11 September 2010 ~ 64 Comments

Why NOT to make your blog dofollow


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I remember Ileane Smith when starting a discussion related to dofollow and nofollow links. She’d remarked “Google is smart enough to tweak their algorithms, let us blog!”.

dofollow-vs-nofollow

After we’ve discussed the advantages and disadvantages of dofollow links (see. Pros and Cons of Dofollow links), I hope you are in a position to make decision wisely. Here I argue, why I did not like dofollow for my blog.

I run my blog – ICT Trends (http://icttrends.com) – as a dofollow blog for one cycle of Google PageRank update. It had PR 4 when I started the experiment. I informed wherever I could and got interesting improvement in comments as well. It was a misfortune when I was compelled to remain inactive for many weeks due to my personal problems and real world job. So, I won’t blame dofollow links solely for the decrease of PR to 3. But during this time, I made a lot of studies on dofollow and nofollow trends. I decided to turn back to NOFOLLOW even if dofollow never had any drawbacks. Following I present my observations:

Ethics

Allowing all comment links in your blog as dofollow is something unethical. It was Google and some others that devised ‘nofollow’ attribute value and awarded the blog authors or webmasters a tool, hoping they would help the crawlers decide if a link is worth following or not. After all you are the one who know most of links in your page. You got the power at your disposal – now you can flag somebody to follow or nofollow! Everybody who has power should do his/her duty too! The intention of nofollow attribute in links is to avoid the sites and blogs that are link spams (more popularly comment spams) from getting undue benefit.

When you reward a link with dofollow, you casted a vote! You agreed that the site is related to its subject matter and is useful. You raised green signal to search engines to count it and improve the ranking so as to present the site to anybody searching for information. Did you do your job well before raising the green signal? If you can’t do your duty first, how dare you use the power?

Comments

After you read a post and moved with its arguments or useful details, you’d like to thank the author or add some value with your views in agreement or the opposite. You found something missing in subject matter and reminded the author. You got curious about the new thing in post and wish to request more information or clarification. You can write in comment. It will be valuable comment. Should there be any other motif behind?

You wrote a post which is great and thought provoking, would anybody check whether the links in comment is dofollow or not to comment? A good post will always raise desire to comment and most often cause the need. You can design your post in a way you compel your readers to comment if the post is really demanding.

Can you feel proud of comments that lurk as an ugly long tail to your post? There are ‘thank you for sharing’, ‘good post’, ‘subscribed your rss’, ‘this is the good post on the topic, expecting some more to come in future’ sort of comments which really has nothing to do with the topic discussed?

There can be many comments that completely appear genuine but were dropped just to get their link published. I call them ‘false comments’. I hate false comments.

Spams

This is not the only reason to hate dofollow links but it is true that you will invite a flood of spammers in your blog ranging from “……. Enlargement” to “……watch”. Yes, you can enable Akismet and other spam filters to get rid of them, but none of the filters are 100% capable, and most of them throw some genuine comments into spam box. Though you did not publish spam comments, you need to check against all of them to see if some genuine are buried among. This task is not of negligible volume. You can find from a dozens to some hundreds of spams always lying in your spam folder.

Monetizing

Links are valuable in online world. You should spend links as investments. They return you value in future. So, spend them wisely!

After few weeks, when you find your blog pretty popular, with demonstrable number of traffic and subscribers or members, you’d certainly welcome some revenue returned. When you try to sell some Ads positions, the advertisers will check outgoing links. Oh My God! There is so lot generous flow of Dofollow links?

When the links from your site is so easy and flowing everywhere, why anyone would spend money in it?

PageRank

PageRank is a metric by Google. It places your site in a scale from 0 to 10 based on how important your blog it feels. The higher PageRank is awarded to the more popular sites. The popularity of a site is measures with a count of how many other sites have a link back to you. The PR Value is earned when you have Dofollow link pointing to your site and spent when you have dofollow link pointing out from your site.

Having Dofollow blog with lots of outgoing links and fewer incoming link can harm your PageRank value. You will decrease your PR!

Is Google PageRank everything to measure the usability of a site? It can be argued. But majority of advertisers and other site owners do consider PageRank before they make a deal with you.

So, are you going to make your blog Dofollow just to make it appear alive (which is completely false)? Wise decisions earlier the better!

Everybody dreams of good PageRank and a strong presence in Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

There can be many tips to help you promote but next time I’m talking about Advertising and PageRank. Don’t miss the next post (Does Advertising Improve Your PageRank?)!

 


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Suresh Khanal

Hi I'm Suresh Khanal - Part time blogger and a helpful simple man, started SEO MMO Tips to share blogging experience with new bloggers to create, promote and monetize the blogs. I believe the tips and tools shared on this blog are helpful to learn blogging, search engine optimization and making money online!

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64 Responses to “Why NOT to make your blog dofollow”

  1. Ileane from Basic Blog Tips
    Twitter:
    12 September 2010 at 3:07 am Permalink

    Suresh, It’s great that we have these conversations and months later you still remember them! That’s awesome.

    My Blogger blog continues to get traffic from my listing in the DoFollow directory, and it is because of Intense Debate and CommentLuv (which I learned from you) that this traffic keeps coming in. I think each blogger has to look at what is the most important. In my case – I really suck at doing SEO. Don’t get me wrong I read about it all the time and I try some things, but the posts that get the most search traffic are not even the ones that I do any SEO work on. For example I did a post called Feedburner FeedFlare Posts to Google Buzz. That post draws more traffic from search engines than any other. So I gave up on SEO but not DoFollow.

    Thanks for remembering our conversations.
    Ileane@Basic Blog Tips recently posted..FeedBurner FeedFlare Now Posts To Google BuzzMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      12 September 2010 at 3:36 am Permalink

      When we start doing SEO being extra conscious, we often over do it and achieve negative results. WordPress is fine and one good SEO plugin can work you best if you’ve selected title and keywords properly.
      I was reading a post by Alex recently (http://alexwhalley.com/traffictips/need-traffic-now-ask-me-how/) and I like him say:
      The best SEO tips is “don’t try and force it”.
      We’ve made many mistakes trying to overdo following those one field experts. Google and any other search engines always try to make their results relevant. There is the life of Google. The day when it can’t list the relevant result, its of no use. In the name of SEO many experts are preaching to manipulate this and that. Might bring short term results better, but Google is always updating its algorithm.

    • Gail Gardner from GrowMap
      Twitter:
      28 February 2011 at 10:30 am Permalink

      Hi Suresh,

      Ileane is one of many bloggers who are very knowledgeable and generous with their time. There are many more I recommend connecting with that are mentioned in many posts on my blog. The most recent one that comes to mind is about BizSugar. If you want to find more people like me check out those I specifically link to in that post.
      Gail Gardner @ GrowMap recently posted..DoFollow CommentLuv KeywordLuv CommunityMy Profile

  2. Baba Pandey 12 September 2010 at 1:31 pm Permalink

    Haha, well said well said. Dofollow will pass link juice to external website and spammers will be attacking continuously. However, this doesn’t mean than spammers won’t attack nofollow sites. You will still have to moderate comments in nofollow blog. Eh ! About motorizing, advertisers will check the OBL of homepage not of each inner page. So, making dofollow won’t affect this point also. If you don’t lick obl from Homepage then it won’t affect the google pr. Ebuddy Suresh, so far i don’t see any drawbacks for making dofollow if you are careful. Yeee,,,u need to remove latest commentators and top commentators from homepage. etc

  3. Keith Davis from Public Speaking and Presentations 12 September 2010 at 2:12 pm Permalink

    Another useful post Suresh
    I’ve never got to the bottom of which is better Dofollow or Nofollow.
    Guess I’ve just stayed with the default Nofollow on my wordpress blog for comments.

    Good to see that you reward your commenters with both keywordluv and commentluv – I’m still thinking about keywordluv.

    As for pagerank – I must confess that I try hard on getting a good pagerank.
    Tryingt to get to 4, which would make me happy.
    Keith Davis@Public Speaking and Presentations recently posted..Two way trafficMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      12 September 2010 at 2:50 pm Permalink

      KeywordLuv is a must for me as I hate people commenting with their blog name which sound weired as comment author name. Using keywordLuv solves the problem. commenters are happy because they can link to keywords and I get the real name of commenters.

  4. Tek3D
    Twitter:
    14 September 2010 at 5:23 am Permalink

    Yeah, dofollow links could affect negatively to PR. However I still set comments in my blog to dofollow because links in different part of a page are not treated the same way. Links in the comment section has a much less weight than in the content. At this stage, I want to encourage readers and commentators, more than improving PR of my blog, just make it natural.
    Tek3D recently posted..Start Monetizing your Blog in 4 monthsMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      14 September 2010 at 6:43 am Permalink

      Hi Tek, Thanks for stopping by and for your words.

      In Baba Pandey’s view, the dofollow links of inner pages won’t matter much if your home page does not have too many outbound links.

      I have turned everything else NOFOLLOW but the links posted through CommentLuv are DOFOLLOW. I hope this will satisfy the comment authors.

  5. Justin Germino
    Twitter:
    14 September 2010 at 8:54 pm Permalink

    Comments and dofollow links only drain PR from sub posts not from index.php or homepage where comments don’t display. But having subpages with higher PR that link back to your homepage can give your homepage a pagerank boost too. Also, according to Matt Cutt “NoFollow” will still drain a small amount of PR from your blog, it will just tell Google Search Engines to ignore it, but you still lose some PR either way.

    I was a PR2 for 2 years, I was NoFollow for the first 9 months and was a PR2 when I was Nofollow, I converted to DoFollow for 11 months and am still a PR2 as a DoFollow blog. It didn’t appear to affect my PR at all, my PR is artificially surpressed because I do sponsored content which Google penalizes far more. That being said, very few of my “posts” have any PR above 0, this is probably attributed to DoFollow.

    I may take an experiment and convert back to NoFollow for about 6 months (2 Google Updates) to see if there is any positive effect on my blogs pagerank. I have been considering for sometime.

    You are right, PR backlinks = Money, advertisers want them, and if you are suppressing your pagerank from giving away free PR to commenters, you could be hurting your income potential for a deluge of spam comments.
    Justin Germino recently posted..Custom Designed Websites from ConceptsMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      15 September 2010 at 12:33 am Permalink

      Sincere thanks to Justin!

      Because I’m using CommentLuv, one ‘recent post’ link of commenters is already ‘dofollow’ and this will make my comment authors happy. You are right, if home page do not release free ‘dofollow’ links, it can be attractive to advertisers. I guess that would be a better management of link strategy – nofollow for home page and dofollow for commenter’s recent post link.

      Sponsored contents and ‘dofollow’ text links gets penalty from Google. It is not fair, in fact. Because google can’t develop a better algorithm to rank sites for its relevancy and usefulness, Bloggers and webmasters have to limit their income potentials from links economy! ‘I can’t sell links and direct Ads because it will hamper the fairness of Google Search Result Page’ is something funny though the link trade emmerged because google made ranking algorithm in that way.

  6. Tia 15 September 2010 at 3:08 pm Permalink

    I read a post on Matt Cutts blog about dofollow/nofollow, and he basically said that using nofollow is really for sites that you don’t trust.

    Google is supposed to update page rank in a few weeks (early October is what I heard). My blog has been dofollow ever since the last page rank update when it went from N/A to PR2. During that brief time (my blog was almost brand new at the time of the PR update), I was only commenting on high-quality, nearly all nofollow blogs, and my blog was also nofollow. Since then, I made my blog dofollow and started doing a lot of networking with smaller dofollow blogs. It’s significantly improved my traffic and Alexa ranking, but I’m not sure what will happen come PR update. Maybe it’ll increase, but maybe not.

    All that to say, I don’t know why we pay so much attention to dofollow/nofollow. Nofollow links still count! lol It cracks me up when people say they don’t and then I visit my Google back links and sure enough, those nofollow links are there.

    We should do what we feel is right. I made my blog dofollow because I want to share page rank. And I appreciate people who do the same.

    Cheers! Voted you up on BlogEngage.

    Tia
    Tia recently posted..Bloggers- Does It Feel Like No One’s ListeningMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      16 September 2010 at 12:25 pm Permalink

      Thanks Tia for sharing your experience. It will be interesting to see your PR this update.

      It is NOT true that commenting on NOFOLLOW blogs won’t help improve your PR. As I mentioned on my post, the final decision is that of search engines. Google frequently updates its algorithm and tries its best to reflect most relevant search results. In this course whatever practices that are intended to influence the search results, search engines take concerns. So, you never can say because you commented on dofollow blog, you’ve got right credit to promote your page rank. It depends upon the number of links pointing to you and quality of those links. How would one get considerable quality when the author (blogger) is blindly voting each and every links that fall in his/her post?

      As a comment author, there is no need to worry. Go commenting whatever matches the topic with your niche. BUT as a blogger, should we not be more responsible. If we make all other links NOFOLLOW, then only the ones we’ve dofollowed will get credit.

      Making your blog completely dofollow – you will be hammering comment authors – though your intention was to reward them.

      Execuse me, please, if you disagree. I’ll be happy to listen the voices on other side.

  7. Paul
    Twitter:
    18 September 2010 at 3:37 am Permalink

    The nofollow versus dofollow is always debate online. Some make their blog dofollow while others keep it as nofollow. At one point I used a plugin that created dofollow links for commenters that made at least 5 comments on my blog. I don’t use it anymore.

    Right now, I’m not thinking about chaning my blog to dofollow, or increasing my page rank. I am concentrating on increasing my visitor count, and readership, as well as writing content, and hopefully everything else will fall in line.

    I never put much thought into make my comments dofollow, nor do I care about blogs that I comment on. For me, if the content is good, then I’ll comment.
    Paul recently posted..How to Prevent Scripts from Loading for Logged in Users in WordPressMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      18 September 2010 at 1:09 pm Permalink

      Thank you Paul for stopping by and sharing your ideas. I guess, new bloggers in their beginning days are attracted by dofollow comments; as they grow up and better understand the working of search engine, one inevitably learns that it is only content that matters. Feels nice that our thought matches.

  8. Imran from TechiesBlog
    Twitter:
    20 September 2010 at 4:37 pm Permalink

    Hi Suresh,

    Came to know about you from endeavor-online where you have commented, I agree your are very right, and I am not going to debate you on this topic coz I am very new to this field and still learn the heaps.

    If there are good and success, then bad and disadvantages follows, if we have thought of virus first then we would not have opted internet, as you know there so many computer with no internet have load of virus filled.

    I have also made my blog a dofollow blog where in a commenter have to post at least 10 genuine comments only then his or her link will have dofollow otherwise nofollow. So that I have better control on the commenting system, wherein which comment to be approved and which not to.

    Moreover you have given a great post which made me very cautious and forced me monitor each and every thing at a micro level.

    I have never commented this big, you have driven my attention looking forward more stuff from you.

    Thanks for sharing
    Imran
    Imran@TechiesBlog recently posted..Learn How to Setup phpMyAdmin in WampServerMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      20 September 2010 at 11:37 pm Permalink

      Thank you Imran. After all discussions refines and help to derive better conclusions.

    • Gail Gardner from GrowMap
      Twitter:
      28 February 2011 at 3:47 am Permalink

      I understand the theory behind the use of plugins that only go dofollow after 3 or 10 or any other number of comments but they make no sense to me. Few are more diligent than link builders when it comes to leaving many comments.

      I think these types of plugins usually just confuse regular readers and commentators and new bloggers and do little to discourage link builders who know how they work.
      Gail Gardner @ GrowMap recently posted..Higher Blog Traffic By Using CommentLuv EffectivelyMy Profile

  9. Kimi 10 October 2010 at 1:40 pm Permalink

    I have made my blog dofollow a few months ago, but i couldn’t control spammy links in my blog :(

    So i have changed my blog to a nofollow, i have now less comments but also less spams.
    Kimi recently posted..Add Image To WordPressMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      10 October 2010 at 3:00 pm Permalink

      Nofollow should not reduce the number of comments you are having. If they are reduced, they were just false comments or spams. Don’t worry, the ones who appreciated your posts will certainly return to your blog and can’t resist commenting there.

      Thanks Kimi for your comments.

      • Kimi 10 October 2010 at 6:03 pm Permalink

        Exactly, great point, thanks!
        Kimi recently posted..Add Image To WordPressMy Profile

      • Gail Gardner from GrowMap
        Twitter:
        27 October 2010 at 11:12 am Permalink

        I have to disagree about being nofollow reducing your comments. As there are more and more blogs we can not read them all. There are more than enough high quality dofollow blogs so why would someone keep a nofollow blog on their reading list?

        I believe that eventually there will be a natural division of nofollow communities and dofollow communities with very little overlap.

        It doesn’t stop at comments, either. We will naturally link to the blogs that are in our community. Those who are generous with links will link to each other and those who are selfish with links will get as many as they can while giving as few as possible.

        If being dofollow really hurts pagerank I do not see how many of my favorite blogs are still PR3 and PR4 including mine, Kikolani, and many others. I have a post with more than 500 comments in them that are PR4 and many with hundreds of comments that are PR3.

        I believe in doing what is best for all, most sustainable and improves life for the most people. That is why I am dofollow and provide KeywordLuv and CommentLuv.

        Even nofollow blogs get spam – and now with the GrowMap anti-spambot plugin that you’re using spam isn’t much of a problem. Simply put any manual spammers you wish to block into the blacklist in the discussion area of WordPress and their comments will be put into the spam section for review and easy deletion.
        Gail Gardner @ GrowMap recently posted..GrowMap AntiSpambot Plugin Now Available at WordPress Plugin RepositoryMy Profile

        • Suresh Khanal
          Twitter:
          27 October 2010 at 12:38 pm Permalink

          Its my great fortune Gail is on my blog! Welcome home!

          I respect every points you’ve mentioned here and agree on true essence. I wish to clarify a few points I believe.

          Though SEO is always a mystry and Google frequently updates its algorithm, its hard to draw any conclusion for ever. But still, I guess most believe that – Having too many outgoing dofollow links compared to incoming can harm PageRank. When saying that I don’t mean the ‘dofollow’ or ‘nofollow’ are solely responsible to award PageRank. Search engines are always free to make their own discretion to the link they discover.

          Having ‘Nofollow’ blog I’m not selfish. I freely link to other blogs in community through Friday Gems series every week. Doing this, I belive, I’m offering more valuable dofollow link to the community. Having few ‘dofollow’ link from a blog where hundreds are nofollow should be ranked higher than many links from a blog with all dofollow links.

          After you implement CommentLuv in your blog one link is already ‘dofollow’, isn’t it?

          I was very confused when starting this blog. After I read a few literatues and pondered about the reason behind the default nofollow setting in WordPress. Thus I did not wish to pull that rel=”nofollow” right now. But, yes, I’m seeing the more clearer divisions. I’m here to blog, to share, to appreciate others and to be liked by others. Willing to help others and expect the helping hands extending towards me too! Discussions and suggestions from friends will shape the future brighter. Thank you Gardner for your precious comment.

          • Gail Gardner from GrowMap
            Twitter:
            28 February 2011 at 3:45 am Permalink

            Hello Suresh,

            I was going to mention that your CommentLuv outgoing links are dofollow. There are some blogs that have made those nofollow too, but most CommentLuv links are dofollow.

            If a blog has dofollow CommentLuv links but nofollow name links I do not consider them a nofollow blog.

            Those who are seeking keyword specific links can buy CommentLuv default links and put them into the CommentLuv featured post space. There is more information on that in my comprehensive post about CommentLuv that I will feature in CommentLuv in this reply.

            Yes you are correct that links within content are more valuable than links not in content. It is also believed that the first link in a post is more valuable than the links further into the post and it is possible that the importance drops with each succeeding link – but I have not seen any comprehensive tests done to prove that and since that changes all the time even proof might not mean it still works that way.

            What we dofollow bloggers must do is create a strong comment policy and link it right under where you have Leave a Reply so our commentators will be most likely see it.

            I need to publish one and only approve more substantial comments. That may or may not improve my pagerank, but it needs to be done anyway because I am getting so many comments now. Drop by and see it when I have it up and do something similar and see the tips in the CommentLuv post.

            I do allow more comments that most bloggers would not because I see GrowMap as a teaching blog and the link builders are part of my audience. If I just delete their comments I can not teach them how to improve.

            No matter how busy I get I will do my best to always be accessible to those who seek answers. I am just like you – only busier these days – and encourage all bloggers to ask questions.

            There is no reason to learn blogging the hard, slow way when there are so many who have gone before you who are willing to share what they have learned.
            Gail Gardner @ GrowMap recently posted..How CommentLuv Grows Businesses and BlogsMy Profile

  10. Richard
    Twitter:
    11 October 2010 at 7:59 am Permalink

    I’ve made my blog do follow because I want to encourage commenting, but I do moderate for spam. Akismet is a great plugin for this purpose.

    I think it’s a matter of personal preference. I would say it’s a bit far to say that it’s unethical to have a do-follow blog. My understanding is that is actually a preference that WordPress sets as the default, but google’s default is actually follow. Am I wrong about that?
    Richard recently posted..Webhosting Rundown- Reviewing a Couple of OptionsMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      11 October 2010 at 8:14 am Permalink

      Truely appreciate, Richard. I am trying to ponder upon this ‘dofollo’ and ‘nofollo’ type of thing in market. I don’t mean unethical to have do-follow blog, but unethical to blindly link everywhere with ‘nofollow-free’ links. When you link with ‘nofollow-free’, you casted a vote on authority of that site. How could you let somebody else to cast your vote? Yes, Richard it is personal preference, I just wished to discuss a bit with you all hoping a better conclusion is derived. Thanks a lot for added input.

  11. SEO Philippines 6 December 2010 at 2:21 pm Permalink

    I’m starting to accept the idea why I should not encourage bloggers to opt for “do follow” blogs since, most spammers are attracted to the do follow attribute and its role in indexing links and page rank contributions. Google started the entire PR epidemic and yet, most SEO consultants find it absurd to believe that PR is the driving agent why people build links, venture into PPC conversion and other relevant SEO and SEM campaigns. Should I scrape my “do follow” third-party blogs and opt for traffic instead with “no follow” blogs?
    SEO Philippines recently posted..SEO Outsourcing as an Alternative To Print And TV AdsMy Profile

  12. samlei72 26 December 2010 at 12:14 pm Permalink

    spammers are really great problems for do follow blogs, i think this can be solve by having a moderator to contol and omit unwanted post and remarks.

  13. Loc
    Twitter:
    21 January 2011 at 3:55 am Permalink

    maybe I’ll get more visitors now that I set it to dofollow but if the spammer is proven to be a problem, then I will simply turn off the dofollow.
    tks for the great info

  14. cabinets orlando 22 January 2011 at 9:49 am Permalink

    we start doing SEO being extra conscious, we often over do it and achieve negative results. WordPress is fine and one good SEO plugin can work you best if you’ve selected title and keywords properly.

  15. jocuri y8 8 February 2011 at 8:56 pm Permalink

    Dofollow doesn`t worth it…you’ll wake up in 2 weeks with you page rank on the mud.

    • Gail Gardner from GrowMap
      Twitter:
      28 February 2011 at 3:32 am Permalink

      IF it affects your pagerank it takes a lot longer than two weeks. You can minimize the effect by having a tighter commenting policy than I have been using in my blog. Dofollow did NOT negatively affect Kikolani but it did affect GrowMap. I have vastly more comments from linkbuilders and businesses than Kristi does.
      Gail Gardner @ GrowMap recently posted..SEO- SERPS- Is There a Google Search Engine FairyMy Profile

  16. Bogdan from Dictionar Roman Englez
    Twitter:
    20 February 2011 at 8:58 pm Permalink

    If you’re going to make your blog dofollow, you’ll definetely get a lot of comments. People are trying to make dofollow links using blog comments.
    Bogdan @ Dictionar Roman Englez recently posted..Cu automobilulMy Profile

  17. reverse phone usa 21 February 2011 at 12:35 pm Permalink

    I think that you should make your blog dofollow.You will get a lot of traffic and as far as Pagerank is concerned,I know many dofollow blogs with a healthy Pagerank of 5+.
    reverse phone usa recently posted..Reverse Phone Lookup- What Is Exactly Reverse Phone LookupMy Profile

  18. Alex
    Twitter:
    28 February 2011 at 2:57 am Permalink

    Suresh mate, this is a very timely post and one conversation that I just have to get involved in.
    As the excellent post and very indepth follow on conversation proves, there is no real way of knowing for sure.
    All I know is this. I was a PR2 and now after over 4000 outgoing comments to small random sites, my PR went to 1.
    Whether this impacts the overall PR remains to be seen but there is only one way to find out. I have gone no follow until the next update and only time will tell.
    What I found surprising was how upset so many commentators were by the lack of follow.
    Funny thing is, in the scheme of things, one less link back from a comment will not effect them and if anything, the natural no follow and do follow link building will be better for their overall SEO anyway.

    I still give the love to my commentators through the dofollow top commentators widget so I dont know what they are complaining about LOL.

    Thanks for the link in the comment above btw, glad you and I agree that forcing SEO is wasting valuable time and resources.

    Tweeted and voted at Blokube and Blogengage :)
    Alex recently posted..Who Stole My PagerankMy Profile

  19. Gail Gardner from GrowMap
    Twitter:
    28 February 2011 at 3:30 am Permalink

    You have made some wise points regarding the pros and cons and I am not here to encourage you to change your mind – only to add some additional viewpoints to the discussion.

    Links have many purposes besides being seen as currency. To me their greatest purpose is so that I can make it easy for my readers to get additional information or quickly visit the sites I’m talking about. Those who limit links remove this great value from their content.

    We should not allow Google to make our decisions for us nor to control what we see and do not see. It IS up to bloggers who choose to do so to share how to make the world better for all. Part of that may be to encourage our readers to stop handing so much power to the few multi-national corporations controlled by the global elite and start supporting the individuals, small businesses, and communities that will be the ONLY bright spot in the crash to come.

    For all those who believe everything they read and especially what Google says I encourage you to read my last two blog posts about why they truly ARE evil. Do check out the evidence before you next write in their favor.

    Until the last PageRank update, my blog being DoFollow and using CommentLuv and KeywordLuv DID NOT affect my pagerank. It DID affect it on this last update (GrowMap dropped from PR4 to PR3 while Kikolani rose from PR4 to PR5 and many internal pages lost PR too), but I am still in favor of Do Follow and will not change that. I will tighten up and publish a comment policy.

    I disagree with your concept that no one checks to see if your blog is dofollow. Many of us DO check. There are only so many hours in the day and there are millions of blogs with hundreds in most niches. I only focus on those that ARE dofollow and use CommentLuv.

    I very rarely comment in any other blogs EXCEPT when DoFollow, CommentLuv, and KeywordLuv are being discussed or when calling to task trending evil such as what has been going on since last Thursday regarding the Google Farmer update.

    There WILL be separate communities for dofollow and nofollow with very little overlap. Why would I read and comment in your nofollow blog if there are many just as good or better that are dofollow? As more and more quality blogs come online that will become even more true.

    What I read is what I Tweet about, review on StumbleUpon, recommend on BizSugar, schedule additional Tweets about, like on Facebook and share on FriendFeed. Other Social Media savvy bloggers do similar things and dofollow bloggers are more generous about sending traffic to others. Bloggers should factor that into the dofollow/nofollow decision-making process.

    SOME nofollow bloggers attack dofollow bloggers to create controversy to generate traffic to benefit themselves. Just as in forums it is good advice to never feed the trolls, I recommend those who use those tactics be ignored as it is unwise to reward bad behavior.
    Gail Gardner @ GrowMap recently posted..Google Farmer Update Slaps Google Shopping CompetitorsMy Profile

  20. azmee from Buka-rahasia 6 March 2011 at 12:29 am Permalink

    Oh my, I have just tried to remove my rel=nofollow tag before reading this post. But I didn’t. It’s scary and now I am convinced that making my blog dofollow will bring many disadvantages instead. thanks, mate.
    azmee @ Buka-rahasia recently posted..Ubah-Tempatkan Judul Posting di Depan Nama Blog untuk SEOMy Profile

  21. metin2 private servers 6 March 2011 at 4:42 pm Permalink

    so in the end , what is the best strategy?

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      7 March 2011 at 4:55 pm Permalink

      Haaa….! That’s the dilemma Metin isn’t it. There are so many things that you can’t throw it to any of the two sides. It would be completely your personal preference.

  22. Diabetes Review 29 March 2011 at 7:27 am Permalink

    interesting articles to read, I am still confused about the blog and nofolow dofolow.whether many of the benefits when our blog dofolow? whether his opposite its many losses? beg to be described

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      29 March 2011 at 6:28 pm Permalink

      Its nothing like nofollow is loss or dofollow is benefits. If you have dofollow, it will attract others to leave their links (most probably through comments). If your blog is nofollow, people will still comment if your content is really worthy. In short just understand that publishing one dofollow link is a vote of authority you casted for that linked page.

  23. SEO from 31 March 2011 at 4:03 pm Permalink

    Hi Suresh, I have enjoyed reading both your article and the follow up comments posted by many people. I really appreciate what you mentioned in your last reply – do not over do – I think I have learnt my lesson.

  24. jasa penerjemah 20 April 2011 at 2:17 pm Permalink

    thanks friend, I try, it could boost my web directly, previously No. 16 is now number 11 once again thank ya ….

  25. raymund from affordable micr toner
    Twitter:
    5 May 2011 at 6:12 am Permalink

    I think it is OK to make your blog dofollow as long as you know how to handle spam effectively. GASP will do the work in blocking spam. I love this plug in so much.

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      5 May 2011 at 7:28 am Permalink

      Thank you Raymund for your suggestion. Yes, GASP is wonderful to block all the automated bots, at least till now.

  26. Daniel 10 June 2011 at 9:06 am Permalink

    A very interesting topic, Suresh.

    The whole do-follow / no-follow thing seems to bring out some widely varying opinions as to just what the overall effects are.
    From an SEO perspective, the latest news is that ” No-follow links” are more valued(Since the Panda update) as far as Google’s algorithm is concerned.
    That report(completed after some intense research) goes through some interesting data covering all aspects that may affect a website(Blogs) overall performance.
    It shows a number of comparison Pie charts(Broken up by plenty of words between the charts).
    Though, even with so much data from the SEO “Big Kahunas” the article is riddled with admissions that, “They are not too sure just how accurate the stats really are.
    Meaning even those ” in the know” May know not” and the data provided may actually be completely irrelevant.

    Daniel.
    Daniel recently posted..Guest Posting Is Big Now But for How LongMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      10 June 2011 at 3:58 pm Permalink

      Thank you Daniel. I always prefered the natural mixture of dofollow and nofollow back links. For this I never care if a blog is dofollow or not to comment on. I just look for related posts and insert my heads in.

  27. India Data Center 1 July 2011 at 3:29 pm Permalink

    Very good pointview Suresh, however, if you create your own dofollow blog its does not cost too much. As far as monetizing goes, l would like you to read your own statement and think over it again

    “When the links from your site is so easy and flowing everywhere, why anyone would spend money in it?”

    Dofollow and Nodofollow Tag does not affect monetizing or your affiliated marketing.

  28. zaarahjasmin 10 August 2011 at 11:46 am Permalink

    very true… thank you for sharing this tips :)
    zaarahjasmin recently posted..First time + Thinking of new haircutMy Profile

  29. bhumika
    Twitter:
    12 September 2011 at 4:55 pm Permalink

    I recently made my comments section dofollow..did get a few spam comments but deleted them..I was not aware of link juice sharing..now I am confused whether to keep it dofollow or make it nofollow again..
    bhumika recently posted..Tips and Toes Eye Lights Marine Magic Review,SwatchesMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      13 September 2011 at 5:49 am Permalink

      I stayed nofollow for long and just now turned to dofollow. Well to make it easier, what I learned is – if you have a niche blog or website that that does business with organic traffic, you’d certainly like to keep the links nofollow but as far as personal blogs where you like maximum communication, interaction among the bloggers and sharing, dofollow helps you.

  30. Christopher Lopez 29 September 2011 at 10:27 am Permalink

    I agree the facts about dofollow links, it is such a great tool to have in blog sites. It helps generate traffic to your sites and generate income as well. :)
    Christopher Lopez recently posted..Buying New TiresMy Profile

  31. saikiranreddy from Entertainment
    Twitter:
    5 October 2011 at 7:56 pm Permalink

    How to install this keywrdluv and comment luv ina blogger platform..pls help me..thanks
    saikiranreddy@Entertainment recently posted..Youtube Downloader to blogMy Profile

  32. saikiranreddy
    Twitter:
    6 October 2011 at 9:52 am Permalink

    thank you suresh !…
    saikiranreddy recently posted..Youtube Downloader to blogMy Profile

  33. saikiranreddy from picstrickstips
    Twitter:
    6 October 2011 at 10:29 am Permalink

    Hi suresh …i have registered on intense debate..but after installing commentluv its showing a msssage that commentluv no longer wroks on blogger platform..soon it will disable..go to premium now..! what to do now..is there any free plugin like commentluv..and how to install it ?
    saikiranreddy@picstrickstips recently posted..Youtube Downloader to blogMy Profile

    • Suresh Khanal
      Twitter:
      8 October 2011 at 7:12 am Permalink

      This is the worst thing I ever heard. It must be because Andy has recently released his premium version of CommentLuv. Wait for some more days if IntenseDebate and Andy make some agreement.

  34. Bob Brown 12 October 2011 at 10:28 am Permalink

    Dofollow links are great tool in having lots of traffic, but then lots of spammers come along and it is so much annoying. I really hate spam comments. Well, Suresh you made a great information and I appreciate it very much.
    Bob Brown recently posted..Car Auction Tips ArticlesMy Profile

  35. Auren from Tips and Tricks Blogger
    Twitter:
    6 March 2012 at 9:02 am Permalink

    Hi Suresh. The mindset that we only give comment to blog with do-follow in order to get organic traffic will frustrate you. Why not just give a comment with your real name and keywords then may be you will get traffic from that backlink.