Nofollow/Dofollow - Who Cares? We're Dofollow All The Way!

By Geoff Jackson on 28 October 2011 @ 5:30 PM.

Tags: nofollow, dofollow, blog commenting, dofollow blogs.

The whole dofollow / nofollow blog debate. Hmmm.

Nofollow: a link relationship that, I feel, has been abused for personal/monetary gain for some time now. It was probably the worst introduction that Google could have made (in its current form) to instruct crawlers to follow links. Now, you're hard pushed to even get backlinks that will be followed as many blog/site owners want to nofollow all their external links... And if you want a followed link, it's gonna cost ya! *sigh*

The reality is, it doesn't matter anyway, nofollow/dofollow - they all count! Don't believe all the hype that declare that nofollow links have no value, of course they do. Even if they don't pass PageRank and authority, they can still pass relevancy and trust. I, for one, would much rather have a nofollow backlink from Wikipedia than a dofollow backlink from an unknown, unathoritative website.

So, maybe blog commenters only arrive at your blog for a backlink in the first place, does it really matter? Providing they are contributing some value, extending the conversation and not abusing your system, let them have a dofollow backlink (providing its to a trustworthy source), I think this is a great way of rewarding your blog readers for their contribution. Encouraging and incentivising discussion on a blog should be paramount, if you're not interested in that, then you shouldn't be blogging and you've got it all wrong!

You think it'll attract more spammers? Well I got news for you, it will, you're right. But so is any type of comment form whether you have a URLAn acronym for 'uniform resource locator'.

Learn more about URL field or not, spammers are spammers, and they're not going anywhere very fast. Just make sure you beef up your comment system and ensure they really struggle to get through alive.

If you really want to be fancy and creative when 'rewarding your visitors', why not check out the premium version of CommentLuv which combines a few plugins where you can allow blog commenters to:-

• Use keywords as the anchor text in their backlink (KeywordLuv)
• Allow commenters to select one of their last 15 articles from the RSSAn acronym for 'really simple syndication'.
  
  Learn more about RSS feed of the website in question.
• Social media sharing options in one click (Facebook like, Google +1 and Twitter retweet).
• Along with a number of other incentives to encourage blog activity, it really is a great plugin (Wordpress) to generate more blog contribution.

Anyway, we are a dofollow blog, we can nofollow any backlinks we see fit so ensure your contribute quality, and thy will be rewarded with dofollow backlinks. Happy commenting!

About the Author

Geoff is more commonly recognised online by his internet pseudonym 'zigojacko'. He is the Director of Search at Clubnet Search Marketing, founder of The Clubnet Group and has a huge involvement in the music, clubbing and entertainment sector where he also manages operations at Clubnet UK

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