Can blog promotion in blogging communities be harmful for a blog?

Blogging communities can be a great way to drive traffic to a blog, but is it really safe for your blog? Have you ever thought about it? You might be thinking that what's wrong in promoting your blog through blogging communities, but believe me, blog promotion through blogging communities is not safe at all. Let me explain why:

1. Decreased reputation in search engines

Search engines are the best source to drive organic and genuine traffic to any blog or website. Joining any blogging community and getting a backlink through your profile page is OK, but promoting your links in the community will cause your blog getting penalized by Google Penguin, which will down-rank your search results and you will loose organic traffic.

2. Decrease in the number of unique visitors

If you are promoting your blog in blogging communities, then you will get traffic from those people who are members of those communities. You may get frequent visits of same visitors but if we talk about unique visitors, then you may not get unique visitors because the biggest source to get unique visitors is search engines and after getting penalized, you will loose unique visitors. You may be happy that your blog is getting a good alexa rank after sharing your links among other bloggers through blogging communities but only good alexa rank doesn't matter for advertisers. They look for traffic source also and they prefer those blogs who have a good traffic referred from search engines.

3. Risk of getting copied

If your content is online, then obviously you are not safe from copy-cats. But promoting your blog in blogging communities increases the risk of getting copied. Let me clear this point, have you ever seen any "Pro Blogger" promoting his/her links in any blogging community? Don't be confused with the word Pro Blogger, to know actually about the term Pro Blogger, I'd recommend you to read >> THIS ARTICLE.
Now, the answer is - "NO".
This is because pro bloggers know that running a blogging community site is just a way to make some money through advertisements. They trust in organic traffic they get from search engines and that's why they are ranked on the top of the search results.
Now let me come to the point. Actually, new bloggers are getting increased day by day due to a false thought that blogging is the fastest way to make money online. They are not skilled enough to write quality articles so they copy other bloggers' posts. They join blogging communities to get some traffic as well as to get some content for their blogs. They start copying each other's blog posts and in return, they get nothing and their blogs are down-ranked due to copied content.

4. Waste of time

Yes, if you think that lots of people read your blog posts through your links in blogging communities, then you are wrong. You may spend your valuable time in promoting your posts in blogging communities, but that is total time waste. In blogging communities, other people are also there for blog promotion only, they don't bother to read your articles because they don't need your content. They just login there, promote some links and simply sign out.
So instead of wasting your time, you must focus on creating quality content for your site and have patience. Quality content can bring organic search traffic for your site, but blogging communities can never.
I've seen some bloggers showing that they get quality traffic from bloging communities, but I think their concept about quality traffic is not clear (I don't blame them because they are blogging just by the influence of other bloggers who are earning nice income via blogging). Guys, asking each other to visit your links and dropping comments don't bring quality traffic. You may get good traffic by doing this but you don't get unique visitors, as I said earlier, and if you don't have search traffic, then obviously you will see that these communities are the top source of traffic for your blog.

Something from my personal side:

Some of my friends say that some posts I write are bitter. I also agree with them, but you know, "truth is always bitter". I don't want to hurt anyone, but I don't want to keep anyone in dark also. I say that a blogger must not be an artificial one, he/she must be what he/she is and must speak boldly, must share honest opinions.
I also joined some blogging communities, but I'm not active there. And if you have read this article, you can now understand why. The only reason of my presence there is "A BACKLINK", that's it. I have a very busy schedule and that's why I spend my free time in framing new quality articles instead of wasting my time in in playing comment-comment game in blogging communities, haha.

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