Do Follow! This almost sounds like something out of ‘Simon Says’ or a game of, ‘Mother May I?’ In fact, it has nothing to do with children’s games, but everything to do with helping your blogging community.
As I am sure you are aware, getting more comments on your blog posts is not always an easy task! I remember writing a post asking people to leave a comment so I knew SOMEBODY was reading my writings and I heard the crickets chirping… I received advice once from an expert who told me, ‘If you want comments, just ask for them!’ Easy said than done! Just like with your Opt-in list where you exchange items of value (your special report for your reader’s email address), you may get more comments if you offer something of value back to the commenter!
There is something called a ‘do follow’ link which contributes to increased rankings for your comment authors. That is right! When a comment is left (along with the comment author’s website), you are in a sense telling Google that the author’s website is important! And who does not want to feel important?
By Default… rel=”nofollow”
Techie warning! Techie talk is coming up! I will type slowly so everyone can understand!
By default, WordPress includes what is called the rel=”nofollow” attribute to all comment links and their websites. This tells the Search Engines, “These are not the links you are looking for” and the search engines ignore it. The reason the no follow attribute is the default setting is to not provide any goodness to spammers who are posting Fake Blog Comments to get back links to their web sites.
Um, So What??
Here is the deal… Many bloggers know that there is less value for them to leave a comment on a site that is No Follow compared to a site that is Do Follow. Think about it… If you were going to leave a comment on only one site and you are considering 2 sites – one that will give you some love and credit for your site’ or another site that only says, Thanks!, which would you comment on? Exactly! You would comment where you get all the love! Many bloggers will not post on a no follow site.
What Can You Do?
If you want to share the love, there are a few things you can do to remove the no follow tag from your WordPress website:
- You can go in and add some php programming code of WordPress;
- You can actually modify the WordPress files that get executed when someone comes to your site; or
- You can install a WordPress Plugin
I am going to say that most people do not feel all comfy and cozy tinkering with programming code, so let’s just skip to #3 and install a nice easy plugin, shall we? Why yes! Yes, we shall!
Go into your Dashboard , click on Plugins / Add New and search for the phrase, “do follow" – I found the plugin, dofollow 4.0. I installed it and activated it here on I Need Help With WordPress. This is now a Do Follow website!
If you become a do follow site, I highly recommend that you monitor your comments very closely to ensure that you are letting anyone post just anything in order to get Google Juice! After all, in a sense, you are giving your word that the comment author’s website is worthy of your recommendation.
Once that is all done, I suggest that you put a graphic on your website so others know that you are not a no follow blog (talk about double negatives there!) which means you are a do follow blog! If you look on the left side of my site, you will see I put a graphic there! The world now knows this is the place to comment!
Thank you for this great advice. Word Press is not user friendly if one is a newbie like me. Your information and suggestions are a wonderful gift.
Thanks Julia!
By the way, if anyone wants to look at the follow-up post, https://digitalmaestro.com/how-do-you-display-picture-wordpress-sidebar/, you can see some additional info on how to add the image to your sidebar.
Great post! Dofollow bookmarking sites play massive part in search engine optimization, the result of this is that spammers have caught on to this and many social bookmark sites have gone no follow.
Of your list, from what I can tell, Digg and Del.icio.us are both now nofollow which blows. I suppose the only hope if that for every site which goes nofollow, 2 more sites pop up which are dofollow.
I looked at the links within you comment section, included on this posting and they look like NoFollow links. Does the tool create DoFollow links in the name field or within the comments section with this WordPress add on?
Hi Keith – WordPress automatically will make a name ‘clickable’ to the website that is included when someone leaves a comment.
Looking at the code that is created you can see that the link on your gravatar is a “nofollow’, however, the link based on your name IS not a “nofollow” (technically, it is an “external” link).
Thanks for clarifying this, Paul as the follow or no follow was something I’ve wondered about. Very helpful!
I have read your post by taking time because it has impressed me and of late I’m decorating a blog site on SEO & SEO affiliated information with my personal thinking & decoration. I was somewhat excited that how can I build my site Dofollow, your emphasized instruction by installing dofollow 4.0 program helped me lot. I’ve also seen your “fake blog comments” post which been good for blogger I think because they can get help by seeing sample of the fake comments. Personally my view concerning weblog that it’s like a kid, if you don’t take care of, it will be spoiled. Concerning dofollow recognition with graphics, can you please furnish link to get detail explanation.
Kumar – can you please elaborate more by what you mean, “Concerning dofollow recognition with graphics”?
Thanks.
Thanks Paul for your attention. Please note that in your last paragraph you have quoted “….. I suggest that you put a graphic on your website so others know that you are not a no follow blog”-I would like to know that how I can organize it in my blog, “How To Make Money Online”?
Kumar –
This is simple – if you go to the John’s site that I listed in the post ( Extreme John’s) you can get the a graphic. Then, place the graphic in your sidebar like you have on your site.
Paul.
I like you analogy in the opening paragraph, that’s exactly how I feel after reading about not to not follow. As my head finishes spinning, I think I get it now. Use common sense. What makes me crazy is that when bloggers run out of things to write about, they rehash the unhashable and confuse us all over again. I started a notebook. When I come across something I haven’t thought or read about for a while and it (a post) throws me a curve ball and presents me with a new kink to re-work out, I first check my notes, to see what the final resolution was the first time I ran across it. Which is what I should have done with this category of no follow/follow. The reason I went on the search in the first place was my new theme automatically no followed my internal links, which I gather should not be not followed. Oops, head spin again. Thanks for your clear example of what not to do. Plugin here I come.
Thanks for sharing! Keeping a notebook is a great way to keep track of solutions you found when you were stumped! I also like to keep track of websites, ideas, and things to do!
Thanks for the info. I have been looking for a way to do this. Has the number of comments gone up since you made the change?
Great question, Nick – Overall, I would say yes! Honestly, there are a lot of factors that get comments. Folks LIKE to comment on DO FOLLOW blogs becuase they get some benefit coming back to them. The spammers LOVE DO FOLLOW blogs since it gets them backlinks. For this reason, make sure you are moderating your comments and only approve the real ones. I wrote a post on this over at:
But, back to your question… WHen I actively drive traffic to the site, I get more comments. When I give a “Call To Action”, I get more comments. When I ask a question, I get more comments… So, it is not just one thing or another!
Thanks.