No Follow … Do Follow … What Is All This Business?
Wordpress, by default adds a no-follow tag to links in comments.
What that means in very simple terms is that a Search Engine Bot should not follow that link. Your commentator receives no link benefit from this and gets no page rank credit from Google. The reason why this is a default action in Wordpress is to combat comment spam, to stop people from leaving meaningless comments just to get a link back to their websites.
However, all this does is inconvenience the real posters who are genuinely contributing to the discussion. The no-follow tag has not served its pupose and has not stopped spam flooding your comments. Best option is to just use the Akismet plugin (comes with Wordpress) for that and be done with it.
So let’s come back to the people who are contributing effectively to a discussion on your blog. Why are they being punished? They are giving something, they should get something back. It is a fair exchange. And it is a win-win situation as you can be at the receiving end as well by posting comments on blogs that do-follow links.
So from today onwards, this blog is officially a DO FOLLOW blog.
You can use a very simple, set it and forget it plugin called Semiologic Do-Follow
You can add your do-follow blog to this list.
There is a list of more plugins as well as directories you can add your do-follow blog to. Check it out.
Tags: Backlinks, Comments, Do-Follow, Google, Link Benefit, No Follow, Page Rank, SEO, Wordpress Plugins
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Tucson SEO Solutions says:
On July 18th, 2008 6:48 pm
Hi Erum,
I will gladely add you to our Do Follow List of blogs and forums that can be found at http://www.tucsonseosolutions.com/dofollowlistoflists.
We usually update when we verify we have have done so it should appear very soon.
The Drunk Blog says:
On July 20th, 2008 6:11 pm
I agree with your post, but I am looking for a way to hard code it out without bothering with a plugin. A search for nofollow in the code would probably suffice, I just don’t feel like breaking my blog until I test it correctly.
Also, a completely unrelated note, but have you ran across a way to display all posts in a category or by an author? Perhaps as an RSS feed or similar. You seem to know your Wordpress.
Erum Munir says:
On July 20th, 2008 8:25 pm
The problem with hard coding something like that is that you have to remember to do it every time you upgrade Wordpress. A plugin makes the process much simpler.
Do you want to place the RSS feed from a certain category on another website? I know Feedburner has a widget that does just that. Perhaps only add a category/author feed and you should get the desired result. For example the feed for my ‘All Things Wordpress’ category can be found at: http://www.erummunir.com/category/wordpress/feed
mevric says:
On July 21st, 2008 2:25 am
ya i gree with ya dude and thank for post
The Drunk Blog says:
On July 21st, 2008 4:12 pm
Ah, yes! Awesome, I never thought to append /feed/ to a category, it works perfect for authors as well.
Yeah, I know the issue with upgrade, but every little plugin adds up, especially with cheapo hosting….
Erum Munir says:
On July 21st, 2008 5:29 pm
Glad I could help.
Just make sure you keep a record of any hard coding and you should be fine.
Erum Munir says:
On July 22nd, 2008 8:00 pm
Thanks for the link Tucson. For some reason Akismet thought your message was spam. I had to rescue it.
Florida web design says:
On March 10th, 2009 1:59 am
I don’t think nofollow is good choice to fight Comment Spam we already have comment moderation for that . Ans only google bot differentiate between no-follow and do-follow ,Yahoo and Msn still give importance to No-follow links
Erum Munir says:
On March 13th, 2009 6:52 am
So true. Comment moderation along with the Akismet plugin and may be a Captcha plugin can take care of spam.
Since Google is one of the most used search engines, it is best to avoid the no-follow tag IMO.
Management Mentoring says:
On August 10th, 2009 11:48 am
It’s good to see someone else using dofollow links! Like Erum says, spam is an issue but it is possible to prevent this and still have dofollow links if you install the right things.
Robert says:
On August 13th, 2009 12:09 pm
Hurrah! A fellow blogger has joined the movement