What is Blog Commenting? Check out any blog and look towards the bottom of the post. This is where you’ll find the key to this technique.Take a look at the comments that people post below the main, original blog post. Click on the author’s name and you are taken to the commentators site. This is exactly why many of us post comments on blogs – to get a person to pay a visit to their website and ‘borrow’ some of the traffic that the post is getting.

So how do you actually go about using blog commenting to drive traffic?

Let me tell you now that many people get it VERY wrong. Here’s how to do it, step by step:

Start by finding the popular blogs in your niche. You probably already know what these are. If at all possible you want blogs that receive a large amount of traffic and which are ‘active.’ These exist in almost any niche.

Find posts on the blogs that you can make an intelligent response to and then add to the discussion. This is the most essential thing – using blog commenting to drive traffic is a great method to use, yet many people use it in the wrong way by simply posting one line comments such as ‘great post.’ This a.) doesn’t do you credibility any favor (and therefore people are unlikely to take a look at your website) and b.) it’s blatant spam.

By using blog commenting to engage in the original post, you’ll come across as an interesting person, and most importantly as someone who has a valued opinion on the topic. This makes people perceive you as an expert.

Join in the discussions. Question the original post, or add some extra information, and then enjoy the traffic that blog commenting can bring.

Other tips? Look for the popular topics and then add to them. Another good strategy is to look for new posts and be the first person to comment. You can get traffic for years to come from this method, and it’s so easy to do. Start finding blogs and begin commenting on them now! Soon you will be enjoying valuable, targeted traffic to your wordpress website.

What does getting indexed mean?

The search engines keep a cache of every page in their index. In English, this means: The search engines make a duplicate of every web page they visit and place those pages in their database. When you use a search engine the results list relevant pages to your search, usually 10 results per page. Each outcome includes a live “link” to the page, and a “cache” or “snap-shot” of the page, recorded the last time the spider (the searxh engine’s automatic viewing robot) visited that page, at some time in the past.

Obviously, if you wish to get a web site indexed, first you must have a web site… preferably a real one that you possess, not a “free” website a’ la Geocities etc. It will cost you less than ten bucks to register a domain name, and about $5 a month for low priced hosting, while $10 a month will provide you excellent quality hosting.

To get listed fast, I suggest you start a blog on your site. This can be with any blog software, but I think that WordPress is the greatest…

If you get good quality hosting, it will include cPanel and Fantastico scripts. In Fantastico scripts there are about 50 scripts you can instantly install on your server through one click… and WordPress is one of them. The alternate is to manually install wordpress on your own.

Once you have developed the basic barebones web site (Main page, ½ a dozen content pages, and a sitemap linking them with each other, it’s time to get indexed in the search engines.

You can “submit” your site to the search engines if you wish, but that is too slow.

Here’s where the web log comes into play… post content or messages to your blog on a daily basis, and don’t miss a day for the first few weeks at least. The posts must be interesting, and appropriate to your website.

Configure your blog to automaticlly “ping” the blog web directories every time you publish a new post.

Here’s what takes place… Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other search engines are always searching for fresh content to deliver up to their search visitors or clients, and one place they search for fresh content is in blogs. Search engines absolutely love blogs, because they are dynamic — updated on a frequent basis by their owners – as apposed to common website pages which largely remain static – unchanged for several months on end.

If you update your blog every day by adding fresh articles or other content material, the search engines will take note, and they will soon be browsing your blog every day like clockwork.

I incorporate a link to my standard website pages by including a link to either my home page or sitemap, in the sidebar (menu) of my blog.

The second best thing Search Engines really like after fresh content are “links”… they will virtually kill for links, and if they discover a link anyplace that they’ve not noticed before, they make a note of it, then follow to to where ever it may lead… and if the link they find is on your blog, you better make sure it points to the sitemap of your website. Double check that it really does, by clicking on it after you make it.

Yahoo and MSN will include your website pages as soon as they visit them, and will normally index them within a few days. As soon as they are indexed, people can find them in search results.

And that’s exactly how painless it is to get indexed fast.

The key is to keep in mind that structure and presentation are two distinct points. Now, I recognize I just spoke Greek… ‘Structure’ is the underlying foundation of a site – the ‘glue’ that holds it all together and works whatever functions you may require.

‘Presentation’, on the other hand, is what the web site actually looks like. Smart website developers attempt as much as possible to separate the foundation of their website from the presentation of the content contained on their website. The ways to do this are beyond this short article – but you can look up ‘CSS’ should you be interested.

Some people turn to ‘turnkey’ website templates, but there are two key problems… unless you know HTML, you can’t modify what you start with, and probabilities are, it’s going to look like a few million other sites. (Of course, with the size of the Internet – that’s not the problem that it might first appear.) Being not able to modify a ‘turnkey’ template to do what you want is a major problem for those who aren’t HTML literate.

So is there a remedy to allow non-geeks to put up a internet site fairly quickly?

Well, yes and no. For even the method I’m going to describe will require that you know how to FTP software to a web host – and how to ‘CHMOD’ files. Knowing how to create a MySQL database with a CPANEL is also a requirement. Fortunately, there’s a great deal of instructional material on the Internet for these minimum requirements.

Ready for the answer? One that will allow you to put up a website in a minimum amount of time? It’s a solution so shocking that some of you will start banging your head ala ‘The Three Stooges’.

In a word – Blogging Software. I’m going to detail just one ‘brand’, but what I say can equally be applied to many other blogging packages. I use ‘WordPress’, which is one of the largest and most used of the blogging packages available. It’s also absolutely free and well backed. New updates seem to appear on a monthly basis – so you don’t ever have to fear for a lack of assistance.

What does blogging software such as WordPress do? It gives you the underlying foundation of a website – all you have to do is define how you want it to ‘look’ with theme plugins, and type in the content. I’ve actually created a complete website in just half-a-day, and most of that time was spent on the actual content I was adding.

WordPress features of their famous “5 Minute Install”, and from experience, I’d have to say that they aren’t far off the mark at all. That is, of course, once you’ve done it a few times. If you know how to create a MySQL database, and know how to FTP files, and CHMOD them – then you should have no problems meeting or beating that 5 minute time!

Now – some of the advantages: WordPress comes out of the box as fairly good in the SEO department – and the few holes can be quickly patched with a few SEO plugins. In the Blogging Software world – plugins are just bits of code that you upload to a distinctive directory – ‘turn them on’, and they begin to add some new or unique feature or functionality to your basic website.

In other words – no need to learn HTML, or, in this case, PHP – since any feature or function you can think of has already been desired and programmed by someone else. All you need to do is to search Google for the WordPress plugin you want.

Another advantage for using Blogging software – Search engines seem to treat ‘em differently. I was used to waiting weeks and months for my hand-coded websites to be indexed after submitting them. But due to the time-sensitive nature of Blogs – search engines seem to put blogs ahead of ordinary websites. Maybe it’s just my imagination – but Google had my last WordPress driven website indexed the same day – and I started getting traffic from Google within the next few days.

You may wonder if two WordPress driven web sites might look too similar – certainly it’s a possibility if they’re both using the same ‘theme’ – but the chances are remote. I use a specific ‘Semiologic’ theme for my website – and I’ve never run across another website using that theme – although I know that there must be several hundred others out there.

Since Blogging software is, by default, a “content management system”, making changes to your website is no more difficult than going to your website and ‘logging in’. Then you merely type new content, change the presentation, add brand new features by uploading a new plugin, etc. I’ve hand-coded complete websites, and let me tell you, the variation in difficulty is like ‘night & day’. Keeping up a website run on blogging software is extremely easy!

For the more sophisticated webmasters – you can easily incorporate blogging software with adtrackers, autoresponders, and any other software tools you require.

Give it a try!