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
I like how you think, Blake!
I like the idea of blogs being “two-way streets” where both the blogger and the commenter will get something out of each other. The blogger will get traffic for his/her site, while the commenter will get a chance to attract more traffic onto his/her site.
And yes, I am one of those people who immediately click on that small “x” at the upper right hand corner once I see that the blog is a No Follow blog.
Great advice. Why didn’t I hire you the first time?
But you did the comment wrong… your “name” should be your keyword phrase! You have lots to learn grasshopper.
Ah! Thank you for the tip Blake, although I feel silly typing in a keyword for my name.
Hey Blake,
Thanks for another awesome SEO tip. Always teaching this old web-dog some new tricks
Steven Noreyko´s last blog ..Getting the most out of your headshot
Dofollow is a good prize for commenter not for spammer, keep it up. I think only thoughtful comment must be posted on site and that should get link.
I’m not sure if it’s a good thing but even though it encourange many readers to post comments, it also encourage people to post useless comments. E.g a funny post, the reader could just type 1 word and spam other post too with their useless comments.
WordPress has pretty good spam blocking tools. I also use a plugin to remove the ‘do not follow’ attribute, and have it that way for years. I have not had any problems with spam slipping through.
Joe Poniatowski´s last blog ..FreeBSD and the Addonics NAS Adapter
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