Is blog commenting still useful for SEO, post Panda and Penguin?

[AgentsofValue]

One website I checked is ranking well on Google. Upon checking its backlinks, I found that most of them are blog comments.

Is blog commenting still valuable? Anyone encountered any recent problem (ranks gone down, etc)? Are there any specific strategy to blog commenting these days?

Thanks!

[Matt-Williamson]

I would say it all depends on how natural your blog commenting is in terms of are you adding to the topic by adding a link and does a link on that blog in a related niche appear natural when it links back to you. In terms of using it purely as a link building tactic I think it is a low value and dangerous practice especially if you start adding links with keyword rich anchor text on any old blog. I have no doubt that there are some sites still using this tactic successfully but it will catch up with them eventually and they will end up dropping in the rankings. If the majority of their link profile is blog comments this will stick out like a sore thumb and eventually Google will notice...

So in conclusion a few links in a related blog are natural and will be fine but if you start adding loads, in a short space of time you are playing with fire in my opinion!

[zeepartner]

I agree with Matt here. If you're using Blog comments for backlinks instead of actually commenting on the blogs content, you might hurt yourself. What with Penguin and other updated this (like forum spam) is increasingly devalued. All in all, it depends on your general link profile quite a lot. If you have dozens of blog comments to your site this might be bad. But if those dozens of comments make up only 2% of your link profile, it shouldn't be a problem. Blog comments carry no authority IMO, so you won't get a lot of value from those anyhow.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

To be fair, Google have never said they don't want to see just blog comments, so right now, people are making use of this and if you find blogs in your niche, form a good comment and a sensible link, then you can still benefit.

However, what will happen further down the line is anyone's guess. Google have said they want to see links back to sites that deserve to be there, so as a long term strategy, this is surely one that won't stand up to the test of time.

The best thing to do is write great content and publish it on your own blog and then seed this out to others in your industry and hopefully they will find it that good, that they will want to link back to it again.

Andy

[Jeepster]

I keep hearing that certain types of links (blog comments, low-rent directories, etc) are not worth the bother.

However, I'm with the original poster on this, in that infuriatingly I still see these sites  ranking supremely well for very competitive keywords.

There is one particular site in niche where their ENTIRE link profile is exact-match blog comments and low-rent directories.

And there I am like a fool focusing on high-quality content.

I really despair.

[zeepartner]

I understand your despair Jeepster. But unless these sites have other valuable links and really have just been engaging in blog post spamming, just be patient: they will disappear. Even it blog comments may cause short-term rankings (which i doubt), it's definitely too risky as a long-term strategy. nothing comes easy...

[AgentsofValue]

Thanks for the advice. I think a lot of marketers are still using this technique but they're just real careful on how they do it so they don't fall out of the good graces of Google.

[AgentsofValue]

I understand your despair. Site optimization has really gone a long way from just throwing links out there.