Syndicate Your Content For Search Engine Domination Traffic from Commenting | JohnCow Interviews IMWithJoe.com
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Thought I would do something a little different here… seems I can never make everyone happy… so I am going to give you all the best of everything. If I hear any bitching about this.. just keep it to yourself 
Yesterday I did a fifteen minute interview JK Swopes aka “Normal Joe” of IM With Joe dot Com
and I have put this into the following formats…
- PDF (Click Here to Download)
- MP3 (Click Here to Listen Now)
- MP3 Zipped so you can download and listen later (Click Here to save to your computer)
- and last of all.. transcript is available for your reading pleasure below…
Start of Interview…
JK: Hey everyone this is Jason Katzenback with JohnCow.com. Today I wanted to do a recording with someone who I’m sure you are all pretty familiar with if you spend anytime on JohnCow.com.
In fact if you frequent any of the other popular blogs, like Yaro’s Entrepreneurs Journey, Joel Comm’s blog, or Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report I’m sure you’ll have seen his face there many times, and who I am talking about is the man behind http://www.imwithjoe.com and I wanted to talk to him, simply because first of all I am always impressed with how much commenting he’s doing, but I’ve gotten to know him over the last little while and his mention was…his number 1 traffic method has been commenting.
I know a lot of us talk about commenting but we never really get into it about how we do it and the steps that are followed. So I wanted to talk to Joe a little bit about that today and let him share it, then we can talk a little bit about his blog too. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites to go to. He’s got good information and it will also make you laugh. First of all Joe; thanks for being here.
Joe: Thanks for having me, man.
JK: Oh you’re welcome.
Joe: After you was talking about me last week, I had to bust you out.
JK: I have to admit that comment on your blog where the guy wanted to give me a titty twister; I didn’t quite know what to do about that.
Joe: People get territorial man.
JK: Oh they do, they do. My wife actually had a good laugh and, yeah it was all in good fun.
Joe: Yup.
JK: What I want to do is I want to ask you four specific questions that hopefully our readers and listeners will get some value out of. So first of all, this is an important one, especially for people who don’t have much time in the day.
How much time do you spend on commenting per day?
Joe: Man that varies. I would say at least you gotta spend about an hour, a solid hour; during the week. Now on the week-ends I ramp it up quite a bit and that’s usually when I get more of my commenting done on the week-ends, but I have a specific set that I go through during the week and try to get on. The thing, I mean if you’ve got at least an extra hour you can get a lot of stuff done. I say an hour because I actually read, you know, read the post I don’t go in and say “Hey good post.” So…
JK: And that’s such an important part and if you look at the blogs that you mention that you comment on and I know myself I’m pretty strict on it. If someone just give’s a generic reply, they haven’t proven themselves as a commenter, I’ll usually just spam it out. I’m thinking it’s just someone who’s trying to give a back link. If it’s someone for example, if you just gave a quick reply I know you’ve proven yourself with other comments. I think that’s a huge mistake. You kind of hinted on this, that you have a process you follow.
Can you kind of just give us an idea of what your process is and how you use commenting?
Joe: My process is ever changing; I just switched it up probably this week or like towards the end of last. I had a process where I categorized all my RSS feeds into specific groups. If a blog had top commenter’s they would all go in one group, if it had comment love or keyword love or, you know? A lot of different things I would categorize and put into different groups like that. On top of that I always had a set of blogs that I read daily and you know, always have a list of blogs that I read that are new for the week and stuff like that. Recently I went through and kind of cleaned house, got rid of a lot of blogs that I actually don’t read and just narrowed it down to daily, blogs that I read daily, blogs that I read every week, I got one for new blogs that I found that week and…what’s the other one? Daily, Blogs, Weekly, New Blogs…I think that’s pretty much it.
JK: Do you track when you’re finding a new blog do you have a process, do you test the new blog and make sure you’re getting your comments approved and then watch to see if you get any traffic from them? Do you have any strategies like that?
Joe: The main thing I like to look for on a blog when I comment is if they have subscribe to comments enabled, otherwise I can’t really keep track of it. For a long time and I know I’ve met many people that have thought the same thing, I thought that subscribe to comments was a default feature in WordPress, so for awhile I didn’t have it on my blog. I think it was Yan, he told me “Yo you need to put subscribe to comments on your blog.” And that was a few months back. For the longest I just thought that was just the default, so if they don’t have that on there and there not a blog that I visit regularly I’m not gonna comment on there because I don’t wanna just be a one hit drive by comment person. I rather focus on, you know? Commenting on specific blogs, then going around and throwing my link up and my name up on different blogs that I have no plans on going back to.
JK: So basically what you’re saying is that you kind of found your home base of blogs that you visit regularly, you’re always looking for new blogs and different areas, but, also first of all you look to make sure that it’s got a subscribe to comments and you also like to see if there’s something like comment love and keyword love.
Joe: Right, Right. Lately I re-organized everything, so a lot of that stuff I don’t organize my RSS feed that way anymore. Actually you can see all my RSS Feed, it looks like a blog roll on my blog now, cuz I have it all in separate boxes. Those are actually my RSS subscriptions.
JK: That’s on your blog http://www.imwithjoe.com
Joe: Right. So if you go over there, you can see Daily, Weekly, New Blogs, you can see all that stuff listed right there and that’s actually directly from my feed reader. It will update dynamically you know if I change somebody from daily to weekly or weekly to daily or if it’s a new blog that I’m reading, I’ll just add it to my reader and it will just show up there.
JK: Basically one thing that you are saying, if there’s anyone out there that wants to encourage people to post comments on their blog, because we all know that the more comments you get on your blog, the better it is; because first of all it encourages interaction by others but also the search engines love it. But it would probably be pretty wise to enable at least the subscribe to comments and maybe one of those great plugins. I’m a bit fan of comment love, if someone’s taking the time to comment I want to give them a link back, but make sure it’s not done in a spammy way.
Joe: Right, well I think if you want to attract quality comments then you should put in that subscribe to comment, cuz most people who are putting in quality comments probably want to come back and see what you have to say about. Now they don’t care if they are just driving by and leaving a link because they see that you have a certain PR or whatever on your blog, then their not gonna care about subscribe to comment, it’s not gonna make a difference. But I noticed as soon as I put that on my blog I started getting higher quality comments.
JK: What are your main blogs? You’ve got maybe a half dozen, or maybe a little bit more I’m not sure, but why have you chosen those blogs as your main ones?
Joe: The blogs I choose, I mean I just…when you first start blogging, you hear everybody say you know “you should do this to build link and build traffic” and try to you know find the blogs that are most popular or have the highest PR, but I realized I wasn’t really following that because I just choose blogs based on the content and the community of the blogs and the content they are providing. If I vibe with the blogger or I like their content and they are helping me out, those are the people I continue to go too and network with.
JK: You hit on something real powerful there. Me and you we’ve started communicating more recently and it’s a good way to build a relationship with people as well. If you’re a blogger and all of a sudden you see someone who’s a regular contributor, supports what you’re doing their going to be a lot more open to you communicating down the road as well. But if you’re a fly by nighter and say ‘hey I’ve commented once on your blog, do you have a moment?’ I’m going be like “well there’s a lot of people who’ve commented once.’ But if I see that your someone whose adding value to my blog, I’m going to be in a position that I’m going to listen to you because I’m thinking well I don’t want this guy to leave. I think that’s a great point that you can use it as a networking tool as well.
Joe: That’s basically what it is for me, it’s not just you know ‘let’s go, let’s find where we can get links at’ I just, you know I find a blog that I like and I tend, I’m going to play loyal deuce, I tend to get loyal to certain blogs and that’s just where I go. I’m always looking for new ones but I don’t just pick them on popularity otherwise I’d be on a whole bunch of blogs that I don’t comment on that a lot of people do. But I don’t do it because 1 – their not really appealing to me personally and I just don’t find them interesting and 2 – there’s no point, if I’m not going to say something worth while then there’s no point of me even commenting to say “Hey” so my name shows up on this blog or that blog.
JK: You know it’s funny I’m sure you get this as well, you get those repeated comment that say things like “Well I didn’t agree with you at first but your last paragraph made sense.” And you know that’s somebody just copying and pasting or using some spam system. But if they would just take the time whether it was five minutes to read the post and put something worth while and get their comment approved by a blog that’s high quality. Cuz the blogs they are getting approved on are not high quality blogs, so the long term benefit is so minimum. So if you just take the time and do this right, actually read and I think one of the things your saying too is because you have a home base of blogs of stuff that you like to read, it makes it a lot easier to go and comment because you want to read what’s there instead of making it a chore to find blogs and kind of struggle through the content.
Joe: I know people that do that and they have, they doing blog commenting, they just out looking for random blogs to comment on and if I say I’m, you know I’m catching up on my blog comments, that means I’m catching up on reading. I can’t just; I can’t just fly through and read, like if I come to your site I’m not just going to be able to just you know read it in five minutes and read, cuz you know you write long posts. Same with Yaro, he writes long posts, I can’t just go in two minutes and comment. It takes time to do it because people are writing quality content, so the posts are going to be a little bit longer and you’re going to have to take the time to read it.
JK: Now one of the things that a lot of people do and I see people doing it and it just mind boggles me; why they even try, is being spammy with names on the post and links inside the post. What are your comments on that, like when you’re commenting, in general what are your feelings on that?
Joe: I’ve never really been one to put links in my comment, I finally did it once ever and it was directly related to a post and it was on a blog that I frequent, “oh yeah I just did that over here.” but for the most part I don’t put links in my posts. I don’t really like the “sell more tupperware bowls” as comment names neither. I mean just, you know; if you want to comment on my blog use your name. If keyword love is enabled then that’s different, if not, just comment as your own name then. I tend to think higher of commenter’s that do that instead of using a keyword as their name.
JK: Yeah and I think, yeah your right. There are tools like keyword love but still they still enable it so the link is separate then the name. But even if it’s a brand, for example like John Cow or Shoemoney or you know any of those where it’s just a name where you recognize it right away, but if you see posts that are “The best mesothelioma help out there.” You know it’s like well, and their giving you a four word comment, you’re like ‘no I don’t think so.’ Because you gotta think when you’re leaving a comment and you’ve mentioned this a few times, you’ve got to add value. You want to, it’s like a you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. You provide a value comment; I’ll approve it and give you the link love.
Joe: There’s definitely a method to my madness. The blogs that I choose to comment on. Content is the first thing. Like you said, the more you comment and offer good content in your comments on another blog, those people are going to take notice.
JK: I’ve noticed your blog, your starting to rank up there pretty good with some regular commenter’s and getting quite a few comments per post. What percentage of your increased traffic has been from commenting on other blogs?
Joe: Man, I would say at least maybe 50, 60 probably 75%. I talk to different people, different bloggers, I talked to one a couple of months ago. He was like his girlfriend seen me comment on his blog and she was like “That’s that guy imwithjoe” and I’m like ‘well how she know me?’ and he’s like “Well she recognized your picture somewhere, I don’t know.” So I mean you know when people start seeing you and I’m the same way, if I start seeing the same people on certain blogs that I read, there’s a higher chance I’m going to go visit that blog.
JK: It’s almost like building a brand name. You know, if your using a different keyword every time and your avatar’s different all the time, cuz it’s different URLs and everything, but if you stick with it, like your using your name and everything, people start to recognize it and they get curious. Man this guy’s all over the place, and they want to check it out.
Joe: Right
JK: Well Joe I just want to thank you so much, because I’ve been wanting to, I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago I wanted to interview you just because of the commenting side of things. How old is your blog, the http://www.imwithjoe.com, how long has that been around?
Joe: Ah man it’s probably…I think I started it in like March.
JK: So this is a pretty new blog and its started to gain some good momentum.
Joe: Not even six months.
JK: So there you go everyone, that’s the power of commenting and that’s the strategy used by Joe from http://www.imwithjoe.com go check it out, he’s got a lot of cool videos out there, he’s just real down, he loves eating “sammiches”.
Joe: Yeah man “sammiches”.
JK: And he’s got some pretty fancy sponsor’s too. So go check it out and have a laugh. So again Joe thank you very much and to all the readers of John Cow we’ll be talking to you later.
Joe: Alright, Thanks.
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I don’t know why but I found reading that transcript very strange. The mix of speaking styles in transcript warped my fragile mind.
Clog Moneys last blog post..I’ve only gone and created some plugins.
lol… listen to the audio then
Joe does has a super weird reading style….
But that is what makes him unique
Ha, I called it! A thick Canadian accent and joe’s down home mid-western country accent. LOL!
Joe is super good people!
He just needs to get his lawn in shape.
AL
Allyns last blog post..Honest Review of the Neuton Battery Powered Mower
My Canadian accent is that thick
Canadian accent? Oh yeah… Oot and Aboot… that’s the one right :p
We Canadians don’t have an accent.. it’s the rest of the world with the accent
LOL
Mikes last blog post..Buying and Selling is Easy Using Online Auctions
I prefer to read, rather than to listen.
PDF was great for me
Thanks for the interview. Really interesting stuff.
Steven Blackmans last blog post..How To Create Landing Pages For Adwords
Thanks for letting me know you enjoyed it
It’s funny to hear Joe say that he will often check out someone who is leaving a trail of quality comments and recognizing their avatar repeatedly. That’s why I originally went to his blog.
As soon as I got there, I watched one video and subscribed.
Besides delivering IM stuff in a unique (and honest) way, he’s freakin’ fun to watch. He has that “video post X factor”, where you’re engaged regardless of whether he’s talkin’ about keyword search tactics or sammiches. lol
You guys both made great points about leaving quality comments and their long term effects. I’m a firm beleiver in spending time leaving quality comments as opposed to doubling or tripling the amount of crappy comments just for the extra backlinks.
Quality commenting can lead to so much more than just a backlink. A good example is this interview happening.
Great job guys!
Cheers!
Jay
SuiteJs last blog post..3 Winners Of A Fantastic Free Custom Ebook Cover Design
very true… the entire reason i started reading IMwithJoe is because of the comments he left. Then he started doing more video and they were a blast to watch… and the rest is now history.
SuiteJ… your avatar is becoming a pretty recognizable one to me as well now… seeing both you and ryan popping up all over the place
Ha. It may just “seem” like it’s around a lot, because of the size of my head. However, I do admit to using that to my advantage whenever possible.
SuiteJs last blog post..Using Google Analytics To Find Hidden Gems In Keywords
Hey man.. work with what you got
Commenting is my number one source of traffic also. About 60% of my traffic comes from posting on other blogs and I have grown a lot of readership over this last month from commenting. (My RSS has jumped from 30 to 200).
Commenting is definately one of the best methods to promote your blog in it’s early days. But it takes a lot of time so you have to remember the long term reward as your blog grows exponentially
Ryan McLeans last blog post..Why Website Flipping Sucks
You have been a steady contributor for a couple months now and I have checked your blog out more then a few times… maybe in a couple months we can do you can do an interview with me if your up to it.
I too have noticed an influx of traffic after I comment on a given post. Although I have not seen quite the traffic boost as yourself.
Mikes last blog post..Buying and Selling is Easy Using Online Auctions
Thanks for the interview Cow, I hope it provides some tips or insight or a few folks. It was definitely fun man and wouldn’t have happened had I not followed the advice I spoke about.
I put this stuff to use, and focus instead of shotgunning comments on tons of blogs, it’s more about building relationships and contributing to different communities and not just getting a link on a blog.
Thanks again.
Normal Joes last blog post..What Really Goes On At Blog World Expo
My pleasure… I have mentioned more then once that I am a big believer in proven facts and not chasing theory. This is proof of something that works and the steps you use.
Mmmmmm…. Sammiches!!! with Grape Crush!
Auds last blog post..Differences and Similarities Between Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis
I know most people don’t like “Keyword” names in comments, but I do take time to read the post and make good comments. I believe it falls under the I’m helping you and you are helping me category.
Certainly a site that has CommentLuv or KeywordLuv makes it less necessary. However, one point, John Cow isn’t your name, but the name you’ve chosen to brand (quite successfully, of course).
Also, for personal reasons, I don’t use my name on this blog. Other projects I do.
Another thing that is great about Commenting, especially on blogs with CommentLuv is the SEs and people see your recent posts. Certainly helps with exposure and rankings.
I think Commenting and article writing make a great team.
As always, thank you for the great stuff. And I think it is really cool that you give Joe exposure, too.
Top CD Ratess last blog post..$700BB - You’ve Got To Be Kidding
You kind of are an exception to that rule because you do leave worthwhile comments that are obviously in response to having read the post.
I was writing so much I forgot a good tool that can be used in conjunction with subscribe to comments. http://co.mments.com allows you to track blogs and comments. It is great for tracking to see if a blog approved yours or not and gives you an easy way to go back to the blogs and see what is new and/or add to the original discussion.
Sorry for the second comment.
Top CD Ratess last blog post..$700BB - You’ve Got To Be Kidding
I also ended up reading joe’s blog because of the comments he was dropping on my blog. But as Joe said, he doesn’t drop a ‘nice post’ like 90% of commenters…That makes a difference!
Ben - frogstr.coms last blog post..Google killed it!
His blog seems to be down?
“Error establishing a database connection”
it is back up now
I have a kind of weird unimportant question. Some people have their domain name starting without the “www” in the beginning of their url.
Personally I find it a bit ugly. It seems to give a “incomplete” look.
What do you guys think?
The issue really is will you get into an issue with google getting confused and tagging you as duplicate content. Believe it or not they look at http://www.yourdomain.com, http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php, yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com/index.php as four different files. You want to make sure that no matter what of the four they enter, they will be only brought to one page. Whether you personally use www or not, is not important… just make sure Google does not get confused.
Great answer CowMan! That could have easily been a long blog post.
Using www redirects to my domain “without www”, but commentluv doesn’t work on many sites if I don’t enter the http://www. in the URL field.
This doesn’t affect my site negatively, does it (In G’s eyes)?
SuiteJs last blog post..Using Google Analytics To Find Hidden Gems In Keywords
no.. as long as the redirect is set up on yoru site.. it will tell google what it is and that is what they will credit it too.
Comments should definitely come naturally. Not using any Entrecard SezWho plug-ins and all that. I have made an experiment, and made around 20,000 comments in 2 months, the results weren`t even near my expectations.
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Alex, that is like 300 comments a day. Seems like it would be difficult to write 300 quality comments in a day.
Top CD Ratess last blog post..$700BB - You’ve Got To Be Kidding
Great interview guys, I didn’t realize the ways to comment and the ways Joe categorizes his RSS feeds into groups and working the list down to ones to read daily. I needed this info since I’m just getting into commenting, didn’t think there was much to it, and I am getting the How to Build a Business, NOT just a blog ebook now.
Thanks,
James
James A Nicholss last blog post..Dominating CB 2 The Latest one!
Thats was good JK , I am impressed with the effort JOE puts in commenting on blogs..Its not a comment like “awesome post” or ” great post’ ..He takes pains to give his view on the post….Hats off to JOE
“Hey good post,”–naw I’m just kidding…but to your point, I started dedicating a couple of hours when I first get up to visiting blogs and commenting. And by Wednesday of this week (I began Monday), I saw a significant increase in traffic to one of my blogs. I specifically targeted a blog that doesn’t have entrecard or anything like that, just a plain ‘ol dofollow blog. Yes commenting not only builds traffic, it builds friends. Thanks John for all your straight forward advice.
These links on here are no-follows. Does that matter when I go to other sites that have no-follow? Will those links help my ranking?
That was great JK and Joe…
I (for the most part) try and take the time and really think about what I’m writing when it comes to posting a comment on someone else’s blog…the only problem with that is that I can’t write to save my life.
I’ve tried at a few forms of blogging but it doesn’t always work out for me. I can’t write about parenting even though I’m a mother of three, I can’t write about diabetes even though I struggle with it every day and I definitely can’t write about making money because I’m pretty much dealing with being poor, ALWAYS (LOL)…shoot, I don’t even have the charisma that Joe has! So, basically, I just stick to giveaways since you can’t really go wrong with that :), besides, it’s easier to comment in that area. Can I still earn respect from other bloggers when I leave a comment?
Now, if you or Joe want to get a little “good post” comment out of your system every once in a while…I’m here, I’ll take them ;).
Barbara Bakers last blog post..Anyone Up for a Playstation 3 Giveaway?
Interesting interview. I appreciate it being offered in different formats.
However, I’d have found it MUCH more useful if you’d managed to extract precise statistics such as unique visitors and revenue generated. It left me wondering if all that commenting was a dreadfully inefficient way of trying to make money on the Internet.
Allan Gardynes last blog post..12 things I’ve learned in 12 years online
I enjoyed the interview. What I find very interesting about the commenting and folks recognizing am individual and then following them is that it truly is basic marketing. Marketing 101…Statistically folks have to see your message (brand) 10-12 times before they begin to trust you and consider buying your product or service. Commenting and blogging simply provides a different method than 10 years ago to drip on your prospects.
Thanks for the interview.
Donna
Donna Amoss last blog post..Aiming for a mere $100,000 per year income?
Commenting on blogs is definetely the way to go and has also brought me many subscribers.
JR @ Internet Marketing Strategiess last blog post..Link Building - 2 More Do-Follow Social Sites
LOL @ the thick canadian accent. Im a canuk and people swear im american new york specifically. Which is weird. Maybe it’s the ottawa valley accent.
Joe has a very good strategy for commenting. I like the organizing of the rss feeds very good production tool and an even better time saver. Gonna get mine organized soon.
shane at make money bloggings last blog post..I Scored some freebies for you From Derek Gehl
wow. I did think that it was important to put effort into commenting, but not THAT much effort. Guess I need to step it up!
Lisas last blog post..Job Opportunity For Bloggers
Cow, you better be careful hanging out with Joe. He is known to steal your hats and eat your sammiches!
LOL! Joe just flat out cracks me up!
Freddies last blog post..Monday’s Motivational Moment: Urgency
I know I’m new here, but I absolutely LOVED reading/listening to this interview. Actually, I did both simultaneously! I read the transcript while listening to the MP3…lol
Good information there though! I learned a few things that, as a newbie, I didn’t even know were going on out there. I guess it only makes sense that there are people out there who leave spam comments, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me that people might not actually read the content. A waste of time if you ask me. If you’re not going to read the content, then your comment cannot be worthwhile!
Anywho, I think you have a new regular reader here and you owe it all to Joe! His recent blog about the blogs showin’ him love was what led me here. (Which is why I’m here so much later than most of the other commenters!)
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Ok, so I’m a little late on this but only because I was busy traveling. I did catch this interview between flights and have to say… Joe is the man! Seriously, I have NEVER seen anyone get the response he has in such a short period. I’m tagging him as a web-phenom and I know it’s largely part of his commenting. Not only is he a dedicated comment-king, covering miles of blogs any given week, but he’s got a unique way of relating to people in those comments. Ahhh NormalJoe, to know him is to love him!
Thanks for the great interview John Cow!
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NormalJoe the Phenom!! I Love It!
Hi John and JK,
This was a very insightful article. I love following comments around and around. It’s funny to see comments on here from Allyn who I found out about on Garry Conn’s website. This is a really tight knit community. The great thing I think is that we can all grow together.
Cheers,
Jeremy