Web Marketing
Blogging tip: Turn off nofollow in your comments
One of the tenets of blogging is building a community. This isn’t the one-to-many model of old school journalism. Rather, we want to engage our readers, start discussions, and even make friends.
Turn off nofollow in your comments. “nofollow” refers to a property defined in html link tags that prevents search engines from spidering (or following) a given link. Most blogging platforms automatically add the nofollow property to all link tags because of comment spam. As long as comment spam can be caught using other tools, however, there’s no reason to do this. In fact, giving your commentators (or is it commentors? dammit!) a little linkback love is a good thing. This encourages readers to comment, which should foster discussion, and ultimately improve the quality of your readership, your writing, and your life.
(Well, the last one is up to you, but hopefully you actually like this blogging thing in the first place. ;-))
There are a plethora of plugins that accomplish this relatively simple task for various blogging platforms. I’m personally using Semiologic’s dofollow here on Really Smart Guy.
Of course, this isn’t a new idea. I’ve been meaning to do this for months. Better late than never, right? I’ve also added a nifty new ifollow badge to my sidebar, courtesy of Randa Clay Design.
Oh, and you absolutely must have an anti-comment spam plugin like akismet or spam karma (which I’m using and love) installed with this. But you knew that already, right?
For more mostly objective information on the nofollow tag, see the wikipedia entry.
;) Now that you have installed Dofollow plugin, you shall see me commenting more often here. lol ;)
Seen you on Andy Beard’s new “neighbourhood” ads - is that paid for? Is it a plugin?
Shaun
Hello,
Congrats, your site is now listed on the Do Follow List!
Regards,
Nicusor
Better Search Engine Rank…
It is right on that finding accurate information on this matter can be difficult….
Ok, so the “no follow” attribute is to reduce spam, but it’s my opinion that it would be good for “no follow” on comments to expire in X many days. If the comment is spam it could be deleted prior to expiration and if it were not deleted, it deserved to be there anyway! Right?
Is there a way to have “do follow” on blogspot blogs?
Unique Baby Gear, Nursery Themes and Decorating Ideas
Very well said. I myself have a love-hate relationship with nofollow… but mostly I prefer dofollow with anti spam plugins. Give some love to your readers :)
I have an Herbalife blog and need to be able to turn on an off the no follow is there a plug in available? Great blog here thanks.
I hate no follow. People take the time to reply and comment on posts, adding content to the blog and creating the social sphere. The minimum you can do is grant them some link juice. However due to all those annoying spammers a spam blocker is a must, even if your blog is a no follow. Which brings me back to the point, no follow was supposed to stop spam, but it doesn’t. I mean auto script spam regardless if it’s follow or not… oh well. God I hate spammers :)
Stranger…Im back in cali. I live in Emeryville…hope all is well.
Unfortunately this blog is actually nofollow. Why don’t you remove dofollow logo?