Blog Commenting for SEO: Does It Still Work?

Blog commenting used to be the easiest way to build backlinks. I know because I did it. A lot of it. When I started blogging in 2008 at age 15, leaving comments on other blogs was how you got noticed, built links, and grew your traffic. Fast forward 18 years, and the landscape looks completely different. Most of those comment links are worthless for rankings now. But that doesn’t mean blog commenting is dead.

I’ve left hundreds of blog comments over the years. Some helped me build real relationships that led to guest post invitations, collaboration offers, and genuine referral traffic. Others were a complete waste of time. After working with 850+ clients on their SEO strategies, I’ve seen the full spectrum of what blog commenting can and can’t do for your site in 2026.

Here’s what I’ll cover: what blog commenting actually does for SEO today, why the old approach is dead, and how smart marketers still use comments to grow their sites without chasing link juice that doesn’t exist anymore.

What Is Blog Commenting for SEO?

Blog commenting for SEO is the practice of leaving comments on other people’s blog posts with the goal of generating backlinks, driving traffic, or building visibility. The basic idea is simple. You find a relevant blog, leave a thoughtful comment, include your website URL in the comment form, and hope that link sends some value back to your site.

Back in the early 2000s, this actually worked for rankings. Blog comment links were treated like any other backlink by Google. If you left a comment on a high-authority blog with a link back to your site, that link passed PageRank. It was free, it was easy, and it scaled. So naturally, everyone abused it.

The typical blog comment form has fields for your name, email, website URL, and the comment itself. When you submit a comment, most blogging platforms like WordPress create a hyperlink from your name to the URL you provided. That hyperlink is your “backlink.” In the golden age of SEO, these links carried real weight. Today, the vast majority of them carry almost none.

I remember spending entire evenings in 2009 and 2010 just going through blogs in my niche, leaving comments on every post I could find. It wasn’t sophisticated. But it worked back then because Google hadn’t figured out how to discount these links yet. The web was smaller, blog communities were tighter, and comment sections were genuine gathering places for discussion.

The Rise and Fall of Blog Comment Spam

To understand where blog commenting stands today, you need to understand what killed it. The short version: spammers ruined everything. The long version is more interesting.

The Golden Age (2000-2005)

Blog commenting in the early 2000s was authentic. People read posts, left real thoughts, and engaged in conversations. Comment sections on blogs like ProBlogger, Copyblogger, and John Chow were mini-communities. You’d see the same names showing up, building reputations, and forming connections. I was too young to participate in this era, but I read through those archives when I started blogging in 2008. The quality of discussion was remarkable compared to what came later.

During this period, Google treated comment links like editorial links. A comment on a PR6 blog (remember PageRank toolbar scores?) passed real juice. SEO practitioners caught on quickly, and automated comment spam tools started flooding every blog on the internet.

Google Fights Back (2005-2012)

In January 2005, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft jointly introduced the rel="nofollow" attribute. This was a direct response to comment spam. The idea was simple: add nofollow to comment links so they don’t pass PageRank, removing the SEO incentive for spam. WordPress, Blogger, and most other platforms quickly adopted nofollow as the default for all comment links.

Did it stop spam? Not even close. Spammers kept going because many didn’t know about nofollow, and some blogs hadn’t updated. Automated tools like ScrapeBox and Xrumer made it possible to blast thousands of comments across the web in minutes. I saw this firsthand on my own blog. By 2010, I was getting 50-100 spam comments per day on posts that had any search traffic. Akismet caught most of them, but the volume was insane.

Then came Google Penguin in April 2012. This algorithm update specifically targeted manipulative link building practices, including large-scale blog comment link schemes. Sites that had built their backlink profiles primarily through blog comments, forum links, and other low-quality tactics saw their rankings tank overnight. I watched several blogs in the Indian tech blogging community lose 60-80% of their traffic within weeks.

The Modern Era (2012-2026)

After Penguin, blog commenting for direct SEO benefit was essentially over. Google got increasingly sophisticated at identifying and discounting low-quality links. The introduction of rel="ugc" (user-generated content) in 2019 gave site owners another way to mark comment links, making it even clearer to Google that these weren’t editorial endorsements.

Today in 2026, here’s the reality. Almost every blog comment link is nofollow or ugc-tagged. Google’s systems can easily identify comment-based links. Building your SEO strategy around blog comments for link juice is like trying to win a marathon by crawling. You’ll technically be moving forward, but you won’t get anywhere useful.

Does Blog Commenting Still Work for SEO in 2026?

The honest answer is: it depends on what you mean by “work.” If you mean direct link juice that improves your rankings, then no. Blog commenting is basically useless for that. But if you expand your definition to include indirect SEO benefits, the picture changes significantly.

Direct SEO Value: Almost Zero

Let me be blunt. The direct SEO value of blog comment links in 2026 is close to zero. Here’s why:

• 99%+ of blog comment links are nofollow or ugc-tagged
• Google has confirmed that nofollow is treated as a “hint,” meaning they mostly ignore these links for ranking purposes
• Even on the rare dofollow blog, comment links carry minimal authority compared to editorial links
• Google’s spam detection systems specifically discount patterns that look like comment link building

I tested this with a client’s site in 2024. We left 200 high-quality comments on relevant blogs over three months. Zero measurable ranking improvement for any target keyword. The links showed up in Google Search Console, but they moved nothing. Compare that to 5 quality guest posts during the same period that pushed 3 keywords onto page one.

Indirect SEO Benefits: Actually Valuable

Here’s where it gets interesting. Blog commenting can still help your SEO, just not through the links themselves. The indirect benefits are real, and I’ve experienced them personally.

Referral traffic. A thoughtful comment on a popular blog can drive visitors to your site. I’ve gotten 50-100 clicks from single comments on high-traffic blogs in the WordPress space. Those visitors had a 4.2% conversion rate because they came pre-qualified. They were already reading about topics related to my services.

Relationship building. This is the big one. When you consistently leave valuable comments on someone’s blog, they notice you. I’ve gotten 6 guest post invitations over the years purely from being an active commenter. Those guest posts generated real dofollow backlinks that actually moved rankings. The comments didn’t build links directly, but they opened doors to link opportunities.

Brand visibility. Regular commenting puts your name and site in front of a relevant audience. I’ve had people tell me at conferences that they recognized my name from blog comments before they ever visited my site. That kind of brand awareness doesn’t show up in SEO metrics, but it builds the trust signals that indirectly affect your search performance.

Content ideas. Reading and engaging with other blogs through comments keeps you plugged into what your audience cares about. Some of my best-performing articles came from questions I saw in comment sections. My post on WordPress speed optimization (which brings in 3,000+ monthly visitors) was inspired by a comment thread on a hosting review blog.

How to Find High-Quality Blogs to Comment On

If you’re going to invest time in blog commenting, you need to be strategic about where you comment. Not all blogs are equal. Commenting on dead blogs with no traffic is a waste. Commenting on high-traffic, actively engaged blogs can actually drive results.

Here’s how I find blogs worth commenting on.

Use Google Search Operators

Google search operators are your best friend for finding active blogs in your niche. Try these queries:

• "your niche" + "leave a comment" to find blogs with open comment sections
• "your niche" + "comments" + inurl:blog to find blog posts with active discussions
• "your keyword" + "notify me of follow-up comments" to find WordPress blogs with commenting enabled

For example, if you’re in the digital marketing space, searching for "WordPress SEO" + "leave a comment" returns dozens of blogs where you can engage. Filter by date to find recent posts with active conversations.

Look for Active Comment Sections

Don’t waste time on blogs where comments get no replies. The best blogs to comment on have these characteristics: the author responds to comments, other readers are also commenting, posts are published regularly (at least monthly), and the blog has real traffic. You can estimate traffic using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or even SimilarWeb’s free version.

I focus on blogs that have 5-20 comments per post. These are active enough to be worthwhile but small enough that your comment won’t get buried. Blogs with 200+ comments per post (like some major marketing blogs) mean your comment is one in a sea. You’re less likely to get noticed by the author.

Check for Dofollow Comments (Rare But They Exist)

Some blogs still have dofollow comment links. It’s rare in 2026, but it happens. Usually on smaller blogs where the owner hasn’t changed the default settings or on blogs using platforms other than WordPress. To check, right-click a comment link, inspect it in your browser’s developer tools, and look for rel="nofollow" or rel="ugc". If neither attribute is present, the link is dofollow.

I want to be clear: don’t build a strategy around finding dofollow comment blogs. That’s the old playbook, and it doesn’t work. But if you happen to find one while engaging genuinely, it’s a nice bonus.

Tools That Help

A few tools make finding commentable blogs easier. BuzzSumo shows you the most shared content in any niche, and shared content often has active comment sections. Ahrefs’ Content Explorer lets you filter by topic and shows you pages with the most referring domains. Feedly or any RSS reader helps you track blogs you want to comment on regularly. I use Feedly to follow about 40 blogs in my niche and check them weekly.

What Actually Works: Writing Comments That Matter

This is where most people fail. They know blog commenting can help with networking and visibility, but they leave garbage comments that do the opposite. They make themselves look like spammers instead of experts.

Let me show you the difference with real examples.

Bad Comments (What Most People Write)

Here’s what a typical spam comment looks like. You’ve probably seen thousands of these:

“Great article! Very informative. Thanks for sharing this valuable information. Keep up the good work!” – SEO Services Mumbai

Everything about this is wrong. It’s generic. It could apply to literally any blog post on the internet. The name field is stuffed with keywords instead of a real name. There’s no evidence the person even read the post. This gets deleted instantly by any blog owner who cares about their content.

Here’s another common bad pattern:

“I was struggling with this exact problem and your tips really helped! By the way, I recently wrote a similar article on my blog that your readers might find useful: [link to their post]” – John

This one tries to seem genuine but fails. The self-promotional link in the comment body is a red flag. Most blog owners will either delete the comment or remove the link. It screams “I’m here for the backlink, not the conversation.”

Good Comments (What Actually Gets Results)

A comment that builds relationships and drives traffic looks completely different:

“Gaurav, your point about server response time being more important than caching plugins matches what I’ve seen too. I switched from shared hosting to a $12/month VPS last month and my TTFB dropped from 800ms to 120ms. No caching plugin ever got me close to that. One question though: do you think Redis object caching is worth setting up on a small blog with under 10,000 monthly visitors, or is it overkill at that scale?” – Sarah Chen

Why this works: It references a specific point from the article. It adds original experience and data. It asks a genuine question that invites a response. The name is a real person’s name, not a keyword. There’s no promotional link in the comment body. The website URL in the comment form is the only link, which is totally normal and expected.

Here’s another effective approach:

“I disagree with your recommendation of Plugin X over Plugin Y. In my testing across 15 client sites, Plugin Y consistently delivered better LCP scores by about 300-400ms. It could be a hosting difference though. I’m running everything on Cloudways with Vultr. What hosting setup were you testing on?” – Mike Rivera

Respectful disagreement with specific data is one of the most powerful comment strategies. Blog authors love commenters who push back with evidence. It makes the conversation better, and it positions you as someone worth paying attention to.

The Real Name Rule

Never, ever use keywords as your comment name. “Best SEO Company” is not your name. “John from SEO Agency” is not your name. Use your actual name. If you’re commenting for your business, use the name of a real person at that business.

I moderate comments on gauravtiwari.org, and I immediately delete any comment where the name field contains keywords. So does every other serious blogger I know. You’re not fooling anyone. You’re just getting your comment trashed and blacklisting yourself from that blog.

Consistency Beats Volume

Leaving one thoughtful comment per week on 5-10 blogs in your niche will outperform leaving 50 generic comments across random blogs. Consistency is what builds recognition. When a blog author sees your name pop up with insightful comments repeatedly over several months, they start recognizing you. That recognition turns into responses, then conversations, then relationships.

I built a relationship with a well-known WordPress developer purely through blog comments over about 8 months. He eventually invited me to contribute a guest post on his blog, which has a Domain Rating of 72. That single guest post did more for my SEO than 500 blog comments ever could. But it started with those comments.

Blog Commenting vs. Other Link Building Strategies

Let’s get practical about where blog commenting fits in your overall SEO strategy. Because your time is limited, and you need to spend it on what gives you the best return.

Time Investment Comparison

Here’s roughly how long each strategy takes per “unit” of effort based on my experience:

• Blog commenting: 10-15 minutes per quality comment. To see any indirect benefit, you need at least 20-30 comments per month on relevant blogs. That’s about 5-8 hours monthly.
• Guest posting: 4-8 hours per post (writing, pitching, revisions). But one quality guest post on a DA 50+ site delivers more direct SEO value than a year of blog comments.
• Link outreach: 2-3 hours per successful link. Cold emailing site owners with a compelling reason to link to your content. Hit rate is typically 3-5%.
• Creating linkable assets: 10-30 hours to create an original study, tool, or resource. But one successful linkable asset can attract dozens of natural backlinks over years.

ROI Comparison

For pure link building ROI, blog commenting ranks last among these strategies. It’s not even close. Guest posting, digital PR, creating original research, and even broken link building all deliver more measurable ranking improvements per hour invested.

But here’s the thing. Blog commenting isn’t really competing with those strategies. It serves a different purpose. Think of it as networking, not link building. You wouldn’t compare attending a conference to sending a press release. They do different things.

The real question is: do you have 5-8 hours per month to invest in building relationships through comments? If you’re already doing guest posting, outreach, and content creation, adding strategic blog commenting on top can amplify those efforts. The blog authors you engage with become warmer leads for guest post pitches. The visibility you build makes your outreach emails more likely to get responses.

When Blog Commenting Makes Sense

Blog commenting fits best in these situations:

• You’re new to your niche. When nobody knows you, commenting is a low-barrier way to start building your name. You don’t need any authority to leave a great comment.
• You want to build relationships with specific bloggers. If there are 5-10 bloggers you want to eventually collaborate with, becoming a regular commenter is a solid first step.
• You need content ideas. Active comment sections tell you what questions your audience has. Use this for content planning.
• You have extra time but limited budget. Blog commenting is free. If you can’t afford guest post placement fees or digital PR, commenting costs nothing but time.

Blog commenting doesn’t make sense if you’re using it as your primary link building strategy. If you only have 10 hours per month for SEO, spend them on content creation and outreach. Not on comments.

Common Mistakes I See Every Week

After running gauravtiwari.org for 18 years with 1800+ articles, I moderate a lot of comments. These are the mistakes I see constantly, and they’ll get your comment deleted on most blogs.

Dropping Links in the Comment Body

Your website URL goes in the form field, not in the comment text. When you paste links into the actual comment, you look like a spammer. Even if your comment is otherwise great, that random link to your latest blog post kills it. Use the designated URL field. That’s what it’s there for.

Commenting Only on Old Posts

Some people specifically target old posts because they assume the blog owner isn’t watching. Wrong. Most bloggers get email notifications for all comments, regardless of post age. And commenting on a 5-year-old post with “Great tips!” is obviously not genuine engagement. Focus on recent posts where the conversation is still alive.

Using Automated Tools

ScrapeBox, GSA Search Engine Ranker, and similar tools can blast comments across thousands of blogs. Don’t use them. Ever. The comments they generate are obvious garbage. They’re getting caught by spam filters anyway. And Google’s systems can identify patterns of automated comment links and discount them entirely. I’ve seen sites get manual penalties for aggressive automated commenting.

Writing the Same Comment Everywhere

If you copy-paste the same comment across multiple blogs, you’re doing it wrong. Bloggers talk to each other. When two people in the same niche see the exact same comment on their posts, they both know you’re not genuine. Customize every comment to the specific post you’re reading.

Ignoring the Comment Thread

When someone replies to your comment (especially the blog author), respond back. This is where the real relationship building happens. A single comment is forgettable. A conversation is memorable. I’ve had back-and-forth exchanges in comment sections that lasted weeks and led to direct business relationships.

The Smart Approach to Blog Commenting in 2026

Here’s my recommended approach, combining everything I’ve covered. This is exactly what I tell my clients when they ask about blog commenting.

Step 1: Build your target list. Identify 10-15 blogs in your niche with active comment sections. Follow them via RSS or email. Make this a habit, not a one-time effort.

Step 2: Read before you comment. Actually read the entire post. I know that sounds obvious, but most people skim the intro and drop a generic comment. Reading the full post lets you reference specific points and ask relevant questions.

Step 3: Add value in every comment. Share your own experience, data, or a different perspective. Ask questions that show you understood the content. Respectfully disagree when you have evidence to back it up. Never just say “great post.”

Step 4: Use your real name. First and last name. Build a recognizable identity. If you use Gravatar, set up a professional photo so your face appears next to your comments. People remember faces.

Step 5: Be patient. The benefits of blog commenting take months to materialize. You won’t see results in two weeks. Think of it as planting seeds. The guest post invitation, the collaboration offer, the referral traffic spike: those come 6-12 months down the line.

Step 6: Track what’s working. Use UTM parameters on your comment URL if you want to track referral traffic from specific blogs. Check Google Analytics to see which blog comments actually drive visitors. Double down on the blogs that send traffic and stop wasting time on ones that don’t.

This approach won’t skyrocket your rankings. It won’t replace a real link building strategy. But it will build your network, drive some qualified traffic, and open doors that wouldn’t open otherwise. For a strategy that costs nothing but time, that’s a pretty good return.

Frequently Asked Questions

I get these questions constantly from clients and readers. Every answer comes from 18 years of blogging and working with 850+ clients on their SEO strategies.

Put This Into Practice

Blog commenting isn’t the SEO hack it was in 2008. The direct link value is gone, and it’s not coming back. But the networking value? That’s still very real. I’ve built genuine professional relationships, landed guest post spots on authority sites, and driven thousands of qualified visitors to my site through thoughtful blog comments over the years.

Here’s what to do right now. Pick 10 blogs in your niche that have active comment sections. Subscribe to them via RSS or email. Commit to leaving one thoughtful comment on each per week for the next three months. Don’t expect ranking improvements. Expect something better: real connections with real people in your industry. Those connections will lead to opportunities that no amount of link building automation can replicate.

If you’re working on building backlinks the right way, check out my complete guide to link building strategies that covers guest posting, digital PR, and other approaches that deliver real ranking results.