Start with the topic and the people you want to reach: use the words they use to search, find relevant publications and conversations, then assess whether each blog is genuinely useful to that audience. If you join the conversation, contribute something substantive and follow the blog’s rules. Don’t use comments mainly to plant optimized links for search rankings.
Start with the audience’s language
List the questions, problems, and interests your intended readers have. Search for those topics using the words they would naturally use, rather than beginning with a goal such as finding sites that offer a particular kind of link. Google’s Search Essentials recommends using words people search for in prominent places on a page.
Try a few variations of the same subject: a broad topic, a specific question, and a term for the audience or use case. Follow promising results to related publications and discussions. The aim is to find places where your readers already learn and exchange ideas, not simply to collect a long list of URLs.
Decide whether a blog is a real fit
Discovery is only the first step. Review a blog’s recent articles and its intended readership before deciding to read, contact, or participate there. This is a practical editorial judgment, not a formal Google scoring system.
#1 Best Overall
- Topical relevance: Does the blog regularly cover the subject, rather than mentioning it once?
- Audience fit: Are its readers the people you hope to serve?
- Usefulness: Do its articles answer questions or offer perspective that helps those readers?
- Contribution fit: Can you add something relevant that would be valuable even if it included no link to your site?
Google’s people-first guidance says SEO can support content when it is created for people, rather than primarily to influence rankings. Its advice is to “Create helpful, reliable, people-first content.” See Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content.
Participate to help readers, not to place links
Relevant community participation can help people discover a site, but it should be a genuine exchange. Read the discussion, follow the site’s commenting rules, and contribute an answer, clarification, or useful perspective. Mention your own material only when it directly helps with the point being discussed and the community permits it.
Rank #2
A comment written mainly to insert an optimized link is a different matter. Google defines link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate search rankings, and specifically lists forum comments with optimized links as an example. Its Spam Policies for Google Web Search say violations may lead to lower rankings or exclusion from results.
What the original title meant
“This is how I find blogs” was the title of a SitePoint forum thread opened on December 18, 2011. The author asked for “some high PR blogs or other good methods for link building,” and replies discussed search footprints and comment links. One participant argued that comments should share information and thoughts rather than exist only to obtain links. These are historical forum comments, not current SEO guidance. The thread is useful context for the title; its dated tactics and terminology should not be treated as recommendations.
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Google recommends helpful, reliable, people-first content, relevant language, crawlable links, and participation in communities where like-minded people can learn about a site. Following these practices can help search systems understand a page and make it eligible to appear; it does not guarantee that Google will crawl, index, or serve it. Blog discovery and outreach are most useful when they help the right people find genuinely relevant material, regardless of whether they produce a ranking signal.
Quick Recap
Rank #4
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