Commenting

One of the best ways to get others to find your blog is by visiting theirs and leaving comments about their posts and observations. Blogs are often something akin to mini-online communities and comments play a large role in the communicative function of blogs. Bloggers tend to check the blogs of those who have visited and you can develop some regular readers simply by making comments on other blogs.
In many cases, you can leave the URL of your blog in the comments, making it easy for all of that blog’s readers to find you, too.
 

Trackbacks, which are means by which one blog notifies another of a visit and or comment, can also be used for this purpose. Not all blogging platforms support track backs, but if yours does, you should avail yourself of the opportunity to use them.
 

The fact that links could be left behind in blog comments led some people to use this is a strategy for increasing their total number of backlinks in order to help with search engine placement. They would leave comments of a suspect nature (or even, in some cases, complete gibberish) along with an address simply to claim the backlink. Blogging services recognized this growing comment spam problem and have taken actions to minimize its effectiveness.
 

These safeguards include a “no follow” HTML tag that makes the link meaningless in terms of search engines. Some bloggers and services also require users to manually type in a code when commenting, freezing out automated blog spamming attempts and making the process of comment spamming less attractive.
 

Comment spam still exists, and it is a hated commodity in the blogging community. Thus, if you are commenting on other blogs, please make sure your contribution is legitimate and thoughtful. Feel free to provide your URL, but don’t turn your comment into mere advertising for your blog.