could be spending your time more productively writing content, but good content is hard to produce and a lot of good content is really hard to produce. There’s very little to add to the personal finance/travel blogging/make money online world that hasn’t already been said before. Being creative and unique is difficult and it’s much easier to try to get backlinks or keyword stuff your posts of whatever the latest and greatest “SEO strategy” is.
I think if you’re small time and act like you’re big time, you’ll get your site noticed by the G and other sites. When you’re small time and act small time, you may get fleeting moments of traffic or retweeted by one of the PF greats, but it’s not going to cement you as one of the pillars of the PF sphere.
Not everyone can write great content all the time. Sometimes your post sucks. Sometimes its awesome and no one notices. Thats how it goes, and no amount of SEO or marketing can change that. People are going to read good stuff and ignore the fluff.
I think your site, Sam, is an example of what years of persistence can get you: a rockstar site, tons of quality content, a growing community of fellow financial warriors, and a nice side income as well. Focusing on the long game doesn’t guarantee you success, but it seems to work out better than sweating the small stuff.
Thanks Spencer. Although there’s little new stuff to add, every now and then there will absolutely be something innovative to introduce to the web.
I don’t see how pretending to be big time when you’re small time works. Although, the make money online by showing you how to make money online comes to mind.
If we all know that consistent writing improves traffic and possibilities, it seems to make absolute sense to keep writing. I don’t understand why this is so complicated. Who cares if one’s post sucks. Just keep trying. Things get better with practice and experience.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The work of SEO is to feed back the content that people THINK Google wants. It is exhausting to try and write and build your site according to these mystical codes that will change with the latest round of Google updates. Google is looking to provide people the best, most relevant content it can….that’s its value proposition. If you just focus on providing high quality, relevant information you’ll be working with Google and not chasing after it.
I am seriously curious to see what the SEO industry overall revenue has looked like by month over the past 10 years. It’s probably going up a lot since more people move online and search gets bigger, but I also wonder about efficacy.
If Google can find the best stuff and continuously punish and close loopholes, then surely the need for SEO lessens no?
“I currently rank #1 for the term, “Financial Samurai” in search and it’s unlikely anybody will outrank me so long as I still have my site.” – I think that’s the main point here. Maybe the travel blogger wanted to rank for Financial Samurai, so he couldn’t be sending you that precious link from his own site… it would confuse Google!
Now, my evil plan to monetize the unwieldy acronym ‘DQYDJ’ continues…
Not if I can get there first! Just kidding.
Nice post, Sam. I think that those first six months when virtually nobody is reading your site, can be very trying for site owners. That’s why so many bloggers burn out in that span. It’s only natural to try to look for any advantage that you can get, which is why so many seem to try to play games with their SEO.
I tell all beginning bloggers to comment like crazy, but to me– it really doesnt have anything to do with link building. It has to do with the the traffic (albeit minor) that will come when those bloggers visit your site in return, but more importantly- it will be rewarding to get people reading and commenting on what you write. Getting that feedback and support is essential to motivate you to keep writing and keep your site growing.
If I was still in the first six months, and somebody, ANYBODY popped by to leave a two paragraph comment and who has a site, I’d definitely be happy to kindle some type of relationship. The last thing I would think about would be that the commenter left his site’s blog name in the name box!
I scratch my head all the time about things and I really am trying to comprehend why folks focus on the minutiae when there are so many more important things to do.
The other funny part of this is the long term traffic strategy. If you built the relationship, it’s more likely the 30x bigger blogger would promote your articles (Twitter, etc.) and maybe even link to you. That would be infinitely better “SEO” than anything to do with the comments. I agree with you 100% – focus on relationships! That’s almost what Google is trying to do anyway with all of their algorithm changes.
That’s what I was thinking. I’d be ecstatic if someone 30X bigger popped by on FS to want to start a dialogue. I wouldn’t tell him to change his site’s name of all things.
So here’s the kicker, I’m sure he had no idea about who I was and my site’s traffic and nor should he. If he did, maybe his attitude towards me would be different. But this is what comes with the territory of a lack of self-promotion and vanity stats. I want exchanges to be as unbiased as possible so they are as genuine as possible, regardless of how rich, good looking, famous, whatever one person is.
Matt Cutts says a lot of things. Among some of the things he recently said: don’t guest post. But logically, you know he doesn’t mean the kind of guest posting you do at big, established websites; just the spammy small fries. Everything should be taken in context and that guy is missing the context here.
As a travel/finance blogger who’s also a real estate investor, I find your initial discussion about having a home interesting. And no, I’ve never had a travel blogger make me change my name, even though I sign off as Nomad Wallet on many a travel blog.
Cheers,
Make Money Online Working from Anywhere (let’s see if I can rank for this)
Ah, but to rank for “Make Money Online Working from Anywhere ” you needed to add “Make Money Online Working from Anywhere ” in the name section when you left your comment! :)
When I first started blogging seemed like everywhere I went people were saying SEO, SEO, SEO to help grow your blog quickly. Being a complete novice on what that was I chose to ignore it and just write and comment. I still don’t know much about it but after 18+ months of blogging I’m having my most viewed month ever. I’m not big time by any means but can see I’m growing.
I find it interesting that Travel Blogger spent so much time handling that issue with you. In fact, you are probably not the only one he is doing that with. Seems like that time could be better spent doing something else. My guess is that he has also turned you off as a future reader/commenter thus costing himself page views and a great connection. That’s no way to run a blog.
I focus my attention to on page SEO and that is about it. I just make sure some of my posts focus on a keyword, but not all of them. Commenting is about building relationships and sometimes traffic. I don’t care about ranking for Grayson @ Debt Roundup, which is what I use to comment. Who would search for that?
I was gonna leave my comment as “Silly Sydney” or something random for fun, but I’m already logged in so this will just say Untemplater lol.
Folks like that travel blogger are too caught up in the small stuff. Some people are so inefficient that way.
I’ve noticed some comments on my site that are clearly typed by a human who read my post, but they use obviously spammy keywords in their Name, not just the name of their website. How do I handle it? If it feels like spam, I treat it as spam – I just chuck it and move on. Not worth any more time than that imo. But if someone is leaving a comment with their website name, that’s no big deal. We all do it!
Haha, Silly Sydney, nice! Yeah, I’m logged in automatically already, so I can’t test out my new method. But I will elsewhere!
I really don’t get it! Why do people try to win games, the rules of which are never entirely clear and these also change regularly? Don’t they see there is no way to win? Also, it seems to me that blogging is one of the most democratic forms of writing and writing is always for readers.
In other words, bloggers write for their readers, not for Google. If one becomes really good doing that, Google comes around.
As to your question, why small time bloggers get obsessed by metrics and games, it is the same in academia – usually marks a distinct lack of greatness, vision and integrity. As a good friend of mine says (and a world known French intellectual), ‘metrics is the game of the poor man’.
Blogging definitely does seem to be one of the most equal playing fields around where anybody with enough creativity and commitment can make things happen.
I think there’s just an inherent desire to take short cuts for short-term gains. Milk it dry for as long as you can.
It’s kind of funny, I was just making the argument that Google probably takes into account your nofollow links. Because why else would they show them in Webmaster Tools?
Where I disagree with that travel blogger and Matt Cutts is the idea that you shouldn’t name your site in your comment name. If I’m commenting within my niche, then, yeah, it is usually pretty obvious what kind of site I’m linking to. But if I’m reading a blog outside of my niche, how are other readers or the bigger going to guess that I’m a good blogger? It would be spammier to talk about my site in the comment than to mention it with my name.
That’s what I’m thinking too. GWMT and all other tools highlight the comment links and other nofollow links, so surely there must be some weight. So all this time, who knew that comments might actually help.
Google change their algorithm all the time. When you try to boost your SEO, it might work now, but they will probably change it up later. I haven’t done much SEO stuff for over a year now and I think that’s the best policy. Trying to keep up with the latest is just too much work especially when they keep changing the rule.
I think many people look at SEO as the magic bullet. Blogging is still based on relationships and what you write. I think certain subjects resonate more than others and create a following, Some surly comments whether by someone is leaving the comment or the blogger is a turn off. I view it similar to the drivers who exhibit road rage. It just doesn’t make sense, You should just ignore it.
It’s a self-defeating attitude. Everyone knows to grow, they need to connect w/ others and write better content. So if you don’t grow, just look at these two things.
I know you don’t agree or believe in SEO, I think Spencer brought up a good point about just wanting to get on the search engines. I’m personally doing a mix of SEO and writing great content. You wrote a post about a year and a half ago on writing great articles that were 1000+ words. These articles hold much more value than the 300-500 word financial articles out there. I will report back in 6 months and let you know how it goes.
Sounds good Marvin, and good to see you’re back in action!
I think that travel blogger is pretty nuts. I don’t really get caught up in to much SEO stuff, and even if I did, I think the name someone comments on my site as would be at the bottom of that list! As long as the comment itself isn’t spammy I don’t see why it would matter. If you’re contributing to the conversation you’re welcome to comment on my site as any name you wish!
The funny thing is that in 6 months when Google changes their algorithm, the travel blogger will suddenly be asking for people to use keywords in the comments. Like others have said, you can’t win so why even play? Focus on building relationships and writing great content. Fewer posts that are great is better than more posts that are average.
Great anchor text! HAHAHAHAHA
When people start emailing me about removing old comments and links, I know it is time to stop visiting their site. If a blogger cares so much about SEO and not good content, I don’t want to waste my time on his/her site.
Yeah some people have too much time in their hands and just plain paranoid!
(On the brighter side Sam, be glad the travel blogger didn’t ask you to pay to keep your comment!) :)
I don’t make much SEO effort either and am happy that Google is getting smarter every day and moving toward rewarding quality content rather than old school SEO methods.
As a semi anon blogger, I’ve never left a comment anywhere using my real name. Tell you what does bug me though – bloggers who sign off their comment with their URL at the end. My blog is on WP, you get a link anchored to your name anyway, FFS.
I have encountered one other blogger whose comment policy reflected their dislike for “self-promoting” signatures like my name @ blah blah blah. If I’m bothering to stop by and say something, it’s because I’ve got something to say. Backlinks are fun but it’s nothing I’m going to get sweaty over. Totally not worthwhile.
(In keeping with the theme of the post, I decided to change up my name. Hopefully that doesn’t send my comment to the spam box) :)
That was a fun exchange of emails to read through. This is certainly an excellent example of someone taking SEO way too far.
I think it helps to think of SEO as more of a diet or guidelines. When it comes to food and nutrition, you can make good choices and you can make bad choices. For the most part if you stay within the spectrum of good choices, then you’re probably going to be okay and lead a generally healthy life. Link building works the same way with your blog.
To follow my diet example, sometimes people get too focused on wanting to reach a certain weight or look a certain way. They then obsess about their diet and end up doing more harm than good to reach their goal. Again, SEO is the same way. You can obsess about having perfectly written posts, keywords, links, whatever. But is that really all going to achieve the success you’re really hoping to accomplish?
To be fair, there is some truth to the fact that you should vary your anchor text. Let me try to explain what the Travel Blogger was getting at in a slightly different light.
Consider if 100% of the links pointing to your site were “Financial Samurai” or “My Money Design” (in my case). If that was to happen, Google would surely flag your site as spam and none of your posts would ever be found in the search engines ever again. I know because this actually happened to one of my young niche sites I was building when I made some poor link building choices and anchor text selection.
Now of course this hasn’t happen to either of our main sites because we receive lots of other links from people who respect our content and link out to us. So using your brand name in the comments probably won’t hurt us anytime soon.
But now consider if you were a new blogger who didn’t know any better. If every comment you left was “My Blog Name” and those were the only links pointing to your site, then you’d end up sabotaging yourself!
Matt Cutt’s comment was simply a suggestion that you need to think about this when you leave your blog name as the anchor text in a comment link. And in general you should use something other than the blog name itself since most people over-optimize their blog names to secure some kind of desired keyword. This doesn’t mean you have to avoid using your blog name every time. But you do want to shoot for as much variety as possible.
BTW – What kind of loser goes around impersonating another blogger leaving phony comments? That’s a whole new kind of low ….
I guess that makes sense about varying your anchor text for your own site… but wow, that is just getting way in the weeds and totally defeating the joy and freedom of blogging imo. I don’t think that’s Google’s intentions. They are directing their responses to spammers out there who abuse the system to the 1000th degree.
I hope you rank well with Mr Money Design!
I have discount prices on UGG boots!
No, seriously, the saddest thing I ever saw was someone who thought all the “great post. I will tell my roommate” spam comments were real comments. It broke my heart.
It’s a law of numbers. Spam a million times, and if just 1% go through that’s 10,000 approvals!
Sam, That blogger has too much time on his/her hands! I rank #1 on Barbara Friedberg and leave that name in the “name” spot when commenting. lol. I never even though about it in seo terms in relation to my website; bfpf
Can’t believe you rank #1 for Barbara Friedberg! Not for long if I have anything to do with it!
That person was taking his or her blogging way too seriously. While I do think that it’s important to consider SEO ramifications with different things we do on our sites, that was going way too far. Why torch a potential contact/relationship like that? There are all type out there.
When desperately trying to increase readership through google, you can easily find yourself focusing on the wrong things. It seems that this travel blogger has fallen into this trap!!
Not sure what the big deal is about comment SEO. I mean, do people really think that leaving keywords in the comments will really boost your rank that much? Kinda ridiculous….
I don’t think it’s that big of a deal using keywords on comments. It may not even count that much anyways, so why bother, right?
I appreciate you writing a post like this. As a fairly new blogger, I’ve been struggling with thoughts about whether I’m doing enough SEO or not. My natural instinct at this point is to write content that I enjoy and then network with others whose content I enjoy and hope that I can slowly build a following. It’s great to hear a successful blogger basically validate that strategy.
The email from the travel blogger is interesting. I have come across some larger sites that do specifically say to leave a real name, not just your blog name. I always thought this was because the site owner didn’t want lots of “great post” comments created for the sake of the commenter promoting their own site, but I could be wrong. All I can say is, I am always thrilled to get thoughtful comments and certainly never care what the commenter wants to refer to themselves as.
No problem Kay. My best SEO tip for you is to come up with searchable titles. What would you search for if you were looking for an answer to your post’s question. After filling out the basic meta data and key words in your SEO plug-in, that’s it!
I think the reason that I always sign as BGM is to protect myself and my family’s privacy as much as possible right now. Maybe that won’t always be a concern, and frankly maybe I just don’t know what I don’t know being so new.
With being new to blogging, I’ve found it hard to really pin down what I should be doing. I know content is #1 and beyond that it’s just all fuzzy. Wanting to help people is my goal, so maybe I should just not worry about Analytics right now because it just frustrates me? What do you think?
Yes, I didn’t look at my Analytics for the entire first year, and then maybe once a month after that.
My wife and I started our blog about a month ago. In preparation to launching our site we read so much information about SEO that we focused on trying to boost our SEO at the expense of writing the way we wanted to actually write. This post is a great reminder that we just need to focus on content and networking and the rest will take care of itself. Thanks!
Congrats for your site’s launch! You’re lucky to be able to get some insights on such things as I had no idea what I was doing when I first started :) But on the flip side, it helped make blogging totally about writing and connecting, than making money, which helped with longevity.
[…] can monetize in the content section. Leave the comment section as pure as possible please.Related: New Ridiculous Link Building Strategy To Boost Your SEOReaders, if you use a comment system, please share the benefits. I’ve just shared my own […]
great information. at the end, I keep it simple. Google wants great content consistently published on a focused topic.
Ray
Professorsavings.com