Most SEO experts agree on at least one thing: incoming links to your web pagees are very important when it comes to determining where your page will appear in the search engine listings. An impediment to getting these valuable links is that, by default, most blog platforms are set up so that a “Do Not Enter” sign is added wherever a link appears in a comment. This means that search engines will not “count” the link as they are crawling the internet. In geek-speak this is known as a “no-follow”, originally designed to help stop comment spam. With today’s ease of comment moderation by blog owners it’s really not needed. In fact, what it actually does is remove some of the incentive for your readers to contribute the blogging community by commenting on your posts.
What can be done about this? Do what I’ve done, I’ve turned off “no-follow” because I appreciate my reader’s comments. How? It’s easy. If you use WordPress, use this plugin. If you use Blogger for your blogging, then read this instructional post on how to modify your template.
So if you’d like, please feel free to comment and include a link to your site. We’ll both benefit; you’ll have an incoming link to your site and I’ll have an engaged readership!
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groozi.com is a blog about negotiating and web marketing. It is written primarily by me, Blake J. Discher, a 
31 Comments
Thanks for the information, I didn’t realize that most blogs are defaulted to the “no-follow” setting. I think interaction between bloggers is the best way to build internet communities that aren’t centered around sites like facebook.
I think that you rock… It’s such a good idea to go Do-Follow personally my blog is also Do-Follow.. I believe that the Internet is made to the people by the people and there for it is very important to give back to the community…
Awesome choice if you ask me…
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You are, as always, a wealth of insurmountable knowledge Mr Discher !!! Thank you, thank you, thank you. Oh, and where have you gone, are we taking the summer off from blogging? I look forward to seeing you this Fall in Philly.
It’s interesting that blogs first started out as a way for people to express their opinions on their chosen subjects (at least that’s what I thought), but now it has turned into a networking tool with this dofollow and nofollow debate.
But I guess business is business, and I think dofollow is the way to go.
While the idea is a good one, there are also ones that can hurt your PR in the long run if you allow links back to larger sites like Microsoft, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and the like. A good counter-measure here is the NoFollow plugin which only disables pingbacks to large sites based on “Wikipedia nofollow” and “Identify External Links”.
As a general rule though, I do let most comments through and appreciate the feedback and helpful insight (and pingbacks to their sites)…
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