After adding the Top Commentators plugin I’ve seen an increase in comments here on this blog and I’m happy about that. I’m more then happy to give some link love back to the nice people who comment here. Taking that further I’ve decided to remove the evil nofollow tag from all comments and trackbacks here.
The nofollow tag in my opinion was a crappy idea to begin with and was just a simple method adopted by Google to fight comment spam. Has it worked? No! Spammers still spam comments and luckily there are services like akismet, spam karma and others that help to cut down on bots leaving comments with a hundred links in the comment field. I use spam karma here and it has worked great. I don’t have time to approve every comment and so spam karma has saved me tons of time.
So where did I find this dofollow plugin? I found it over at Andy Beard’s blog in a dofollow list he put together of all the dofollow plugins out there. Thanks Andy for the list!
So, now when you leave a usefull and interesting comment here you get a link that search engines can follow. I think this will encourage even more people to comment. Now I just have to post in a way to start a conversation, a dialogue, etc.
I don’t consider myself a professional blogger. It’s not how I earn my living. I started this blog to share my thoughts on web design, seo, marketing etc. Not to make money. I used to have adsense ads here but removed it because I didn’t think it was adding any value. And quite honestly I’m sick of seeing Google ads everywhere you turn.
Having said all that I hope to post some better posts in the future, ones that will induce a dialogue with you the reader. We’ll see how it works out. Let me know what you think!
First Time on your Blog. Very Informative.
Lots of Stuff to Read. I need to put this dofollow thing in my blog too.
Good Job
Linu
You’ll have to do a follow up post and let us know how much DoFollow improves comments.
Thanks for sharing your SEO tips on http://www.homeofficewomen.com
I believe they are useful for my readers. Hope to learn more from this blog too
I would also love to see a follow up post. I’ve been thinking about adding the dofollow plugin to my list of plugins but don’t want to deal with too much spam comments. A follow up post would help me decide what to do, I love comments, I hate spam.
Are there certain themes/setups that default to “no-follow”? Or is that just the author of the site doing it?
Nice site though, I’m going to look around more now.
I reckon nofollow has only created complications for web masters and even Google themselves. Sometimes I feel that there is some confusion in all this. I don’t know. But there is something definitely missing. Looking at Google’s history, and their prospect future, they must have something in mind when they introduced nofollow, but I dont think that it is serving its purpose.
I remove the nofollow tag from all of my blogs because I figure if I’m bothering to take the time to moderate the comments and delete the ones that are spam, why should people who take the time to actually post something useful be penalized by not giving them a backlink to their site. I personally find it encourages people to post more thoughtful comments and helps promote social networking which is what blogging is all about.
I like the dofollow, I think that the nofollow for comments was probably more from greedy blog owners, that didn’t want to risk giving away their precious PR, but I believe also that in taking care not to lose our PR, or ‘link out’ to much, that people have wandered away still from the true meaning for links, sharing good on topic websites.
We try so hard not to link away from our own sites to much, or decrease the value in our site, so that when we DO find something great, or something worth sharing, we don’t.
Furthermore, I’m going to add this DOfollow to my blogs too
I think if someone takes the time to visit, and express an interest in so much that they take the time to create something worth reading (and if it’s not worth reading, I delete it) then yes, I’d like to share a link with them too.
[...] Zoals jullie misschien wel weten draait deze weblog op WordPress. WordPress zet sinds bepaalde tijd het nofollow attribuut standaard op alle reactielinks. Een tijd geleden introduceerde Google het rel=”nofollow” attribuut voor links. Leuk om linkspam tegen te gaan en zo. Echter: het is toch niet meer dan fair om iemand die een reactie op je weblog plaatst te belonen met een linkje terug (zie ook: Jeff Hendrickson)? [...]
ah.. for a moment I thought dofollow is a tag. Anyway, looks like a good thing to implement when something like spam karma is there.
I’ve definetely seen an increase in comments here. With more time and more posts I should be able to tell even more but overall it’s working. Yes of course I’ve had the occasional one liner comments or people commenting on every post but that is controllable.
So now that I am following your links I have to take the time to monitor the comments and make sure people aren’t linking to their viagra/porn/gambling/pharm sites via my comments. I don’t want that.
Controlling who you link to is one thing Google knows you can do so part of their algo relies on that information and I certainly don’t want that harming my rankings. It would be a shame to fall from the serps for removing the nofollow tag from this blog. So it’s another big test in SEO.
We’ll see if I drop from the Google serps for my main keyword “SEO Web Design” or “Web Design and SEO” for taking this action.
I’ve also changed my theme if you haven’t noticed so we’ll see how that works out as well.
& Thanks everyone for commenting! I appreciate it.
Obviously comments are going to see a boost from using dofollow. Let us know if any negatives come with it. Congrats and thank you.
I have Do Follow and I think it helps. I think I am going to go ahead with Top Commentators too.
Hello Jeff.
Personally I don’t bother posting links to site with no-follow links. I would rather make the resource more valuable by finding a site that will allow back-links (such as this one) and giving it some link-vote/PR. And I am much more likely to link back to good quality blogs if the don’t have no-follow as they are prepared to share some of this vote with other good quality sites rather than hog it all and make the internet, as far as I am concerned, a little less democratic.
Thank you for doing this! really a GOOD JOB. By doing this, you appreciate your valuable users and they appreciate you more! keep up the good work….
Great job on the “Seo Web Design” search engine placement, it’s funny how we all have our methods for ranking, and I must admit your was very effective the way you jumped past Bruce and Svend and took the pole position. From one Jeff to another, great job!!!
We also happen to be in the running for the term. Happy link building.
I have just started this activity and am still learning the tricks of the trade as it were. I find it interesting and informative. I hope to come up to some of the levels that people obviously are.
long live do follow
Viva blog power
I’ve decided to start using the nofollow tag again! That’s right, I said it…
Atleast for the meantime. I’m kinda on the fence about it because I am seeing some negative things happen from following links. ie. repeat meaningless comments just to get a link back to some crappy site.
You know who you are.
I have no problem linking out to other sites I deem appropriate or valuable, in that they add to the user experience, not detract from it by having my blog look like a free-for-all spam fest.
Having said that, I hope if you have something constructive to say you please say it. With or without the no follow tag.
Posted here a couple of weeks ago, just following up.
It’s usually pretty easy to evaluate who is spamming and who is legitimately posting. A spammer will never argue against the main point of a forum, and it is usually a crappy two line statement.
I still prefer do-follow sites though, and I maintain for the same reason that if you’d expect people to link to you for PR, it is only fair that you give them something back. I have actually found a few people who said the had do-follow and didn’t, and then asked people to link back on a do-follow network. In that case it was actually the admin trying to scam the users for do-follow.
Google just needs to rely more on a Trust Rank system so that it can evaluate which links are valuable and which are not. Assuming spam links are moderated, presumably they are removed before those links come out of the sandbox. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Also, consider only allowing trusted members to post with do-follow (e.g. people who have made 50 posts).
Its a nice concept, but it also leads to increased ’spam’ with comments like ‘Good Job’ or ‘Nice blog’ that are not actually relevant to the post, but are just there because the poster saw a ‘DoFollow’ badge on the blog and wanted a backlink.
I suppose you could call this a double edged sword, it’d definitely get your more comments, but also increase your moderation work.
dofollow or nofollow, I hope you follow-up another informative blog.
Have you noticed an increase in reader participation as a result? I know this is an old topic, but I didn’t know where else to ask.