Jul 13, 2007
A lot of blog authors are joining the dofollow revolution, and are hacking their Wordpress installs to remove the ugly rel=nofollow attribute from comment links. I'd like to announce a new feature of this blog, and other blogs based on Jojo CMS, where a good comment is rewarded with not only a live link, but with your choice of anchor text.A link is a link
As I see it, a live link is a live link and the cost to me is the same (no it's not free, the cost is in link juice). It costs no more to give a link with good anchor text as it does a link with poor anchor text. Personally, I have way too many links saying "Harvey" or "Harvey Kane" and not nearly enough links saying "SEO" or "SEO Articles" or "SEO Blog".So, if you post a good comment on one of my blogs, I'll consider removing the nofollow. If it's an especially good comment, then I'll throw in the link text free of charge. If it's a crappy spam comment, I'm still going to delete it.
Follow suit by following links
I'd love to see other blog authors follow suit on this one. Comments anyone?
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Comments
Harvey - Jul 20, 2007
I think the word "Lazy" is perhaps a little strong.
Many blogs get hundreds of comments each day and it's impractical to manually moderate every comment.
But for many blogs, building a stronger community is important and a free link on a somewhat decent site is a pretty good incentive to leave a comment.
Ladyholdem - Aug 27, 2007
This is an awesome idea! I think that people tend to 'take' their anchor text pretty often anyway, you'll find a lot of people just use the text they want for their link as their name..
However, this takes a little bit of that 'community feel' away, you don't get a name anymore, not even one of those cutsie usernames we used to get when we all first found AOL :P
I honestly hope that wordpress catches on to your idea, it's a great idea and i'd like to add it to my own blogs :)
Michael - Articles - Sep 3, 2007
Apparently Removing the rel=nofollow has really been working. It seems you are getting some really good comments that include some of your great indexable keywords.
This makes me think. In some of my sites I have some rel=nofollow code that limits the Spammers that Post links from actually getting links to there Cruddy Black Hat Websites. As I almost Always delete the comments posted because of Spam, it would be nice to see people posting comments for a real reason, even if they are getting a free one way link.
Harvey - Sep 3, 2007
yep, comments have definitely started picking up, both for real comments and rubbish comments.
Automated spam has pretty well dried up since adding the CAPTCHA, but by removing the nofollow you get a lot more "great post" comments as your site gets added to dofollow lists.
Traffic has been down significantly since removing the nofollow, but I think this is more to do with a lesser frequency of posts than losing link juice via comments.
Turk Hit Box - Turk Hit Box - Sep 13, 2007
Why don't you just use the plugin I wrote, DoFollow Trackbacks? ?t basically removes nofollow from trackbacks only, sharing the link love with people who found your post interesting enough to link to it.
http://www.turkhitbox.com/wordpress-seo/dofollow-trackbacks-plugin.html
Harvey - Sep 13, 2007
Not a bad idea, but this isn't a Wordpress blog so I gotta write my own plugins for the meantime :)
Bape - Sep 29, 2007
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow I have seen many blogs leeching off the dofollow movement claiming to be dofollow sites but actually use nofollow, they are worse than the comment spammers in my eyes.
Harvey - Sep 29, 2007
I wouldn't say "worse" than the spammers, but it's certainly against the spirit of dofollow.
The problem is that people are abusing dofollow by posting inane comments in the hope of getting the link, as can be expected.
So it's really up to the blogger to use their discretion as to whether they give the link love or now - if they reserve the dofollow for only the best comments, or only for people who comment frequently, then I can understand that.
mlankton - Sep 30, 2007
No names, but I think it's funny that someone who has obviously been making his way down the d list spamming their online store takes such offense to it. Maybe it's because he can't get a link from them.
Bree DoFollow - Oct 4, 2007
I do-follow links now on my Aussie housewife blog. After a long time procrastinating I have seen the importance of dofollow and using the "do follow" principal to help keep the Internet better connected. http://www.reallyreally.net - Take a look at my dofollow blog and feel free to comment. Thank you, Regards Bree.
Greg - Jan 6, 2008
Do-follow blogs give more content and backlinks to the blog and add to the blogs content increasing backlinks as well as the blogs traffic as well.
Blzh - Aug 9, 2008
who cares your pagerank sucks anyway. pretty bad for a pagerank based site.
Harvey - Aug 9, 2008
Who cares? Not me.
The site ranks well and brings in more business than I have capacity for, so I can pick and choose the work I take on.
And I'm frequently getting good feedback about the blog.
So no, I don't particularly care about PageRank, though I don't consider the current PR5 to be all that bad.
John - Sep 27, 2008
You are correct when it is the link juice that really matters. Anchor text is very important in search engine optimization as well as what page that link is pointing to. When people make comments they should act as though they are part of a conversation instead of just trying to get a link. If you join the conversation then the links will automatically follow.
Post Comment
We welcome comments on this article, provided they have something to contribute. Please note that all links will be created using the nofollow attribute. This is a spam free zone. HTML is stripped from comments, but BBCode is allowed.
Cristian - Auckland Restaurants - Jul 20, 2007
I personally believe that by removing the attribute rel=”nofollow” on a blog it offers everyone an incentive to leave comments on that blog. People leaving good comments should receive credit for the contributions they make to a blog's content.
Setting automatic nofollows on links is pretty lazy and comment moderation and maintenance are the responsibilities of the blog editor.
A lot of bloggers out there have realized that the use of the attibute "nofollow" does not prevent comment spam and have disabled it on their blogs.
The use of the rel=”nofollow” harms the connections between web sites and prevents the Web from being a web.