Question: If I post a comment on someone's blog, and that comment included a hyperlink to my website, will that link provide any SEO benefit for me?

Answer: Generally, no.

Many blog platforms, including Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad, insert the "rel=follow" attribute into the anchor tags of comments. If you were to post a comment on someone's blog, and included a hyperlink, that hyperlink will automatically have the "rel=nofollow" attribute added in by the blog platform.

So, all those hundreds of comment spam you posted on people's blogs, was all for naught. Google won't count them as backlinks, nor will it count them as anchor text, nor even follow them.

The only thing it's good for is to get direct traffic, that is, a click through from the comment.

If you want an inbound link from a blog, try contacting the blog owner and asking them. Reciprocal links, on a one-to-one basis still works very much between blogs. Google doesn't downplay nor ignore one-to-one reciprocal linking between blogs, because as I've said before, Google loves blogs.

It's true, however, that Google hates "spam blogs", but then you're not publishing a spam blog, right?

Labels: Linking Strategies, SEO