How to grow blog traffic with efficient blog hopping


Feedly page of resultsBlog hopping (also known as blog commenting)is a traffic generating method where a blog owner visits other blogs in their niche, leaving comments on blog posts and getting links back to their own blog. The idea is to increase the links to their blog and get an increase in traffic.

The great thing about this method is that it can be done by someone new to working online and it actually works. The drawback is that if you are not organised you can lose track of which blogs you have visited, revisit posts you have already commented on, and spend so much time on this method that you don’t make progress in other areas of your online business.

So here are some tips to help you blog hop more efficiently.

Firstly you need to identify and list appropriate blogs to comment on. You may start with a pool of blogs belonging to people you have met at an online hub, like a Facebook Group or forum. However, you’ll want to increase your blogging circle, especially you are new to blogging and the hub is a place for people with as little experience as yourself. Nearly everyone will be starting from scratch and you’ll only end up with a small circle of people leaving low quality comments on each others posts.

You can search for blogs in your niche by Googling the niche keyword + blog. Also look for experts in your niche and see if they have a blog. Add these to your list.

Next you want to consider how active the bloggers are. If you are part of a group of people new to blogging there are going to be some who give up and stop blogging after a while. The most active will make themselves known when they announce their latest blog post or visit your blog to comment. At this stage you can comment on their blogs. After a few weeks those who give up will simply stop posting.

Once you have reached this stage it’s time to weed out those who have stopped posting and start getting organised.

You can waste a lot of time visiting blogs that have not posted since your last visit. To overcome this you need a resource where you can see when a blogger has published their latest post.

Feedly is a site where you can follow blogs and organise them into categories of your choice. The site suggests blogs for various niches and you can add blogs from your list too. Once it’s set up you only have to login to Feedly to see the latest posts from the blogs you are following. They can be viewed in their categories or as a list with the most recent posts at the top. The list includes the title and the first few words of the post. This overview helps you quickly decide if it is a topic you could leave a comment on and is a great time saver.

You can login to Feedly using your Google or Facebook accounts. The basic version is free and I’ve found that adequate for this purpose, but there are paid upgrades available. One advantage of upgrading is you can receive alerts so you know instantly when new content is posted. This can help you be an early commenter, increasing your visibility to those visiting the blog later.

On many blogs when you leave a comment you have the option to receive an email if replies are made. Take advantage of this as it means you can follow up on any replies, giving you an opportunity to further engage with other blog readers.

Blog hopping is a long term traffic method. Ideally you should leave comments on different blogs in your niche every day. However you may want to allocate more time on days when you post on your own blog to quickly get a healthy number of comments.

When blog hopping set yourself a target and use a timer to ensure you do not spend too much time on this task. For example, you could allocate one hour to this method. At first you may aim to spend ten minutes per post and only reply to six posts a day, but eventually you will become faster at reading and replying to posts and could get it down to six minutes per comment, giving you ten new links to your blog each day.

Could the above help you with your blog hopping? Are there other steps, methods or resources that you’ve found improve your blog hopping efficiency? Let us know in the comments below.


11 responses to “How to grow blog traffic with efficient blog hopping”

  1. Nice article on the basics of blog hopping.

    I think the initial intent with blog hopping is to simply get your name and website/blog url distributed far and wide. It is a very time consuming process for a very small return in the beginning and this can lead to people dropping this method before the magic starts.

    The magic is finding those popular blogs in your niche where industry leaders and influencers are commenting and your comments are being accepted in the threads. All it takes is a few smart comments in the right place and your traffic and popularity will increase

  2. Blog Hopping is a very time consuming process for what seems to be very little reward. In the beginning, it all seems quite pointless really, but all it takes is one intelligent comment on a popular blog in your niche and you are set.

    If you can get a conversation going on an active blog where industry leaders and influencers are reading and sharing their views, there is a good chance this will have a positive affect on your traffic and gain you some popularity within your niche.

  3. Great post David, It can be a very time consuming and ineffective way to build recognition unless you know exactly where to go and who to follow. Maybe i need to create a software that can fix this problem – lol…..But if truth be told – if we plan our blog hopping exercises each day and write down exactly how much time we can allow ourselves for each task – we can move forward more efficiently. That’s been my experience anyways.

    • Thanks for your comment Col. Software would be a great help with this. I remember seeing something called Authority Spy that helped identify those with the best online presence in a niche. Perhaps something along these lines would help find the best blogs to hop to. Till then we’ll just have to use discipline and a system.

  4. David, very interesting post. I, too, do a bit of blog hopping but I do restrict myself as you can get carried away and waste a lot of time. I have found quite a few blogs that just stay stagnant.

    This method is a long term strategy so no quick results but by doing this you are spreading your website around the www.

    Thanks for sharing

    • Yes Gill, you can find a lot of stagnant blogs if you blog hop. I think the saddest are the ones that have a couple of enthusiastic posts and then nothing. You can’t help wondering what went wrong, but blogging is not for everyone.

  5. Great bloghopping strategy I use. I use inoreader from Inoreader.com, it has almost similar functions like the feedly service you mentioned.Since I got this tool it has made my bloghopping expirience a brease.

  6. Hi David,

    I think that blog commenting is more about awareness and building that know,like and trust and leading to possible future opportunities with the owners of different blogs.

    It can generate traffic especially over the longer term when blog commenting is part of our long term plan.

    But because it can be very time consuming – it is also important to have a set time to do this – so we still have time to do other things in our online business.

    • Hi Shane,

      Yes, blog commenting is one of the many tasks that can distract you from the most important things you should be doing for your business. But as you say it can lead to relationships that can be beneficial too.

Leave a Reply to Shaneman Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *