Exchanging Comments: The Only Way to Drive Traffic?

Hi, WAers,

Not too long ago, I engaged in an interesting discussion with a WA member regarding the exchange of comments to drive traffic to our sites.

I think all of us here have used either the Comments thread or SiteComments at some point. We've been told it's a good practice for SEO purposes. When search engines see engagement in our sites, they rank them higher since they're like, "Hey, there's something going on here!"

We all know that Google takes different elements into consideration when ranking sites. Two of them are site authority and engagement. To rank higher, we need both. However, we run into a dilemma, which reminds me of someone looking for a job for the first time. We know experience is important, but how do you get experience if you have never worked before? The same thing happens with sites. How do we get authority and engagement if no one visits our sites? It's a never-ending cycle.

I suppose there comes a point where you don't have to rely too much on comments, but what do you do when you don't have a large audience? Which brings us to the reason I'm writing this post:

1. Is exchanging comments unethical? Are we gaming the search engines?

2. Does exchanging comments here within WA really help?

3. When can we stop using them?

4. Do you use them? If not, what do you do to drive traffic?

I was told we can get penalized by Google for creating such networks. This hasn't been my case, but again, I haven't been very successful at exchanging comments here either.

What is your take on this? Let me know in the comments below.