When people leave a comment on your blog (or generate a trackback by linking to a blog post), your blogging software is most likely adding the “nofollow” microformat extension. The result is that search engines like Google don’t follow those links off your site, and therefore the sites linking to you don’t gain any Google Juice from your blog.
The links work – people can click on them – but the links don’t provide any search engine value to the originating site/blog.
Why NoFollow?
The reason blog software like WordPress adds NoFollow is to minimize the benefit you’re giving any spammers who might sneak a comment or trackback in. If spammers’ links added search engine value back to their sites it would be quite beneficial for them – so NoFollow combats that.
Let’s Remove NoFollow Anyway
Recently there’s been a growing disenchantment with the NoFollow concept. If people provide legitimate, quality comments or links back to your blog, what’s the harm in giving them a little value in return? And with spam plugins like Akismet available (which do a very good job of stopping spam comments and trackbacks) it makes sense to open things up a bit and give your community some link love.
Andy Beard has a definitive list of DoFollow plugins available on his site.
Try The Link Love Plugin
I decided to implement one of the plugins called Link Love. It’s a newer plugin so I don’t know how well it works or how stable it is, but the idea is that it only removes NoFollow after a certain number of comments have been left by someone. You can set the determining value to whatever you want. I’ve set it to 3. So after you leave 3 comments, all of your links back to your site will have NoFollow removed.
I like this idea because it benefits my real community; people who frequent Instigator Blog regularly and participate. Those are the people I want to give some added value to.
DoFollow For Your True Community
NoFollow’s intention is worthy. But even with NoFollow being automatically done on blog software like WordPress you’ll still receive tons and tons of spam. So it’s not as if NoFollow by itself has stopped spammers. By removing it you’re telling your community that you care, and you’re willing to give ‘em a little link love.
Incidentally, I also enjoyed Dawud Miracle’s post about branding yourself through blog comments which added fuel to the fire for me to remove NoFollow.
@Max: I’m not sure why WordPress doesn’t have that implemented. I know it’s been discussed by others in the past…
[...] RandaClay – find out more about why, who and how; and get a your own graphic while you’re at it. Paul Enderson – @ Reflections Chris Garrett – @ chrisg.com Ben Yoskovitz – @ Instigator Blog [...]
Thanks to everyone for stating their preferences about the follow – nofollow issue. This helped me cement my decision to allow robots to follow links posted on my site. I will be adding a blog, and after reading all your input I feel ready to jump in! ;- )
So what’s your opinion on dofollow links almost a year later? I hope you’re happy with your choice – I think it’s commendable and brave of you and hope it pays off.
This dofollow movement is a double edged sword. If you think about it, it help your blog by increasing the number of comments but sometimes they may not be relevant, may be there just for the link. I guess your time to approve/delete them also increased right?
Of course it will. Sometimes a blog format isn’t the best as a busy one will merge the boundaries between that and with a forum. Perhaps we should start calling ourselves forbloggers or blogrums. Bring on the new software!
BB
@Commenter: Time to approve/delete hasn’t really increased EXCEPT with people using SEO-centric names to post comments, knowing they can get some Google Juice from it. I find that somewhat annoying and have made it a policy to edit those names. Although I’ve yet to make the policy public, which is my mistake.
I think you only need to alter the first instance of anchor text of any link (to any one site). That’s the current theory anyway.
BB
@Bill: As you can see, I’ve just added a quick comment policy. It’s not exactly thorough but I think it gets to the heart of what I wanted to say, and tells people what’s important to me – community, helping others, but not being “used” for Google Juice and link love…
great work,i think all blog should remove it,so we can feel more comfortable express our thought
I learnt recently about the dofollow and nofollo, and in fact I’m doubting recently if they did right with the invention of the nofollow tag, I mean, what’s the aim of it?
Great blog and love the layout. Thanks Ben and he best of luck with your website.
Great post, and still timely!
Hi,its a very useful blog and i think it should be soon so popular blog and we got latest information from there.Thanks
I learnt recently about the dofollow and nofollo, and in fact I'm doubting recently if they did right with the invention of the nofollow tag, I mean, what's the aim of it?
I learnt recently about the dofollow and nofollo, and in fact I'm doubting recently if they did right with the invention of the nofollow tag, I mean, what's the aim of it?
I added the dofollow attributed to my blog not too long ago and it is a great process I beleive.
I added the dofollow attributed to my blog not too long ago and it is a great process I beleive.
I added the dofollow attributed to my blog not too long ago and it is a great process I beleive.
It is good to see that a lot of people are getting behind the movement and adding the attribute. I did it on my blogs and it benefits everyone
It is good to see that a lot of people are getting behind the movement and adding the attribute. I did it on my blogs and it benefits everyone
It is good to see that a lot of people are getting behind the movement and adding the attribute. I did it on my blogs and it benefits everyone
how does dofollow work? i really don't know about it., all i know is blog commenting.,
It's a good think that Link love is now available. That way we can filter the comments.
This is a great post on a wonderful site.
This is a great post on a wonderful site.
so nice useful points about google and seo.
just today came to know about link love. I checked the URL but seems liek it is not working. Does anyone hs working copy of link love plug-in?
Say yes to Do-follow, spread some link love to others. Its really nice going through your blog Ben, like many other you have convinced me also to go for do-follow links instead no-foloow.
yep, it doesn't look LinkLove plugins works anymore. Or did you decide disable it ?
I just did the same, good move.
I just did the same, good move.