Recently I published a new review page for CommentLuv Premium (since it’s on sale through October 4, 2011 for over 50% off). I’m a huge fan of the free version, and wrestled with getting the premium version but I bought it for a reason.

You can read my CommentLuv Premium review for those reasons, but here I wanted to lay out my strategy with the plugin.

How to Use CommentLuv Premium on a Niche Site

First, a few important points to make:

  • You don’t need to have your comments turned ON to use it.

  • You might want to have your comments turned on, but see above.

  • This plugin takes the weaknesses of blog commenting and flips them upside-down.

  • You can get targeted backlinks with great anchor text through blog commenting.

Really quickly about points 1 and 2 – “you don’t need your comments turned ON/you might want to…” What do I mean?

Essentially, CommentLuv allows your blog commentators to leave a comment that links to one of their last 10 posts. A drop-down menu appears and allows them to choose – and the title of the post is the anchor text.

Excellent for anyone who optimizes their post titles.

It was designed to encourage blog comments, and it works both ways since you go on a blog commenting ‘run’ to get yourself some links on other CommentLuv-enabled blogs.

On most niche-websites, like my own, people don’t want comments turned on. Well, you don’t have to change that if you don’t want. But you may want to.

Advantage of Leaving Comments On

Besides the fact that user-generated content is unique, and it adds to the freshness of your content, giving Google something new to crawl – CommentLuv Premium offers another advantage.

You can choose ‘Perks’ or ‘Incentives’ if you will for your commentators. In the case of this plugin, you can set the following:

  • Commentators can be offered to choose from their last 10 posts, IF they meet a condition (# of comments approved, if they socially share your post on Facebook/G+/Twitter, if they register for your site).

  • Commentators can be told to get DoFollow links IF they meet certain conditions (same as above – on my blog, you get DoFollow links if you FB LIKE or Google +1 my posts).

  • Commentators will have a profile that shows if you allow it when people hover over their links, further incentive for people to follow their links.

The implications of being shared socially translate into potential viral traffic. Say for example, someone with a lot of friends were to share your posts on Facebook.

One person in particular does this time to time, Griz – and every time he does this on my blog, I notice it with more traffic, free ebook downloads, sales, etc.

Thanks, Griz!

He has plenty of influence online, even the President of the United States asks his advice in search optimization and social media matters.*

The same is true, if not moreso, with Google +1′s: thanks to personal search. For a while Google has been using social signals to influence the search listings so those in your personal network will change your “top 10 in Google” with their recommendations.

If you can get enough people with large networks (or even if they just have the “right people” in their small networks) to +1 your content, then you can start to see an impact with more traffic.

So here on my blog, I’ve left comments open (of course) and I’m experimenting on my niche sites.

Worried About Spam? Naw

Just in case you thought spam would be an issue, Andy Bailey is the developer of my favorite and most effective spam plugin I’ve used: Growmap Anti-Spam Plugin, or G.A.S.P. Dave hates it (a sure sign he’s spamming me! lol)…and Andy’s behind CommentLuv.

He packaged that plugin in with this one, so you only need one plugin for your spam worries. Not only does the G.A.S.P. plugin work wonders to cut down on spam, the incentives for getting approved comments help, too.

Like: “get X number of approved comments for your last 10 posts to choose from” or for a DoFollow link (whatever you decide).

There’s 2 more incentives to blog comment on ComLuv blogs.

1) You can leave your Twitter username on a Premium CommentLuv blog, so you can grow your Twitter following.
2) The blog owner has the option to include the “Kewyord Name” function (like KeywordLuv) – so when you leave a comment, you get your preferred anchor text by filling out “Your Name@Your Keyword” in the “name” field (I have this turned on, by the way).

Enough about the plugin, though (but you better get it before the price skyrockets – it’s over 50% off here until October 4th).

The Simple Commenting Strategy for Marketers

So I’ve introduced the plugin, now how does it help internet marketers? What if you want your “blog” to have comments turned off?

That’s up to you – I think you should re-consider that because of the incentives to share your content and get you more traffic and backlinks that matter.

Here’s my strategy:

  1. Visit Ana Hoffman’s “directory” of PR2+ CommentLuv enabled blogs.

  2. Use relevant blogs there to comment to my niche sites.

  3. Because I have the premium plugin, I always can choose from 10 most recent posts AND/OR 5 additional posts or PAGES. Otherwise you’re beholden to limitations set by the blog owner.

  4. Because of that, I’ll leave comments to my product reviews.

  5. Find other CommentLuv ‘target’ blogs by searching for the footprint: “This blog uses premium CommentLuv” or “premium CommentLuv + keywords” etc.

  6. Make a list of these blogs and sort according to PageRank but more importantly according to their “signs of life.” Are there 15+ comments per post? Do they have other signs of “social proof” like Twitter, Facebook likes and followers?

  7. Add these blogs to an RSS reader specific to that niche. I’ll do this using various email accounts and readers to keep organized.

  8. Whenever I publish new content, go on a CommentLuv commenting run using both Ana’s list and my own private list.

  9. Use the commenting strategy to build rapport with highly trafficked blogs and write guest posts where it counts.

  10. Always comment using an HMA Proxy ($11 a month or so, or $50 something every 6 months). This is especially useful if using any directory like Ana’s public directory (I don’t want people seeing my IP address and putting 2 and 2 together). HMA is the cheapest and one of the most effective proxy services I’ve used.

I bought the plugin so of course I think it was worth the $40 price – especially considering this is over 50% off, so expect to pay $97-$197 after October 4th.


The CommentLuv Plugin

In my linking strategy, I’m going to be using the daylights out of this plugin, I’ve already seen how it gets traffic to this blog – add in to the mix preferred anchor text (or at least links to the preferred pages/reviews), potential viral traffic and links from social networks, then it’s a wise investment.

The segue from blog commenting to guest posting is something I think too many people overlook – it works if you’re smart about your target blogs (and not many of your competitors will bother).

Get it before the 4th right here. Or get it after the 4th (I won’t complain). Thanks for dropping by!

*maybe this part might not be true about the president. BUT it could be true, only secret.

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