Giveaway Deadline Wednesday Nov 9, 2011
16:00 PST / 17:00 MST / 18:00 CST / 19:00 EST

Click THIS image to ENTER THE GIVEAWAY IMPORTANT: Follow DIRECTIONS in this POST

It is no secret that I am one of the biggest CommentLuv enthusiasts ever.

(More on WHY in a minute.)

GrowMap.com was in on Andy Bailey’s “beater test” (inside joke – what beta test sounds like on the videos in Andy’s UK accent).

We would love for all our blogging friends to have CommentLuv Premium!

This is the unlimited version developer’s license so you can use it on all of your blogs (current and future) and your client’s blogs, too.

I can’t make that happen, but just today Andy agreed to let me give away ONE CommentLuv Premium Developer’s License.

Giveaway Deadline Wednesday Nov 9, 2011
16:00 PST / 17:00 MST / 18:00 CST / 19:00 EST

How to Enter This CommentLuv Premium Giveaway:

1. Simply copy and paste the following paragraph in your next post:

There is a valuable giveaway going on at GrowMap, where Gail shares how to grow business sites and blogs. You can win your own copy of the hottest plugin release of the year – CommentLuv Premium.

Entering is VERY easy: just visit Gail’s CommentLuv Premium giveaway page for more information.

2. Leave the link to your post in the comments below (in THIS post) along with why you want to win.

3. Share this post on whichever social networks you favor such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or one of my favorites, reviews on StumbleUpon or on voting sites like BlogEngage – wherever you feel it fits.

You help me spread the news about the plugin
and I’ll promote YOUR post and send you traffic! *

*As long as your site doesn’t contain adult content or images or encourage vices or anything illegal or immoral.

IMPORTANT: Do YOU and ME a big favor by entering
your email address on Andy’s CommentLuv Premium list.

That way if you don’t win you will be able to get your hands on
CommentLuv Premium the minute the official launch starts.

BONUS: get a free course by five top writers on
how to get more comments in your own blog and
write better comments so you can attract more traffic.

WHO WINS?

Andy suggested that we choose randomly. I have never been a fan of games of chance, so IF ANDY DOESN’T OBJECT* what I want to do is ask other bloggers who collaborate with me to join me in choosing the blogger who shares the best reason for wanting CommentLuv Premium.

*If there is some reason Andy really wants the giveaways to be a random drawing you WILL be entered to win and a winner will be chosen at random. This post will be updated to let everyone know.

You can write it in a post (so your blog gets valuable backlinks) OR you can simply leave it in the comments below.

I’ll ask around among my collaborators and see who is willing to vote on who writes the best “why I want to win a CommentLuv Premium Developer’s License Plugin” or “How I Think CommentLuv Premium Will Benefit My Blog or Business”.

Before the judging begins I will edit this post with the names of some of my favorite bloggers who have agreed to vote on YOUR entries.

Writing a blog post on your blog about it will benefit you the most because we’ll share your post and send you new visitors who – if they like your blog – will become regular readers and commenters.

Do be sure to share the link to your post in the comments with a short description of what you wrote about why you want to win.

Your friends and supporters and my readers are encouraged
to click the reply button and comment in the reasons you like best.
We’ll take your input into consideration when choosing the winner.

I promised to share WHY I feel CommentLuv is so very important. I’ve written so much about it I’ll simply share these links:

• CommentLuv Your Way to Business Prosperity – How bloggers can choose to improve the economy by being small business friendly. Includes the best graph I’ve seen on why supporting the Buy Local movement keeps money recirculating which creates jobs and a stronger local economy.
• Highlights: The Benefits of CommentLuv Premium.
• DoFollow CommentLuv Lists Being Updated – This post contains 28 CommentLuv Premium Reviews written by leading bloggers who recommend upgrading.
• How CommentLuv Grows Businesses and Blogs – Contains tips for bloggers and businesses on how to benefit from using CommentLuv.
• KeywordLuv: How Using It Benefits Us All – Explanation of the free KeywordLuv plugin – the Keywords function in CommentLuv Premium works the same way. Also contains my list of DoFollow CommentLuv Keyword enabled blogs – add yours if you qualify as all my lists will be updated to reflect nofollow versus dofollow.

CommentLuv Premium gives bloggers full control over which fields they make dofollow or nofollow and my lists will be updated and prioritized in this order:

1. Dofollow the CommentLuv and Keywords fields
2. Dofollow the Keywords field but not the CommentLuv field.
3. Do follow the CommentLuv field but not the KeywordLuv field.
4. There is NO REASON to Do follow the Twitter field (although that is an option for some reason). Leave it NoFollow.

I can’t wait to see which Ethical Bloggers get added to my lists and join our close-knit CommentLuv Community that supports each other’s efforts!

NEW: If you REALLY want CommentLuv Premium,
take Andy’s short survey and enter all the other
CommentLuv Premium Giveaways

DEADLINE for MY CommentLuv Giveaway:
Wednesday Nov 9, 2011
16:00 PST / 17:00 MST / 18:00 CST / 19:00 EST

First of all I’d like to thank Gail for the opportunity to write for her blog. February has been THE month of guest-blogging firsts for me: first guest post published on my own blog and – this – very first blog post written for a blog I have enjoyed reading for a while now.

Click this image for more CommentLuv Info

I am always on the lookout for easy ways to drive more targeted traffic to my blog and CommentLuv offers so many benefits that it just can not be ignored. If you haven’t heard of CommentLuv yet, I would suggest you to read Gail’s post on How CommentLuv Grows Businesses and Blogs.

What if there was an optimum way to use CommentLuv to get even more clicks from the comments I leave AND higher search engine rankings? Well, let me share 5 steps that I believe will result in just that: more traffic to your blog from both comments left and search engines.

Step 1: Register with comluv.com

Sounds obvious right? Registering your blog with comluv.com will allow you to have access to 10 links to “drop” in your comments instead of just one when you are not registered.

commentLuv quiver when not registered

commentluv quiver when registerd

Not only that, but for just $4/link/year, you can choose to create permanent links (links that will always appear in addition to your last 10 blog posts) to “pillar articles” or posts targeting popular keywords you wish to rank for – Andy at CommentLuv calls these default links.

Benefits for user traffic and search engine rankings: a greater “pool” of links to choose from that gives you more time to promote individual blog posts.

Step 2: Choose the link that is the most relevant

Having now access to 10 links or more (if you bought additional URLs), your regular visits to the blogs in your feed reader should entice you to always select the link that is the most relevant to the post you are commenting on. By “most relevant” I mean the post on your blog that discusses a similar subject to the one where you are leaving your comment.

Benefit for user traffic: people will be drawn to your keyword rich anchor (more clicks) because you are linking to a post that discusses the same topic that the one they just read.

Benefit for search engine rankings: search engines will give more weight to your link because the “context” of the link will be optimal (the page you get the link from being optimised for your own keywords).

Step 3: Hunting down blog posts

If you are like me, you’ll only have between 100 and 150 blogs in your feed reader, but not all of them use CommentLuv. I believe that the actual number of CommentLuv enabled blogs is in the thousands, so you can see the potential traffic and number of links you could be missing out on. Simply head to your favourite search engine and type:

"'s last blog" intitle:"your_keywords"

with the speech marks, and you should find dozens, if not hundreds of new pages to acquire links from (no spamming though!). Once that’s done, you could do a -intitle to find other posts that could be suitable, but do not include your keywords in the title.

[TIP from Gail: You can also se the CommentLuv search engine to search for your interests and keywords.]

Benefits for user traffic: more potential visitors coming from more sources, plus the above benefits discussed in step 2.

Want proof this works? See Gail’s older post
Blog Traffic Up 54.87% in 30 Days – which went on to an increase of 76.63%

Benefits for search engine rankings: not only will you have the same SEO benefits than in step 2 (above) but your “blog links” graph will appear more natural because spreading over many more domains.

Step 4: Cycle through your links

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to find a link in your CommentLuv quiver that is relevant to the post you are commenting on. If that is the case, take the habit of cycling through the links that are available and select a different one for every comment you leave… even if they are on the same blog and especially if they are on the same blog post!

Benefit for user traffic: people who leave comments will be interested in different things, so while your post on PageRank might not interest them, another post on Twitter might (for example).

Benefits for search engine rankings: you gain more deep links to all your blog posts for a better chance of ranking for more competitive keywords. In addition, search engines might only count the first occurrence of a link on a page and discard any later ones. Repeating the same link (with identical anchor) more than once on a page won’t offer any SEO advantage.

Step 5: Slow down new blog post publications

This one will probably get some bashing from full-time bloggers, especially the ones who publish daily, but if you think about it, the more frequently you post, the less time you can rely on CommentLuv to gain links to your blog posts.

One post per day means that you only have 10 days to get links, while posting 3 times a week (still a high frequency, by all accounts) gives you almost a month’s worth of CommentLuv link building time.

Conclusion

CommentLuv is not only a great plugin to get people interested in what was recently published on your blog, but it will also help obtain keyword rich deep links that help your blog rank higher for its target keywords. By following these 5 easy steps you should see your website traffic soar to new heights and remember: always include your keywords in the blog post title for even better anchor text.

This is a guest post from Rubab Saleem of Pakistan Times. Hopefully I can get her to add a bio shortly. My apologies if the lack of author attribution when this post went live caused any confusion.

WordPress accesses are set up incorrectly.  Using contributor status is like blogging in a black hole because you can’t edit or see what you have written once you submit it. Because of that I provide author access but that allowed this post to be published before I had seen it or I would have asked Rubab to add an author bio. If you have a good solution  to allowing Authors to see all their posts but the blog owner to manage when guest posts are published please do share it with me.

Why Bloggers Should Moderate Comments on Blogs

Bloggers target at genuine and organic traffic for their blogs. Traffic comes either by search engines or by creating fronts and paths to reach back to a blog. Search Engines bring traffic to websites with several subtleties including quality and unique content, reliable information, being first on giving certain information, URL structures, back links etc. However from personal end comments are the most important mean to drag attention of the visitors. For “follow links” people sometimes drop uncalled for and unreasonable comments.

People come and drop a sentence in comment section saying “aaaahhhh!!!! loved this post will return ” or “excellent post will revisit” with an unfamiliar URL in website section, clicking on those URLs takes sometimes nowhere. I always wondered if such comments are spam or do they have worth for website either mines or the one who comments. Another type of generalized comment i recently started receiving that i would want to share:

Hi there, I found your website via Search engines while searching for a related topic for my study. Finally i found site talking this specific topic, It’s truly a wonderful and useful piece of information. I am pleased that you really provided this helpful info with all of us. Be sure to keep us informed like this. Appreciate your sharing.

This was posted on one of my post Islamic Banking in Pakistan: A consumer perspective. For past several months this comment stays in comment bank but i am reluctant to approve it because of the URL it has. WordPress is installed on my website; i have all the options to edit or remove the URL but i didn’t. Because i thought it might not have been a spam, and its generalized nature forced me to moderate it as there is nothing irrelevant though.

See another example on an article Kashmiri leaders demand probe into ‘rape’ of minor girl by troops ”

Exactly how did you figure all this out about this topic? I enjoyed reading this, I’ll have to visit other pages on your site straight away.”

Now here is a cultural and human rights issue confronts me with confusion while i think of approving particular comment on particular post. And no one can enjoy a post about rape of minor girl hence it irrelevancy is authenticated. And even if I approve this comment to show how largely my site is visited, other visitors will certain dislike the idea of enjoyment in this comment.

Check this comment on a post titled Clinton says administration to work with Congress on Pakistan aid conditions:

Your article is pretty uesful to me and aid me solve a large difficulty. I appreciate you very much. But i have some issue of comprehend the last paragraph. Can you say some details for me?

URL given with this comment on a political issue; takes me to the Office products on cheap rates. AAAhhhh thanks to my vigilance, i didn’t even think of approving it.

It is called common sense, imagine in this comment on a blog titled “NA refers KSE scandal, wheat scams to finance committee”
the keyword scam was picked. And i am sure scams have nothing to do with an environment blog. Here is comment

i hate scams wheter it is offline scam or online scams, there are lots of it these days ‘*~

One more reason for which i would always want to moderate comments is abusive language used by the visitors. Besides respecting the opinion of readers and visitors, it is also important to ensure cleanliness that conforms My Website’s policy.

It is hard to recognize spam whether in URL or in IP. Comment spam has not only evolved from random words support each other but with a link with the “proper” anchor text to something that seems to be written by a human. Even if i know they are written by human i would be reluctant in approving those.

Thus i would take time out from my schedule to moderate every single comment rather than letting these go unchecked. For me it is equally important to produce a quality content.

In a guest post on the Louis Gray blog, Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter / FriendFeed) asked Are We Missing Something by Reading an RSS Feed and then answered his own question:

By missing the comments, we are missing part of the conversation. It is a large part of the conversation because it is the one part of the blog post where readers can interact. Are we shortchanging ourselves by not reading the post on the blog along with the comments?

Louis Gray (Twitter / FriendFeed) posted The Trouble with RSS: I’m Not Involved and shared this:

Instead of adding to the conversation myself, I’m hitting “Add to Shared Items” for my link blog and moving on, not commenting and not alerting site owners and content generators that I’d been by. To those site owners who generate the RSS feeds themselves, I’m a mere number in their Feedburner statistics. I don’t show up in their page views, my name doesn’t show up in the comments, and I may as well be invisible.

Both of these bloggers realize that there are some serious drawbacks to not clicking through to individual blogs.  Rob suggested one solution:

How much more intersting would your RSS reader become if it included the comments in the feed? Can somebody work on that?

Until that happens here is another solution: leave your RSS reader and visit blogs whenever a particularly interesting post comes in view. Don’t let RSS Readers Kill Your Involvement because, as Tony says,

…a blog is only as good as the amount of perspectives it provides.

Click through and you’ll quickly see which blogs and types of posts generate lively conversations. Even if you don’t have time to visit and comment in EVERY blog, making the time to become visible in at least some blogs brings great benefits.

I spend almost all day almost every day online. The blogs I feature here and share at cliKball, Twitter and FriendFeed are those I actually read. By commenting here you not only remind me who you are – CommentLuv also lets me know when you’ve added new content and I instantly know whether my readers would be interested. I also make a point of sharing quality posts in blogs outside my niche.

I invite you to start your new visiting here because between my commentators and my answers there is almost always more content in the comments than I shared in the original posts.

Every blogger has to deal with the issue of SPAMMY comments – and the spammers are getting more and more creative in what they leave. The challenge, though, is knowing when someone is just not very experienced at leaving real comments and when they’re only after some link love. While I do try to err in favor of those who just aren’t very good at commenting, we are deleting more and more borderline comments.

Are YOUR comments SPAMMY? Do they contribute to the discussion or are they only intended to provide a backlink?

Here are some very recent examples to help you understand when comments are NOT valuable and are VERY LIKELY to be deleted: 

1. Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking you feeds also, Thanks.
2. amazing stuff thanx
3. Interesting article, i have bookmarked your blog for future referrence [sic]
4. I’ve been having a problem with this for a while now. I just can’t seem to figure it out
5. Interessante Informationen

While every blogger might appreciate sincere compliments, the above are simply too vague and too generic to be of any value. If your comments are sincere I would love to keep them – but really now – how am I to know when they’re as vague as these?

Over time there have been batches of “I can’t figure out how to subscribe to your feed” and “I’ve bookmarked you” which are obviously SPAM. The way we know this is that they’ve already been reported by other bloggers or the same SPAMMY comment appears more than once in a single blog on multiple posts.

Sometimes the SPAM is very well written:

Hey all, sorry if this is in the wrong place. First time poster, long-time lurker. I’m a big fan of this community and found something I wanted to share. I’m really into vintage guitars, I have a small collection of my own, and this site has been a really cool resource for me.

It is a collection of a bunch of really good deals on some really sweet Vintage Guitars.  It updates pretty much daily with a new list of good deals and things that look interesting. Check it out, let me know what you think. RockinMusicDeals.com

The above comment would be better in a blog about music or guitars, but it would STILL be a commercial and likely to be deleted. It starts out with a probable lie and has nothing to do with the post where it was left. Want more proof that it is SPAM? Search on the last line and today those two exact sentences are listed in Google 104 times.

There is nothing wrong with making a comment ABOUT A BLOG POST HERE that LINKS to the Vintage Guitars – or any other site.  Those types of comments are welcome. We’re even using KeywordLuv so you can add your own anchor text.  You won’t see the comment above HERE because we deleted it.

[Note: We now use CommentLuv Premium that has keywords built in - you can use either free CommentLuv and KeywordLuv OR CommentLuv Premium.]

Here is another:

Hello there… I’ve been hanging out in these forums for a while as a guest and finally got around to registering. Thumbs up to whoever runs this place. Seriously, I love the contribution of this community. I thought I’d do some contributing of my own and pimp a ringtone and free SMS site that my friend just sent me.

The last month I’ve been using TheCellFreak.com. This site allows me to send totally free sms worldwide, which is cool because I like finding these free gifts over the web. Plus I can have free ringtones and graphics via SMS to any cellphone worldwide – for free. No hidden costs, popups or nags.

Hope to contribute more useful links like this one. Cheers, and btw: some of the posts here are really funny: lol!

This one is obviously SPAM for many reasons. That this site is not a forum ad we don’t require registration make it obvious this is not a real comment. The extra link within the text is another. This SPAMMER wasn’t nearly as successful as the first. There are only three listings in Google so far when I searched on “pimp a ringtone and free SMS”.

[TIP: Select the most distinctive phrase to get the most accurate results when searching for SPAM comments.]

Here is a much tougher one. The text is still too generic and the commentator left an extra link. They also submitted this comment twice. There are no listings in Google for this comment so far though. What do you think? Real or SPAM?

I really liked your blog! You have some great content. Check out my blog, I just added my new post about Using Plr articles for fresh content. Let me know what you think

http://blogging-to-make-money.com/private-label-rights-products-how-to-use-plr-products-to-boost-your-profits/

The blogger leaving this last comment has a blog that is related to our content. It would be a good idea for them to take the time to write better comments here and use that link as the URL of the comment instead of including it in the text.

Would you approve this last comment, mark it as SPAM, or simply delete it?

[NOTE: Akismet flags comments that include extra links and many people find links - especially really long links - SPAMMY.]

Here are some tips for quality comments that are far more likely to be approved and lead new readers to your blog:

1. Akismet traps short comments so make your comments at least a couple of sentences long.
2. Say something specific about the post that you’re leaving the comment in so the person reviewing it knows without a doubt that it is a REAL comment. Comments should NOT be advertisements or only to invite readers to visit you. FIRST they should be comments; THEN you can add a SHORT blurb mentioning your own site.
3. In blogs that use KeywordLuv use that feature to create anchor text.
4. Consider joining CommentLuv so you can select the most relevant of your last ten posts to link to your comment.
5. Whether you have CommentLuv or not, you CAN link to a specific post instead of your home page if you wish by using that link in your comment.
6. Those using CommentLuv can leave TWO links by first entering their main page and then changing it AFTER they select their post using CommentLuv.
7. If you leave any additional links in the body of your comment it is almost sure to be moderated so do NOT leave your standard links in the text. Only leave links in the body of your comment if you feel an additional link is relevant and will be approved. You might consider leaving one comment that mentions another link and then adding the link in a second comment. That way your first comment will go live and the blog has the option to approve the second link – or not – and you will still have a quality comment there.

Be sure to check comment policies BEFORE you leave comments. There are blogs I avoid commenting in because their policies are overly restrictive. Some don’t provide any links at all. One forbids linking to specific posts and others insist on “real” names (as though they could verify them anyway).  Since we all have limited time why not focus our efforts in blogs that appreciate our participation?

And when we do, don’t make the poor blogger think long and hard trying to figure out whether our comments is sincere and real.  Even if weak or spammy comments are approved, they affect your reputation so only leave quality comments.

Comments are NOT just links back to your site. They are indicators of the quality of your writing. The better your comments the more likely readers are to visit you!

Trade-Show-Guru has an entertaining comment policy worth reading. Even though officially he requires “real names” I’m hoping he’ll grant me a Friends of the Guru exception and let me call myself Internet Strategist as I do everywhere I travel online – or at least GrowMap which I use in blogs where they consider Internet Strategist too much like a keyword phrase.

Most Bloggers Love Comments But Not THOSE Comments is another humorous comment policy page worth reading. It gives some great ideas on what makes a good comment while being funny too.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

ANCHOR TEXT:

• Anchor Text Explained

USING KEYWORDLUV:

• How Does KeywordLuv Work?
• How WordPress Plugin KeywordLuv Rewards Your Commentators
• Target Your Keywords in Backlinks from KeyWordLuv Using DoFollow Blogs

ATTRACTING QUALITY COMMENTS:

• Like Bees to Honey: Attracting Quality Comments to Your Blog
• Do DoFollow Blogs Need a Stricter Comment Policy?

COMMENTING DON’TS:

• Ten Ways to Hurt Your Brand When Commenting on Other Blogs