How to Milk CommentLuv for All It’s Worth

Too many choices?

Most bloggers blog because they want to make money online.

What are the ingredients of making money blogging?

Having something worthy to sell – whether it’s a product or a service, and a readership that is willing to buy.

How do you get readers who are willing to buy?

By providing consistent value, building relationships, and building TRUST.

How do you cultivate such trust?

By giving.

On the Fence about CommentLuv?

When I first started blogging, I was a nobody in the blogosphere; just another wannabe trying to “make it” online.

We all have to start somewhere, right?

I knew that creating loyal readership was what I needed to focus on. Once you have readership, they will be the ones to spread the word about your blog and bring in even more readers.

And one way I did it is by giving my readers every reason to comment on my blog.

I made my blog DoFollow, which it still is, and installed CommentLuv to give my readers even more incentive to engage.

The result?

Traffic Generation Cafe as you see it in just over a year.

If you are still on the fence on whether to use CommentLuv on your blog or not, consider this: do the potential negatives outweigh the benefits of creating steady readership?

If you ask me, the answer is a strong NO.

Benefits of Commenting on CommentLuv Blogs

There are two major benefits CommentLuv provides to blog commentators:

1. Traffic generation
2. Link building

Seems to be simple and straight forward: when commenting on a CommentLuv enabled blog, you build an additional link back to one of your latest blog posts (link building), plus entice other commentators to click on that link by using a brilliant and catchy title of sorts (traffic generation).

Two birds with one stone, right? Not so fast.

Traffic generation and link building are two entirely different goals, which require two entirely different approaches.

CommentLuv Traffic Generation

How do you generate traffic from CommentLuv enabled blogs?

1. You read the post in its entirety.
2. You leave an intelligent comment providing additional feedback, resources, or even a different opinion.
3. You pick a preferably relevant post as your CommentLuv link, the one that…
4. …has an incredibly CATCHY and CLICKABLE title.
5. You wait for other readers to click on that title to satisfy their curiousity.

Traffic generation from CommentLuv links comes down to the blog titles.

How’s that different from link building?

CommentLuv Link Building

As many of you already know, link building is the cornerstone of any successful SEO campaign.

However, not all links are created equal.

Google uses links to determine the topic of the content the link is pointing to.

That’s why using your main keywords as your anchor text is so vitally important in link building.

Side note: you shouldn’t get 100% exact anchor text links back to your blog posts – that would be an obvious link building footprint and Google doesn’t like to see that. Keep the ratio to about 60% exact and 40% other keywords.

So how do you generate exact anchor text links with CommentLuv?

The way CommentLuv works is it taps into your RSS feed to come up with the list of your 10 latest blog posts.

Whatever the current titles are, that’s what you see in your CommentLuv link choices.

Another helpful thing to know about CommentLuv is that it’s not dynamic, meaning that once the link is posted with your comment, it won’t change even if you change the title.

Now imagine you are going on a commenting spree and would like to build links to a specific post with your chosen anchor text in mind.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Change the title of your blog post to your EXACT keyword. Save.
2. Go ahead and start leaving comments on CommentLuv enabled blogs.
3. Pick your new title as your CL link.
4. Post the comment.

Once you are done commenting, you can always go back and change the title of the post back to the catchy one. It won’t affect the links you already placed on other blogs.

Easy and brilliant, wouldn’t you agree?

As you can imagine, these kinds of titles won’t generation much traffic, but they are an excellent way to build some quality backlinks.

Traffic Generation AND Link Building Mixology

I realize that many bloggers are not the kind of link building fanatics you need to be to give up potential traffic generation in favor of pure link building.

Is there a way to accomplish both?

You won’t get as good results doing it this way, but it’s better than nothing.

What you do is change your catchy blog post title to the one that contains your keywords in the very beginning, as in:

• “Your Keyword: Come And Check Out My Brilliant Blog Post”

Needless to say, your keyword has to make sense to be included in the title this way.

Google tends to give more weight to the words placed first in the title, so you still might get some link building benefit, while keeping your title enticing to click on.

How to Do It Even Better with CommentLuv Premium

The new CommentLuv Premium has a great feature that allows you to add your top 5 favorite posts/pages to your list of 10 latest posts.

So now, when I comment on any CommentLuv enabled blog, whether the blogger has the premium version installed or not, I have a choice of 15 posts, 5 of which are pure anchor text posts and the rest are posts with unedited titles.

Your top favorites don’t change unless you change them in your settings, so you have complete control as to what posts you choose.

I use my 10 latest posts to generate traffic and my top 5 to build links.

Speaking of which, how would you like your copy of CommentLuv Premium to be on me?

CommentLuv Premium Giveaway

As you may know, CommentLuv Premium is currently closed to new members, but the new launch is quickly approaching in the second week of November.

And I’d love to give YOU, one of my lucky Traffic Generation Cafe readers, an opportunity to get this incredible plugin completely free.

ALSO, I’ll add to it a 30-minute consultation with me, where you get to pick my brains on any traffic generation/SEO/blogging topic you can think of.

All you need to do is to help me spread the word about my giveaway by linking to it from your blog.

Here are the simple steps to become eligible for this giveaway:

1. Place the following snippet into your next blog post:

There is a great giveaway going on at the Traffic Generation Cafe Blog, your ultimate hub for all things web traffic, where you can win your own copy of the hottest plugin release of the year – CommentLuv Premium. Participating is very easy: just visit Ana’s CommentLuv Premium giveaway page for more information.

2. Leave me a comment below with the link to the post with the snippet.

I’ll announce the winner on the day of the launch.

Meanwhile, to stay in the loop about the upcoming launch, I highly recommend you tell Andy Bailey to include your name on the CommentLuv Premium waiting list – just click on this banner:

Marketing Takeaway

My personal take on this whole traffic generation vs link building idea is this: I’d rather rank my posts on Google and start bringing perpetual SEO traffic than hope that a few readers will click on my CommentLuv link here and there.

What about you? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

Image source: ComicVine.com

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