Archive for no follow
My Hate of ‘no follow’
I wrote yesterday about my hate of the no follow HTML tag and how it completely ruins natural link building. I don’t see any reasons why not making a blog ‘do follow’. The usual argument is that the no follow tag is used to fight spam. The real truth is that it doesn’t make a single difference for spammers! I experimented with no follow blogs and they were receiving hundreds of spam comments a day. Why not have tools to fight spam and let us build backlinks naturally?
How do I enable ‘do follow’?
That’s where the combination of comment moderation, spam control tool and ‘do follow’ comes into play. First of all, if you have a Wordpress blog, use the following plugin to remove the default ‘no follow’ from all your links:
http://kimmo.suominen.com/sw/dofollow/
Then, make sure to enable whatever spam control plugin you prefer. I personally use Askimet and have always been satisfied with its accuracy. FInally, enable some sort of comment moderation on your blog. This basically mean that you will have to approve every comment on your blog. I agree it’s a little more work for you, but it only takes a couple of minutes per day to do so.
This all sounds good, but what do I personally get from ‘do follow’?
First of all, if most people enabled ‘do follow’, link building would be much more easier because you get links by getting involved in the community and commenting on blogs. You know, the whole purpose of blogs and the web in general.
Then, you can submit your website to ‘do follow’ blogs list. This not only gives you a backlink, but also traffic from that list. Bloggers looking for ‘do follow’ blogs will end up on all these lists across the web and eventually on your website. Once that visitor is on your website, he’ll have to read at least one of your article to make a clever comment that you will approve and if you’re lucky, he’ll subscribe to your feed or write a little something on his blog about your website.
If you want to send your website to one of these ‘do follow’ list, here’s a good one by Tuscon SEO Solutions:
Do Follow List
There are many others accross the web but this definitely is a good start.
Wrapping up
So, you get backlinks, more traffic and more clever comments. The only downside is having to approve every comment. I don’t see it as a downside because even with a ‘no follow’ blog, I usually end up approving every single comment because of spam. ‘do follow’ is the way to go.
I hate that ‘no follow’ tag. I think it ruins the whole spirit of the Internet and the blogosphere. I mean, there are zillions of blogs online and most of them are ‘no follow’ by default (Wordpress for example). How are people supposed to get backlinks naturally now? Enabling ‘do follow’ by default only encourage webmasters to use non-natural link building techniques like submitting to directories, buying links, etc. Anyway, the point is that my blog is now ‘do follow’, but comments are still moderated.
I don’t mind giving people backlinks. In fact, giving backlinks to people will get you backlinks too in the end. So there you go, feel free to comment with your website URL, it’s a +1 backlink. Also, feel free to spread the word this blog is do follow! 
