Years ago I woke up one morning, logged into my blog, and found seven new comments from people I had not heard from before. I was thrilled. New comments meant people were reading and engaging. Then I looked closer and discovered that four of the seven were pure spam, generated by some automated software that had been sold to people looking for easy backlinks. My absolute favorite was the commenter who called me a guru using two different names, pointing back to two different URLs. Not exactly subtle.
The Spam Comment Problem
Somewhere along the way, someone sold expensive software that would crawl blogs, find posts matching certain keywords, and automatically drop generic comments. Comments like “Great post, very informative!” or “I learned so much from this, thanks for sharing!” These comments waste everyone's time. They clutter up legitimate discussions. And here is the thing that really bothered me: the people using these tools were completely missing the actual opportunity that blog commenting provides.
The Outcomes Most People Focus On
When people talk about the value of blog comments, they usually mention two things. First, if you leave an early comment on a high-traffic post with a thoughtful contribution, readers will click through to your site. That is true. It provides some temporary traffic. Second, some blogs offer do-follow links to commenters, which can help with search engine rankings. Also true, though the SEO value of comment links has diminished significantly over the years.
Both of these outcomes are real, but they are not the main event.
The Real Value: Relationships
The real opportunity in leaving excellent blog comments lies in the relationships you build with the people who run those blogs. This is the part that spam commenters completely miss. When you develop genuine relationships with other content creators and entrepreneurs, you unlock opportunities for conversations, friendships, business ideas, joint ventures, and collaborations that can transform your business.
I will give you two examples from my own experience. When I first started blogging, I found Garry Conn's site and left a comment asking for advice. Not only did Garry use my question as part of his content, he actually called me back. We have been trading ideas and collaborating ever since. He designed my original blog theme. What started as a blog comment turned into a genuine friendship and business relationship.
Josh Spaulding is another example. I was so impressed with his ethical approach to internet marketing that I started commenting regularly on his blog. That led to me becoming a moderator in his coaching forum, and we collaborated on several joint venture projects. Again, it all started with a thoughtful comment.
How This Applies in 2026
The platforms have changed. Blog comments are less central to online discourse than they were in 2009. Today, the equivalent interactions happen on social media, in podcast communities, on YouTube, in Discord servers, and in private Slack groups. But the principle is identical: meaningful engagement with people you respect leads to relationships that can change your business trajectory.
Do not leave generic comments or replies hoping for a backlink or a quick traffic bump. Instead, engage thoughtfully with content creators whose work you genuinely admire. Add value to the conversation. Share your own relevant experience. Ask intelligent questions. Over time, those interactions compound into relationships that are worth far more than any SEO benefit.
Whether you are building an online business or working in any industry, the formula is the same: focus on building relationships with people you respect and customers you value. It is the oldest advice in business, and it still works because it always will.
Get love where you can and from whom you can. Ask not, if it is true. Okay, just kidding.
Blame this commenting game on the marketers. This quest to get link backs, traffic and what have you.
I only comment to posts I feel strongly about and it is usually a dissent.
So, yeah! Write comments on posts one feels strongly about.
Hi Mark,
Awesome post as always…… guess i should end this comment there if I want it to go to the spam box 🙂
First off, the $5 formula is awesome. I screwed my first attempt up but starting my second now and with the clearer instructions I can’t see how I would fail!! It’s just a little tedious and some hard work, but if you try and stay away from hard work you will never get anywhere.
Relationships too I feel are very important and I put a lot of effort into being helpful to anyone I can and trying to get people the best advice I can give them. Certain bloggers that I follow, like you, have been a great inspiration for me over the few years since I first looked into blogging…. I can’t thank you enough for putting me onto Josh’s forum.
I found you through Garry too so that relationship helped you…. sadly Garry wasn’t very nice (completely unjustly) to me recently and I ceased my following of him but am still thankful of the things I learned from his blog and the help he gave me when I first started….. Only thing I have learned is throw yourself 99.9999% into being helpful and you will get help back. However reserve that 0.0001% of cautiousness for times when you do get burned or someone turns out to be more in it for themselves rather than helping you. I have been burned a few times now….. However karma wins out in the end……
Although there are many benefits to leaving comments on a blog, I find it hard to comment just to get those benefits. I find that either a blog post speaks to me and I have something to say or I don’t. End of story. I guess it’s easy for me as I like to have something to say. In fact, a couple of blogs I read don’t allow comments and I keep wondering if I should unsubscribe as I’ll read something and click through to say something, forgetting they don’t allow you to do that. 🙁
Anyway, I get a lot of borderline comments on my Blogworld blog. It’s been listed on a number of sites because of the Top Commentators widget I have in my sidebar so I do get comments that are there for the backlink. The thing is, some of those “borderline” comments have turned into regular readers who over time have left more and more valuable comments. Which makes me reluctant to delete or spam folder borderline comments. I’m finding it a hard line to draw in terms of what I do and don’t accept. Do you have a set line or do you run more with your gut in instances like this?
Sometimes I let Akismet guide me – if the comment has already gone to my spam folder, I tend to be a little harder in my judgement. But then, I have one regular commenter who has never had a comment go through without Akismet picking it up as spam – and he’s a real person with real comments.
I guess I find it hard to distinguish between being too soft/gullible and too cynical/assuming everyone is spamming me for their own benefits.
If people are going to comment, they should at least read more than the headline so that they can do so intelligently. When you actually add to the conversation, even no follow links are worth something because of the possibility that someone will click them. I like the comment that we allow comments so that they will add value to our blog and we shouldn’t feel bad about deleting something that is trash. It’s always nice to visit a blog and find that the comment discussion took the post to a whole new level.
@Gandree — I completely agree. Sometimes the comments are even more valuable than the post. Some of the best posts that I’ve ever read don’t even provide an answer, they simply propose a question. Regards, Mark
Hi Mark
I have just recently become involved in blog commenting only a couple weeks ago after “accidentally” posting a comment that actually got read by a lot of people. I wrote a comment on Anik Meta’s blog of PPC Classroom fame. It seemed that although many people went through the training, they were still having trouble with their campaigns. After reading some of the posts it occurred to me that many people were still too impatient about starting their campaigns.
So I wrote a 3 or 4 paragraph post telling them about an Adsense article I wrote that dealt with why many people still take action on a plan without that plan even written out and studied. In the comment I told them that Adsense and Adwords are like 2 different sides to the same coin and the philosophies behind them are similar. I then left a link to my article.
I actually had no intention of creating a backlink or of getting traffic. I swear all I wanted to do was help. Anyway, the next morning I decided to check my Adsense account and found that I made over $5.00 in Adsense income just from my article page. To date I made over $40 in Adsense revenue from that post as well as 5 subscribes to my list. I still make a couple of dollars every day from that post and some of them are visiting other areas of my site.
By spending just a little quality time to post a quality comment on a quality blog, you can be rewarded with some quality traffic and even some quality cash…
@Joseph – that is fantastic. Some bloggers are threatened when commenters challenge what they have to say, or add information be on the original article. It’s almost like these blog authors believe that in order to be credible they must know everything and more than everyone. My rule of thumb is that if I ever run across anyone that claims to know everything, I run the other way. if you ever want to build credibility with someone that asks you a question, just tell them that you recognize the value of their question, you don’t know the answer, but you’ll try to find out and get back to them. Nothing is more powerful and relationship than making a small commitment to a person that you barely know and following through. Plus, recognizing this means that you don’t need to know the answer to every question. That’s good, because it is completely impossible to know the answer to every question. Thanks for the comment, and I hope your single helpful comment makes you $100,000 this year! Regards, Mark
Hey Mark,
I hate those comments. So annoying. But, the good news is that they always end up in moderation and spam folders.
Regarding forming relationships, it really depends on the blog and the blogger you visit. There are blogs that after a few comments in a relationship-building mode I just see that there is no point… It is then when I switch to my mooch-visitors mode 😉
Cheers,
Alex
Good post Mark (not doing that just for the link – lol). As Alex notes – it’s a two way street and you do a fine job of helping/interacting with commentors. Keep up the good work. And, it is all about the networks you’re building. If you say Josh, or whomever, is an ethical marketer, that carries alot of weight with me.
Hey Mark,
I just came from my blog and it’s not like I get a million comments a day but it still takes up my time. I had a couple that I deleted because even though they made it through the spam filters I thought they were complete garbage. I get a lot of comments that are just one liners and you know they are just trying to get some link love. I also get some that are either written by someone that doesn’t know the English language or they just can’t write worth a crap. I just delete those.
The whole point of having comments on your blog is to get good relevent content and if I don’t like the sound or looks of it I have the right to delete it. After all, it is my blog and I want good content.
I understand about getting backlinks and all that stuff but as you say I would rather make some good comments and contribute to that blog and develop a relationship with that blog owner. I believe that if I visit enough blogs on a regular basis and leave good comments I will get far better results. Maybe the comment I just left somewhere will bring that blog owner to my blog and he/she will leave me a nice comment.
I think that will bring me more traffic in the long run because I’ll have much more interesting content on my blog. Besides, most blogs are using the nofollow attribute and you don’t get any link juice from them anyway.
I myself, don’t use the nofollow attribute that’s why I am a little more fussy about the comments left on my blog. If I’m going to give you a backlink it’s going to be for good content.
Now I’m not saying that I will delete all negative comments. If they are presented in good taste, make sense and add value I will approve them.
I’m not always right in my posts and if someone has a better opinion or they don’t like my opinion then I think they should be heard.
Later,
Jeff Sargent
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the email telling me about your post, many people talk about commenting on blogs to get back links to help your own website or blog, but I think your article really makes the light bulbs go on! Developing relationships will help you to grow your business and friendships.
I also like how you give good examples of how you did it, by choosing to blog comment on blogs that you like what they are doing or stand for. Thanks for the example.
Barry
I’ve found a nice tool that gets rid of the automated comments. You can get it through WordPress.org or just search for it within your WordPress Blog. It should come up by searching for WP-Spamfree.
It checks to see if the poster’s browser responds to javascript. Most bots can’t. So if it doesn’t it ask the user to confirm it is human. If a human responds it then allows the post. If not the post never even gets posted. No false positives, no spam to delete. I was getting up to 100 such crap per day so I had to do something. Seems to work perfectly for me.
@Rusty – Thanks, man. That sounds really cool. Will definitely check that out.
I hate blog comments that say lame things like ‘fantastic article’, when the article was crap. I guess that’s what free speech is all about. The lame commenting on the crapulous.
Of course it may be that I just disagree with the original article and thereby call it crap. Just had a though – if I believe in free speech, I have to believe in the right for others to have free speech too.
I’ll have to think about this. Ha Ha I wasn’t being completely serious.
I love the way you share your vast knowledge Mark, and I feel I am (very slowly) beginning to find my way in the web that is wide and deep as the greatest ocean ever. Or I might be drowning, it’s hard to tell.
Oops, I gave the wrong website – still swimming, but feeling like I’m drowning at the moment.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for highlighting the comment issue- I continue to be amazed that so many of the commenters assume we don’t read our comments, I suppose they think it is worth wasting our time
I agree, lame comments are such a drag but don’t dismiss all of them. Sometimes they’re actually written by real people with themed sites with e.g. a PR 2. Logically, those comments are worth publishing as it shows that a site of value is commenting on yours, even if what they say is crap.
James Mangosteen Dean
I’m a man of few words but I really express my thoughts when the article is worth commenting.
Just like what you’ve mentioned in your topic, I was a nobody in the field of blogging until I
started to leave sensible comments in the blogosphere , and I ended making not just few but a number of good friends.
@Eric — Exactly. Nothing wrong with not commenting. but, as you say, when you do comment, it should be for the right reason. Regards, Mark
9 comments before a do-follow is a little steep , 4 or 5 is better .
I have been reading some of Josh’s posts for a year now and haven’t left a comment yet. I am leaving one here just because I deleted 15 spam posts on my blog.
By the time I have written 8 more comments I could have written an article or a Squidoo lens . Sorry man , your blog has some link power but not that much , in fact my browser says you have good traffic but no google love at all
Maybe I’ll write an article on egos
Yeah I know , spam filter
Thanks for at least reading it
That’s one of the bad things about the IM experts who tell people to get backlinks or traffic by blog commenting – you end up with a ton of ‘nice article’ comments which are so obviously spam. I think instead of being told to spam those so called experts should spend some time teaching people what a valuable comment looks like – and how they can actually bring in much more traffic than a spam comment.
@Chris. That made me smile. Yes — you should only comment when you have something to say. I certainly do not advocate commenting just for the sake of commenting.
I’ve had an enlightening time the past couple of days, reading these posts and others. I’m definitely one of the ‘only leave a comment if I have something to say’ crowd.
This has all be interesting, and I’m learning lots. If only I can integrate me learning into something useful.
Again, thank you Mark.
Great post, thanks alot!
———
Just kidding lol
I think you made an excellent choice adopting that comment policy. After I did it I noticed a big increase in comments and most were quality comments.
Thanks — completely stolen from you!
Blog commenting is a fine line. Certainly there is the hope of backlinks, but just as important is contributing the the community. I want people to leave useful comments on my blogs so I try to make sure I do the same thing. If I don’t have time to write useful comments, I don’t bother leaving one-liners.
Another part of the fun debate is what name to use. I tend to use a Keyword, and have certainly run across blogs that don’t appreciate that. But, usually providing useful comments overcomes that issue.
Mark,
Great post! Thanks! Bye…
Seriously, relationships are key. I lived in China for 8 years where relationships are more important than friendship. In fact, in many cases in China, relationships precede friendship. If you can’t prove yourself to be a trusting relation, then you don’t have a chance becoming a friend. That’s exactly what you are saying here.
BTW, anyone reading this post and my comment. Mark is the real thing. It is totally in your best interest to be on his good side. Leave a good post.
Regards,
Jonathan
I am a big believer in Blog commenting long term. The reason is long term it is easy to toss the worthless blog comments with akismet and real comments that come from well tended blogs I believe will become valuable. The future is easy to predict. The links that are easily spammed by automation will be. Anything that is approved by a human editor will increase in value.
A well tended blog does not allow spam comments.
Suzy