I couldn’t agree more with your sentiment to give your readers a bit more credit and allow them to weigh up all the different messages (marketing or otherwise) and make their decisions based on that process (be that decision a purchasing one or not.)

Thanks!
Roseanne

Most of the people I’ve met online know that the internet provides them more than one perspective for nearly every product and service on the planet. To think that people are informed _only_ by singular online commentary means that you have to believe average readers are highly impressionable or easily manipulated.

I can see the debate about no-follow from all directions. And I have waded through acres of soft pitches disguised as blog comments. But it’s a long leap from reading those items to persuading me about buying into a company’s product line or convincing me to vote a specific way in an election.

I like diversity. And that means I like seeing and reading the embedded messages online, no matter how they’re formed. Several of those embedded messages automagically appeared in the comments published before mine here.

Bottom line, if you develop and execute a business blogging strategy to support your corporate brand and build links through building relationships online with other bloggers and writing content that others find of value and link to iis one of the ways that blogging reaps it’s rewards.

In business blogging the opportunity is not to sell or pitch but to be an educational marketer bringing your target market resources and information that they will find of benefit.

Then other bloggers – even ‘competitors’ – will link to your blog articles therefore bringing you links and helping in terms of SEO as referred to above.

The other thing to remember is when writing your blog posts in the context of SEO is write your headlines and content for the robots (as in being the key words you want to be found for) and for your readers so that your articles make sense.

Thanks again for sharing your insights and for blogging expert Damien for clearing up a few points and SEO guru Richard for his thought (I agree Richard, I’ll edit blog comments too).

Thanks for the further clarification of Damien’s point re comments. For those of you who don’t know what NOFOLLOW is – it’s an attribute that Google is encouraging blog software makers to include when coding areas where comments and other user generated content can be added. Most up to date blogging applications will now automatically add this attribute to any comments to protect the blogger from inadvertently allowing spammers to create links from their site. Thankfully us non-techie types can leave it to the propellerheads to safeguard us from spam. Phew! You can read more about it here.
Roseanne

Also leaving comments on blogs that are likely to be published (i.e. helpful, objective and “soft” sell comments) is another way to get those lovin’ links going.

I axe virtually all links that are left on my blog that make ‘soft sells’. And of course there’s not much point in getting links from blogs that NOFOLLOW. Blogs just like this one.

Point taken and thanks for clarifying re comments. However there is still merit in writing guest posts for blogs and in being linked from blogs. How chuffed are people when you include them in your Fluffy links for example esp. if they see increased traffic? I also think writing one guest post now and then is a lot less daunting for some people than starting and maintaining a blog full time. It’s also a good introduction to the potential of a blog to attract interest. As the saying goes, “Every little helps.”
Thanks again for your comments!
Roseanne

Michael mentioned that a great way to boost your link love was to write a guest blog post (HINT!! HINT!!). Also leaving comments on blogs that are likely to be published (i.e. helpful, objective and “soft” sell comments) is another way to get those lovin’ links going

Er, how will a guest blog post help you? You get one link to your blog from the guest post. People that like the content will invariably link to the blog post, not the author’s blog. If anything the hoster of the guest post will get more links.

Comments are excluded from search engines for years now. Leaving a comment does nothing for link love unless the blog owner has changed settings to remove the nofollow tag.

Leaving “soft sell” comments sounds icky also.