Nofollow or Dofollow? Better Search and Page Rank vs More Blog Comments

To NoFollow or not to NoFollow. That is the question.

As a blogger you want to utilize every marketing tool and strategy available to you to build your traffic, community and authority.

Sooner or later (and maybe more than once) the question arises for every blogger as to whether (or not) to make your blog a ‘dofollow’ blog.

Nofollow/Dofollow Explained

One of the major elements that Google considers when calculating search ranking for a web page is the links pointing towards that page.

Every link passes a measure of ‘juice’ to the target page. In simple terms, more juice on your page = higher authority and page rank (and thereby higher search rankings) for that page.

Just as every link pointing in lends value, every link pointing out from a page leaks a little link-juice to it’s target.

Nofollow appeared in 2005 as an attempt to block Spammers from taking advantage of this to build multiple high page rank (PR) links their sites. Developed by Matt Cutts of Google and Jason Shellan of Blogger, the nofollow attribute has become widely used across the web, and become the default setting for WordPress blog comments.

A link will be followed and indexed by search engine robots as normal if it’s a dofollow. Nofollow links however are treated differently (and differently by different search engines).

Here’s a simple diagram to illustrate the action of nofollow, from an SEOMoz article about How Search Engines judge link value

Simply speaking, none of the major search engines assign any kind of ranking as a result of a nofollow link. Google and Bing won’t take the anchor text used in the link into account, but Yahoo does.

Nofollow/dofollow summary: there’s less value in terms of link building from a link which is nofollow. Dofollow links allow the link juice to be passed on to the target page and therefore are ‘more valuable’ in this sense.

Note: Your own link building definitely should not exclusively target dofollow links. Link building should at least appear ‘natural’ by showing a mixture of nofollow and dofollow.

How does the NoFollow Dofollow Debate Affect Bloggers?

As a WordPress blog user, your blog commenting section is set to nofollow by default. This means that no link juice is passed to commentators when they leave a comment. That’s good news, since it discourages Spam comments from appearing on your blog (it’s not really worth the effort on the spammer’s part).

BUT (and here’s where the dofollow nofollow debate opens up) what happens if you want to encourage comments by rewarding genuine commentators? Give a quality juice filled backlink to readers who contribute value to your posts?

My view (I’m not the only one to conclude this) is that removing the nofollow attribute and allowing commentators a dofollow link on their comments encourages more comments, (thereby increasing your social proof, stimulating discussion, creating a buzz and building reader participation on your blog)

Of course, the downside here is that spam comments become more of a problem, creating a need for effective spam prevention strategies.

How to Make Your Blog a Dofollow Blog

As the default setting on WordPress is for nofollow, dofollow is going to require plugins.

The essential one is a Dofollow plugin such as No-nofollow which simply removes the nofollow attribute, making your commentators link a Dofollow link.

However, if you really want to reward your commentators with a quality link, you’ll want to allow them to add anchor text to their link in addition to their name. (if you don’t know what that is, read my post about anchor text)

I use the Keyword Luv plugin for this task. What this does is to allow users to enter their ‘name @ keywords’ in the name field when commenting.

EXAMPLE: If I’m trying to rank for the phrase ‘Blog Alchemy’, I would enter ‘Jym @ Blog Alchemy’ in the name field. If I wanted to rank for ‘banana recipes’ then I’d write ‘Jym @ banana recipes’ in the name box (obviously you’ll use your name and keywords, not mine).

Finally, to really engage with your readers (as mentioned above) I recommend using the CommentLuv plugin which allows commentators to add a link to a recent post on their own blog.

I recently wrote about this in depth, in my CommentLuv post, where you’ll also find download links for the plugin.

Here’s where to download No-nofollow (there are several dofollow enabling plugins, I use this one and it works fine with no effort on my part. It also gives the option of enabling dofollow links only after a certain number of comments have been left by a commentator).

Download KeywordLuv here, from the blog of Steve Cronin, it’s author.

Note: If you research these plugins yourself, you’ll find lots of blog posts moaning about spam and announcing that they are ditching the Keywordluv and Dofollow plugins (including Steve Cronin who wrote one of them!?). Virtually all of these are at least 2 or 3 years old (antiquated in other words) and don’t account for the improved anti-spam tools available now.

UPDATE: CommentLuv Premium has been launched and now deals with all the functions listed above – dofollow, keywordluv and commentluv all rolled into one. Plus a handful of other killer bits and pieces. Check out my review of CommentLuv Premium for more info.

To DoFollow or not to DoFollow, that is the question…

The answer to this is going to vary from blog to blog. Here at Blogger’s Alchemy I have all the plugins mentioned above enabled. I believe that this attracts more comments and stimulates more buzz and interaction.

Also, I love giving a dofollow anchor text link and post link to those who make the effort to read my posts and contribute by leaving a comment. A few rogue spam comments sneak through my anti-spam filters, but it doesn’t take long to spot them and mercilessly banish them to the spam folder.

If you’re looking to encourage more comments and reader participation on your blog, you’ll probably want the same set up.

A handful of dofollow links going out to commentators blogs won’t do your Page Rank or search rankings much harm. On the other hand, if you have 50+ outgoing comments per post, you may start to consider the benefits of not splurging all that juice out across the web…

Of course you can always offset the leakage by submitting your dofollow blog to some of the numerous exclusively dofollow directories. Followlist and YouDoFollow are good ones to start off with.

Dofollow? Nofollow? Which Way are You Going?

It’s worth taking a little time to consider the dofollow – nofollow issue as a blogger, and then implement the approach you decide upon.

With regards to link building, it’s clear that the search engines expect a mixture of dofollow / nofollow links pointing towards your site, so don’t be too concerned about excluding nofollow links from your link building activities (for example, by only commenting on dofollow blogs).

That said, make sure there are quality dofollow, keyword anchor text links pointing back at your blog, including some from high PR pages.

Demystified dofollow and nofollow for you? I hope so. Which side of the fence are you on - nofollow or dofollow? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Nofollow – Dofollow – Search Rankings vs More Blog Comments ©2011 Blogger’s Alchemy