Use Analytics to Know Where to Comment
We all know that commenting on other blogs is a great way to build traffic and network with other bloggers. But do you know how effective your commenting is? How would you know? In this post, I’m going to share some simple tips for a more effective commenting strategy.
If you’re commenting in order to get your name out and build traffic, you need a way to know if your efforts are paying off in traffic. You need web analytics. There are many free and worthy web analytics services available. I happen to be a fan of Google Analytics: it’s free and extremely powerful. One thing that Google Analytics does that you want any traffic analysis software to do is show you a list of referrers. Referrers are the sites people were on before they came to your blog. On those sites, somewhere, is a link to you people are clicking on.
When we leave valuable comments that contribute to the conversation, people often get curious about who we are and they click the link in the comment name to visit us. Your analytics package counts those as referrers. Choosing which blogs to comment on and which to leave alone is made easier by seeing which blogs send you visitors if you’ve commented there. I am not suggesting it should be the only reason why you comment at a blog, but if effectiveness is what you’re after, now you have a tool with which to measure it.
James Chartrand - Men with Pens | February 14th, 2008 at 7:21 am #
Now why didn’t I think of that? More fodder for my commenting strategies…!
Interwebhunt | February 14th, 2008 at 8:37 am #
Google analytics is a great way to keep tabs on your traffic, referrers are the most important stat to me at least. You need to cultivate and grow your relationships with other blogs, and referrer logs are a great way to do that.
Michael Martine (Post Author) | February 14th, 2008 at 9:02 am #
@ James -
@ interwebhunt - I particularly like the fact that it lists them from highest referrers to lowest, which makes it very easy to see at a glance who your top referrers are.
RandomThinker | February 14th, 2008 at 10:13 am #
Great info. I actually started doing this about one week ago and am already seeing results. I started doing this because when I looked at my stats, I noticed certain blogs as my top referrals pretty consistently. I actually find this almost as effective as using social networking sites.
Spohn | February 15th, 2008 at 1:13 pm #
I really like Google Analytics. Thats a great idea, to analyze the referrals coming in to your site, and to make sure that you keep those referrals coming and possibly even increasing those referrals.
Andy MacDonald | February 15th, 2008 at 1:18 pm #
Great post Micheal, I also use Google Analytics for exactly this purpose. I think its got to be the best analytics provider around.
Keep up the good work.