Does It Help My SEO If I Link To My Website In The Comments Section Of Another Sites Blog Post – 65

Here is the Transcript for Episode 65 Does It Help My SEO If I Link To My Website In The Comments Section Of Another Sites Blog Post;

Jesse Dolan: Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics, where each week we bring you tips and tricks on how to get found online. I am your host, Jesse Dolan, back with you here again. The reboot, after the reboot, after the reboot of getting back on board with the podcast here. Appreciate the patience in everybody, if you’ve been waiting for some new episodes, we’ve got a lot queued up. Really going to get back in the saddle again, here and put out some regular content, some different types of content, too. We’ve been working on that. We’re going to be mixing in and so I’ll stay tuned for that. But yeah, we’ve just been continuing to grow as an agency. We’ve got a lot of good things happening here at In Trycks. We got a lot of new customers. We’ve got some new people on board and really through the heart of the coronavirus summer here of 2020, we’ve actually gotten pretty darn busy, helping a lot of people, either relaunch their business, start businesses, or just kind of double down on their marketing.

And so, I appreciate again, the feedback. All the listens and the downloads, for all of you that have still been paying attention, even though we haven’t had a lot of new content, and hopefully your patience has paid off and you’re going to get a lot of stuff from us here. So, whether you like it or not, I guess, right, we’re going to put it out. So, hopefully it helps you. And this week here, we got a cool episode. We got a call-in question from Cole of Portage Creative up in Canada.

Hey, Cole. How’s it going? Cole and I have talked offline here a few times. Done some zoom calls and some emails, and we’re doing some work together. And Cole had actually left this question through our portal. Gosh, a number of months ago. But again, we’ve just been kind of delayed in launching this. So, I’m kind of excited to launch it with Cole’s question here.

Anybody else, if you’ve got a question that you want to ask, that you’d like us to answer on the show, we’d love to do that. If you’ve got a question, somebody else has the same question, right? It’s not just going to be unique to you. So, don’t be bashful. If you’re thinking it and you’re wondering, somebody else out there is too. So, this will be good for you to get an answer. It’s great for us to talk about it on the episode because it’s going to help other people as well. So, if you want to get in on that, sorry, if you want to get in on that, go to localSEO,tactics.com down in the bottom left corner, you’ll see a link for submit a question. Just click on that and I’ll walk you through the steps.

And if you do do that, and if we can use your audio on the air, you’re going to get… If you’re watching on video here, you’ll see I’m holding up my t-shirt, In Trycks logo t-shirt. We’re going to send you one of those for free for submitting the question and hopefully a nice token for you there. It is a nice t-shirt, a nice soft, t-shirt. A good fit, good quality. So, I think you’ll like it.

So, before we get into Cole’s question here to play that, and then we’ll get into the answer. I do want to mention to everybody else, use our free instant SEO audit. If you haven’t yet, go out to localSEOtactics.com, click on the yellow button. You plug in your webpage, plug in the keyword you want to check the optimization against, and it’s going to give you a real quick checklist of the good things on your website, the bad things that you might want to fix, and just a bunch of recommendations on how to improve your SEO. It’s pretty easy to follow along. You can kind of go through the quick bullet points or there’s more in-depth information if you’ve got more context, too. So, whether you’re looking kind of for a light and quick thing or something that’s a little bit more intense, it kind of covers you on both sides. So, again, you can find that on localSEOtactics.com, look for the yellow button. And use that as many times as you want, totally free. So, let’s get into Cole’s question here. Play it, and then we’ll go over the answer.

Cole: Hey guys, this is Cole from Portage Creative. We’re a video production company up in Ontario, Canada, and I’ve been enjoying your guys’ podcasts for the last few months. I had a question. I was logged or I was reading a blog from an audio recordist and she wrote this really helpful blog and I got to the bottom and I went to leave a comment on it, and there was an option to put a website URL, along with my name as I’d left a comment, which got me thinking about episode you guys did on backlinks and how that can help your website. And I remember kind of using, I’ve taken advantage of that in the past by using local directories. And you guys talked a lot about on your podcasts.

So, my question is, is leaving questions on related blogs where there’s an opportunity to provide a back link to my website, is that a valid way to build up that backlink, backlink juice? Of course, I wouldn’t, I’m not talking about being spammy about it, but kind of leaving thoughtful comments and a backlink that way. So, I’m really hyper-focused on local with our business, but I guess what I’m wondering is links from larger, authoritative websites that aren’t local, is that also helpful and is leaving comments on websites that allow a link back, is that valid as a backlink in Google’s eyes?

Jesse Dolan: Awesome, Cole. So, yeah. Great question. That is something that used to work really good. If you turn back the clock a few years ago, that was a pretty solid tactic. Unfortunately, at least how you’re laying it out there, it doesn’t work anymore. And there’s a few reasons for that. So, just to frame it up for everybody, what Cole is talking about is if you’ve got a blog out there or even a website with an article and down at the bottom, a lot of times it’ll have a spot where you can reply and leave comments. And sometimes they’ll actually have a separate field where you can not only leave your comment, but also a link to your website or list your website, even. That used to work because it was kind of a brand new thing and effectively, it was exploited. People would spam it. There was bots and some automation developed to find blogs that had that open and then either automatically post to them or however you you kind of preset in or give you a list and you could do it yourself.

And basically, it just got so overused that technology was developed to thwart it, or at least to kind of mitigate it a little bit. Blogs started getting smarter. They started tagging those links as no follow, which even though it’s a link back to your website, as far as Cole’s specific question on, getting link juice or value from that backlink, from that website to yours, taking it as a no-follow link, it’s going to break that chain. So, although the backlink can still work, it can be active, you can click on it and go from that blog post or article to your website, that can still work, you just don’t get that link juice. That authority that Cole’s looking for back from the website, when it’s tagged as no-follow.

In addition, Google did, this year, 2020, launch some additional features where the backlinks can be tagged as promotional or user generated content. So, that kind of expands on that, but effectively, no. Unfortunately, backlinks from blogs, within the comments and the replies, don’t work that good. There is still some value in getting a backlink though, from that. Again, you’re not going to get any link juice from it, but if it’s the right topic and it’s relevant and people want to visit your website to get more information or to kind of follow up on your comments, you can still get traffic to your website, right? So, although it’s not a direct SEO benefit, like it helps your backlink profile, it can generate more traffic to your website, right? So, whether that helps to bring in people through the front door and just become users or customers, or they’re exposed to your websites and now they can tell others, or maybe they go to your website and share your content and get legitimate backlinks that way. There’s a lot of different ways where it could end up helping you.

But again, that direct connection of, if I leave my website or I enter my website into the comment or reply on this blog post or reply in this article, will that backlink help my website? Unfortunately, the answer is no. You do want to go out there and on the topic here, just expand on it, you want to get backlinks, right? Backlinks are a great signal for SEO. Google’s algorithm is still, they don’t really want it to be as much, they’ve been trying to forward it a little bit, it is still dependent on backlinks. Backlinks still make a big difference. You can get ranking without backlinks just fine. But, getting a backlink from a good quality website to yours, especially a relevant website, is something that can really help you out, quite a bit.

So, with that, Cole kind of mentioned in his question, he’s hyper-focused on local and for all of you listening, this is the Local SEO Tactics show, so I’d imagine you’re concerned about local SEO. That is something that I would definitely recommend is that, if you’re going to get a backlink, there’s a couple of different areas here. Try to get one that’s local. Could be a local organization that you’re affiliated with or a sponsor. If you sponsor the T-ball team at school and you’re listed on the school’s website, linking back to yours as a sponsor. Maybe that has nothing to do with your business, but it’s local, right? And you’re going to get that kind of association here with Google. Likewise, if it’s relevant to your niche or your industry, if it’s from an association or organization you belong to something like that. If you’re a plumber and you get a link from a plumbing directory to your website, obviously that’s going to be great. Even if it’s not local. If it’s a national organization or a regional organization, that’s great because it’s relevant to your niche and relevant to your industry.

And aside from that, a backlink from a high value domain is good, no matter what. Even if it’s not related to your niche, even if it’s not in your local area. Maybe that’s a college, right, somewhere or Forbes or fortune 500. I mean, just any, the larger the entity, the more valuable the backlink is. And the local and the niche relevancy kind of go out the window when it’s one of these behemoth type websites. So, that is probably it.

So, again, just to recap, no, leaving comments on a blog post with your backlink to your website, isn’t going to do anything for you. Still encourage you to build good quality backlinks for your website. Try to do it organic. And Google does not like when businesses look fake, right? So, don’t go out there and get a million backlinks, all of a sudden. Try to be acting like a normal business, getting backlinks from where Google might expect you to get them from and that’s going to help you out. So again, if you want to ask us a question, just go on at the localseotactics.com, bottom left corner, submit a question and just like Cole, we’ll be happy to answer that and see if that can help you out.

So, let’s get to our five star review the week. We’ve got a great review this week from username, I’m not even going to try to say this, I’m just going to spell it out for you guys, here. Username M S T 2 2 8 2 2 9. Awesome, five-star review says, “Perfect resource. Really enjoyed the episode regarding WordPress plugins as well as so many others. This podcast will help anyone looking to grow their online presence, highly recommended.” Awesome. Thanks for the great five star review. Like I say every time, you guys keep sending them in, we’re going to keep reading them and we really appreciate it. This is how we know we’re doing a good job. We’re providing good content and bringing you a value.

So, if you haven’t left us a review yet, we’d love to hear from you. And again, we’ll read them as long as he keeps sending them in. Go to localSEOtactics.com, down on the bottom, you’ll find links to what? Facebook, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Google My Business, wherever you’re so inclined to leave us a review, we really appreciate it. And glad to hear from you all. So, hopefully that was a good episode. Hopefully you got some good value out of that and we’ll catch you next time.