One of the best ways to increase traffic to your own blog is to comment on other blogs – especially blogs related to the focus of your blog.
Rich Brooks shares that the leading bloggers at the recent Blog World Expo spend spend almost half of their blogging time ‘off blog’, meaning commenting and doing other related tasks.
The blogosphere–the unfortunate name for the world of blogs–is a giant network. Or, it’s a series of interconnected smaller networks, depending on your perspective. Like any network, it becomes more powerful with every new connection and every new person who joins it.
When you leave comments on other blogs, you’re not only increasing that blog’s ecosystem, you’re building your own……
The more intelligent, relevant comments you leave, the more connections you make back to your own blog. Each comment creates a hyperlink back to your own site or blog. Although there really isn’t a search engine benefit to these comment links, other readers of the blog will see your comments and may follow the link back to your blog to see what else you have to say. Also, the blog owner might take notice and feature your blog in an upcoming post if it’s relevant.
When referencing other blog posts in your own blogging, use a portion of your post as a comment on the other blog. That way you get the benefit of content on your own blog as well as interacting with others on the blogosphere.