Does Your Blog Follow?
May 28, 2007 · → 9 Comments
The traditional question has always been “are you a leader or a follower?” but in the blog world it is more like are you a follower or a blocker?
Did you know that as a way to deter comment spammers most blog platforms have a “no-follow” rule for links in comments. This means that when a “spider” from one of the search engines is indexing you site and they come across the link the “spider” won’t follow the link, and thus the site that the link targets doesn’t get the link-love that they were looking for.
Now that is great for those spammy-bastards who bombard the web with offers for all sorts of weird and wonderful things that have no relevance to you or your readers. BUT … what about all the great people who genuinely come by and contribute to the conversation by leaving a message.. Unfortunately the [tag]no-follow[/tag] rule will stop them getting [tag]link-love[/tag] too 
That is unless you have a self-hosted [tag]Wordpress[/tag] blog and you can install the DoFollow plugin. Thanks [tag]SemiLogic[/tag] for putting together this great little [tag]plugin[/tag] that allows us to reward our commenters and not ignore them.
You can now leave a comment on this blog and get rewarded for your contribution with a little more search engine heads-up from me.
BTW – If you are interested Randa Clay has created a little graphic that you can show proudly if you have enabled this plugin on your site.
Leah,
Now that’s a simple and unbelievably useful tip, especially for those of us who are busy writing and speaking vs. geeking!
I’m using Typepad and am now off to check the no-follow situation there.
Thanks, Leah
Glad that the tip was useful. I know at times I can be a little on the geeky side but I try to keep things simple enough for the regular business owner to use as a regular part of the business.
I appreciate you sending this thank you through.
Typepad’s implementation of the do-follow is a little more geeky but I will post the instructions on a separate post today.
Leah, I found your site from the Cutline review thread. This plug in is useful but I’m also looking for something that would block certain IP addresses. Any ideas?
Hey Leah – I want to share the link love too! I’m sure I already am but will check it now.
Dave — I’m no pro, but maybe something like “Bad Behavior” would do the trick for you… do a search at http://www.weblogtoolscollection.com and it’ll pop up quick.
I’m a do-follow-er from the start, too… although I made my own itty-bitty badge. Anyone’s welcome to it, although it’s much more subtle than Randa’s.
I have been using dofollow for quite a while.
I think the problem with dofollow is that if you abandon your blog, the bots and spammers actually get a benefit from spamming your sites (which is basically why nofollow was implemented by wordpress in the first place).
I agree Rob (Jamdo) that if you abandon your blog with dofollow in place then you are just leaving out the welcome map to the spammers.
For me dofollow is part of the conscious actions that I take in the regular “care and feeding” of my blog. If I ever decide to let it go then the dofollow plugin (and probably a number of others would probably come out.
The other option to help stop the spammers on old posts (whether the site has been abandoned or not is to close posts over a certain age to new comments.
Thanks for dropping by and having something to say.
I think that this is such a great concept and adds so much to individuals sites. I think that it gives the little guy a great shot to become a marketing powerhouse. It gives options for hardworkers and intelligent marketers to get more out of their business. Have you seen benefits from doing this in your blog?
@Dave – Bad Behavior can’t be beat, it works so well with both Akisment and Spam Karma2. Also, I believe Spam Karma 2 will allow you to do some blacklisting of IPs as well.
I’m also a “DoFollower” and I’ve been very pleased with the plugin I’m using: http://kimmo.suominen.com/sw/dofollow/
The key feature is it allows me to configure a time value that determines when the “nofollow” is removed. I have it set for 1 day, so it gives me a bit of time to catch mistakes (aka spammers) in case one slips through.
I’ve recently captured some interesting discussions related to the “DoFollow” movement that might be of interest. Some great stuff in the comments as well.