Branding on blogs

[wheel]

There's a few blogs I comment on just because they're good blogs. Normally I use my name as the anchor text, with my website as the url. It's nofollowed, but the blogs are of sufficient quality that traffic from them is a real possibility.

However, I just realized that while the URL won't pass anything - the anchor text very likely does. Therefore going forward my 'name' will be my company name. That means Google will start seeing the text of my company name on lots of high end websites in my niche. Google will see {nike} instead of {John Hancock} in the comments.

If there's branding to be had, perhaps that'll help.

[Planet13]

From the results I have seen personally, I would suggest that is a good idea. Using the site name (even using the www. before the site name), does seem to help in getting google love.

However, some blogs won't let you post comments if you use a domain name / business name as the Username; they require a "real" first and last name. Although I guess if your site was about Lemon Jello, you could use a name like "Bob Lemonjello" as the username...

The blogs that I comment on all have do follow links, and they may only post one or two comments a year, since they are very vigilant against spam.

Of course, like everyone else, I have no idea whether there is a "branding factor" in the algorithm or not. Is google liking the site more because the links are followed and on relevant pages? Or is it liking my site more because it is being branded better? Who knows?

Coincidentally, I started doing it because people said that if you want to avoid an over optimization penalty, then try to avoid creating too many links with keyword-laden anchor text. Instead, they suggested using variations of the domain name and linking to the home page.

[Leosghost]

"Bob Lemonjello"
Dang it wheel ..your secret is out ;-)

[martinibuster]

Unlinked citation.

[wheel]

Well, yes - but I'm not using my URL, I'm using my company name. which is the same as my url without the www and the .com.