First let me say that this technique will only work if you are using Andy Bailey’s commentluv plugin. If you are not using this plugin, you really should as I believe it will increase the amounts of comments you receive on a blog and it’s one of the best ways to reward your commentators. I’ll let Andy himself explain exactly how it works;

The CommentLuv Wordpress Plugin will visit the feed of the comment author and attempt to scrape the last post they made and display it under their comment, this way you can encourage people to join in the discussion of your posts and give something back straight away.

The plugin looks for a feed at the site given in the URL field of the comment-form, if you have an auto find feed then it should find it.

The plugin retrieves your last post at the time of the comment being entered and appends the extra text just before the comment gets saved to the database, this way it doesn’t put any extra load on the database or server other than the effort required add another 60 or so characters to the comment content.

When commenting, the only time you get any real SEO benefit is when you comment on a dofollow blog as these comments can be ’seen’ by the search engines. Blogs that have the commnetluv plugin also display your last post thereby rewarding your commenter. To pick up your last post it needs you to fill out the url to your blog in the comment box. This is gives you two links, one to your blog, and one to your post.

The thing is that I really wanted to promote my new Top Software Online store but using this link in the url meant that I would lose the link to a post, until I happened upon the following method.

• First you type in the url of your blog as you would normally do
• Then you write your best comment, not only because you don’t want to spam the blog you are commenting on, but because a good comment is more likely to lead to people visiting your link.
• Lastly, before you press the submit button you paste in the new link to the second url you want to promote substituting the original url that you had typed in. This could be a link to another post or another blog / site entirely.

That’s it, you now have a comment that is doubling your presence on the Net.

When people first start up a Wordpress blog they usually go for the default settings as this is by far the easier option. Unfortunately in certain cases it is the worst thing that you can do. This is especially so when configuring your permalink settings. I had completely forgotten about this until I read some of the comments on Understanding The New Rules Of SEO.

The problem arises in the fact that the default setting is http://wassupblog.com/?p=123 which shows the search engines that you have posted post # whatever but not much else. It makes more SEO sense to present to the search engines a lot more information such as the title of the post. While you can change the value midstream this can have disastrous results because all your pages that were previously indexed by the search engines become invalid. Not only that, if you are in the habit of linking to pages within your own blog, a good habit I might add, these also become invalid which would mean you going through all your posts and fixing up the links manually. A very boring and time consuming task, as can be attested by some of the commentators on the above post that I mentioned.

There is an easier solution, a plugin by Dean Lee called Permalinks Migration Plugin.  As the author states;

There is a way to tell the search engines (and browsers) that the page has permanently moved, and that the old address should be replaced by the new one . It’s called a “301 Redirect”, also known as a Permanent Redirect.When you do this, Search engines will update their indexes quickly and you won’t lose your pagerank.you will continue to receive traffic as though nothing had changed. This works for search engines, bookmarks, and links from other sites.

So, if you are having permalink problems or changing your permalink structure I  think you will find this plugin very useful.

There are many reasons for linking to posts within your own blog, the very least being that it may have some SEO advantages. Three that come to mind include;

1. It can tie in other posts that may be relevant to the one you are writing at the moment.
2. Resurrecting old posts so that it brings peoples attention back to those posts.
3. Keeps readers on your blog longer if they choose to follow your links

One blogger that does this well is Mitch and his post Top Three Do’s and Don’ts is a good example of how this is done. Take note that he also links to other blogs which some bloggers of note say is critical to blog growth.

The thing is that all this takes time and many bloggers will not take the time necessary to link between their own posts. Yep, I reckon I am one of them, which is why I was pretty happy to come across YARRP, Yet Another Relatated Posts Plugin. Once installed and configured this plugin will find other posts within your blog and place ‘Related Posts’ links at the end of your posts, a great way of introducing related articles to the readers of a blog.

EDIT: According to s couple of my blogging mates, Stratos, author of Blogger Buddy, and Donace, Of Nexus, YARRP is a little CPU hungry and I’ve learned in a previous post how using too much CPU can be detrimental to your Wordpress Blog. Now I’ve learned before that on occasion, this being one of them, it pays to listen to your friends and so I’ve installed Microkid’s Related Posts plugin istead. I reckon even Mitch will like this plugin as it gives you complete control of which related posts you want to include. Like the author says;

This plugin makes it super easy to manually select related posts. You can search and select posts that fit your criteria, all from within the write/edit post screen.

So, thanks for the tip guys, I like this plugin a whole lot better, and sometime this century I will go over my old posts to find Related Posts but at least I will use it for all my new posts.

I reckon those of you who read my blog regularly would realize by now how I hold my commentators in high esteem and I how I love to reward them for leaving a comment. Those of you who don’t, well let me list them here for you in order that it may encourage you also to join in the discussions on this blog.

1. Do Follow: First of all, by using the Do Follow plugin I have removed the No Follow tags and so Google will now be able to follow the link, left in the name field when you leave a comment, to your blog or site.
2. The F Group: I am a member of the F Group, a group that promises to follow all commentators to their blog and reciprocate with a comment of their own.
3. Brian’s Threaded Comment Plugin: This plugin makes it easier to respond to an authors comment rather than have to use the old ‘@ Name’ Crap and then scrolling up and down to see what the conversation is all about.
4. CommentLuv: This is a neat little plugin, developed by Andy Bailey, that reward you by including a titled link to your last blog post at the end of your comment. If you register your site at commentluv you can actually choose from your last 10 posts!
5. Top Commentators Widget: Read all about how being a regular commentator can increase your backlinks via this plugin.
6. KeywordLuv: KeywordLuv by Stephen Cronin is the latest method that I am using to reward those who take the time to leave a comment. Everyone knows the value of keywords, well with this plugin will separate your name from your keywords in the link to your blog or website thereby giving you improved anchor text.  All you need do to to utilize this plugin is enter YourName@YourKeywords in the Name field to take advantage of it. For example, if I was to enter Sire@Wassupblog in the name field it would show up as Sire from WassupBlog.

You can thank Kristi of Kikolani fame, her latest poem The Sweetest Drug, for that last plugin as it was her comment on my Commenting Etiquette post that inspired me to install it.

I read an interesting post the other day by crsenter called Using Keywords For Your Creativity which is basically how to use keywords and phrases creatively in your post. She’s also included a link to a free website that can help you find the answers to the right keywords. As usual, her posts get me to thinking, and I suddenly realised that although I know all the basics about SEO, including the necessity to use the right keywords, I do not actively take the time to source the appropriate words, phrases, linking stratagies etc to make my blogs stand out.

I left a comment on her post saying as much and to my surprise she admitted that;

I don’t research keywords near as much as I should either. I just go with the flow.

At least she does attempt it on occasions, which is more than what I do. The reason I don’t do all the ‘right’ things is because I reckon it just takes all the fun out of blogging and blogging is something that I want to enjoy. I suppose that in essence I must fit into the ‘Lazy Blogger’ category but at least I am a happy lazy blogger.

Although there is a poll on this post I would like you to go beyond just simply casting a vote. I want to hear your opinions and whether or not you adhere to all the SEO rigmarole.

Are You A Lazy Blogger?

• Yes
• No
• Sometimes

View Results

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