This is a true SEO story.

One of my daily tasks is to find, visit and sometimes write comments on blogs that are related to the two different companies for which I do in-house SEO. Now, I am not talking about using some cheezy interface that serves up blogs and tells me how many words I need to write and then takes my keywords and turns them into anchor text and leaves them as the comment author's name (ahem, Linkvana anyone?). That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about real, thoughtful, relevant, well-written comments that actually have some value to the readers of that blog. Sometimes, I don't have anything good to say, so I don't write anything. But if it's a good thread, and I get inspired, I write a comment. After I'm done writing, before I post it, I read what I've written to see if anything might make good anchor text for a link. Almost always there's something I can use, so maybe I do a link.

As I am doing this, there are two things I really don't care about:

1. The PageRank of the blog - I care way more about whether it's relevant and whether or not there are other people reading it.

2. Whether or not my link is going to be followed or if it will be a "no follow." I don't care. (Well, I do care, I just don't use that as a criteria for posting a comment or not posting a comment.)

Using this method, here is a real life example of how effective this can be.

On October 8th I found a blog post written specifically about the core product of a niche site I do SEO on for a larger company. The product is a specialized Communion product for churches. It is a product that has been at the center of some discussion and debate because it is viewed by some as being very non-traditional. I composed a thoughtful comment, which included one keyword with anchor text, and the comment also linked back to the Website via my real name. No, I don't enter my name as a keyword, ever. For those of you tempted to do that (or doing it or paying people to do it), you need to stop it.

The original blog post with my comment is located here: http://www.christiandroid.com/2012/02/instant-communion.html

For those of you who've read this far and who are detail oriented, you will notice that I totally misspelled my keyword. Doh! I realized it immediately after posting and thought "Well, that opportunity's blown!" - I mean, I can't contact the blog owner and say "Hey, I am trying to use your blog for my own SEO purposes, can you please correct the spelling of my anchor text?" - Yeah, bad idea.

So, I chalked it up as a mistake and moved on.

This is where the taking the time to write good, thoughtful content made the difference!

Two days later, on October 10th, I got an email notification that there was a new post on this very same blog. Not only that, but the topic was about the very same product as the one where I had left my comment. Of course I went to read it.

What I found was an entire blog post from the same author stating how my comment, and the recent experiences of a friend of his, had completely changed the way he viewed the product. He not only quoted my entire comment, he included my original anchor text with the link and he fixed my anchor text typo!

The new post, including my quoted comment is here: http://www.christiandroid.com/2012/10/traditional-tradition.html

So by writing a thoughtful comment, I actually spurred a unique blog post featuring my link and my anchor text (only now it's not misspelled). It took me maybe five minutes at most to write my original comment and now I have not one but two solid links from this highly-relevant blog. I didn't have to write to him, ask him, beg him, pay him or link back to him. All I had to do was care, write, inspire more discussion and be genuine.

You see, blog commenting can still work. It can work in amazing ways. You just have to really care about the topic and be real when you write your comment. So go right now and find ten interesting blogs related to your industry. Search in Google Blog Search, or pull all of your Twitter followers into a spreadsheet using Followerwonk and find all the bloggers. Find an interesting thread and post a thoughtful comment. You might be surprised to see what happens next!