The “No Follow” Blog debate
I’ve read comments on a few forums now about how people dislike blogs that don’t offer “link juice” and use the no follow tag. Firstly, by default Wordpress uses the no follow tag on all links within the comments section, and personally, I think this is the right decision.
If you are writing comments on blogs to help with your blog or websites search engine optimisation, well you’re wasting your time. You might be asking yourself, if someone leaves an excellent comment on your blog what are there going to get in return.
I asked myself the same question when I started to blog, and I quickly realised that by posting useful, interesting comments on authority blogs, my traffic and readership started to increase. I posted my response to a blog post on USA today, and received a nice link in the blogroll, the same with Conde Nast and many other authority travel sites.
So the answer here is folks, forget about SEO when leaving comments and think about networking, show people you know what you’re talking about and people will follow like a herd of sheep, it really does work.
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Filed under: Blog Promotion Tips on June 30th, 2007
I’ve noticed my blogs receive a few spam-like comments from time to time that don’t even earn a response from me. I have no doubts that the best bet is to submit comments that are well thought out and relevant to the topic of the post. I’ve seen traffic returns from comments I’ve left on other sites
That is true but I do not see a problem with disabling the WordPress option and allowing people who comment get their links ‘followed’. I see it as a good will
Hi Darren,
I agree 100%.
People who comment just for the SEO benefit of the link are never going to be saying anything interesting or valuable.
However, if someone has an opinion about the blog topic and thinks it’s worth sharing … IMO, that’s what the comments are there for.
So, I’m 100% behind the nofollow tag for blog commenting.
It allows people to share their thoughts (ie. adds quality content to the blog) and it allows them to invite traffic via their URL.
And it discourages the spammers.
Steve