Comments Policy – DOfollow-NoFollow
I LOVE to see your comments posted on my blog, IF…
you add a great and valuable contribution to the discussion!
And if you leave your awesome comments, you should be rewarded with a link back to your site. Because that’s exactly what you deserve for such efforts!
However ….
Most blogging software come with a ‘nofollow’-feature installed. That means, that although a link is created, it is of little or no value, because the search engines will not ‘follow’ the link and credit your site with link value.
This ‘nofollow’-feature originally was implemented to prevent spam, but instead it’s now used to prevent backlinks. That means, that everyone who makes the effort to add valuable content to my site will NOT get rewarded for the wrong reasons.
In fact, they’re punished.
That didn’t sound good to me.
Spam should be fought with anti-spam measures, NOT with a nofollow link!
Therefore, one day, I decided to remove the ‘nofollow’ attribute.
Now that I have set that one straight, I encourage you to post useful and valuable comments. By that, I mean submitting information that adds value to the discussion.
And if you do, you deserve a juicy backlink from me.
The same applies to a trackback link.
Only ….
Since there IS so much spam around, and since comments are often used to spam the blogs, ALL comments are moderated! By ME!
That means, I have to check every website and I can read English, Dutch, French, German and a bit of Spanish, but Romanian, Russian, Bahassa Indonesia and Turkish, just to name a few, are very difficult for me to follow.
If I can, I will, but if I can’t, I’ll delete them.
Another way to get your comment deleted instantly is an About-page that starts with ‘This is an example of a WordPress page, blah blah blah’. That tells me you’re not taking your blog serious.
Links that I will delete immediately:
- irrelevant links
- worthless comments (that have nothing to do with the content and are only submitted to get link juice), like
“Ooooh what an awesome article,
I will use it for my web at: (URL).
Thank you so mucha….” - affiliate links (tsk, tsk, tsk, don’t know how to do this properly?)
- links to sales or any other promotional pages, garbage, adsense or scraped content sites
- links to offensive sites (porn, hate, violence, gambling)
For the rest, it’s up to me. I’m quite tolerant, but don’t push it too far, otherwise…..
So please …. don’t spam the comments section of this blog, so I can keep the link juices flowing!
Of course it’s up to you, but I encourage you to do the same. After all, THAT’S what makes the Internet tick!
On another note, from time to time I will add Top Commentator to the main page of my blog.
Served on a first come, first shown basis, I will show 8 of them, using a DOfollow link.
Each month, the tally will be reset.
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This is a great way of doing things. I would agree with you that great commenting contributors should be rewarded. The only downturn to this is that many will not as your article mentions due to the amount of spam that it can bring. As long as you moderate every comment you should be fine, which is what you are doing.
I hope you have great success with this and am sure you will get much more comments.
Since a couple of weeks I’m using Spam Karma 2 to detect spam.
This plugin does a wonderful job, sends me a nice overview of actions taken by email and allows me to moderate doubtful comments.
Moderating using this plugin is a breeze!
i really appreciate your thought of giving followable link for the commentors who are posting valuable comments for your post. good.
keep it up to increase more traffic for your site.
Case,
Very generous of you, giving out link juice to those commenters who you think deserves it. Much kudos to you.
I actually was reading your post about Powerful Alternative For Wordpress Adsense Plugins, which you discussed at ForumKnowHow.com and was about to leave a comment at that post but decided to read your comment policies first.
Ended up leaving the comment here.
Anyway, I’ll probably just bookmark that post and learn how to integrate it with my blog so I can have better control of the adsense placements which is very difficult with adsense deluxe.
I struck gold when I found your site, just the right one for a wordpress newbie like me.
Thanks mucho.
Manuel
De nada Manuel.
Glad you like it here. Come back soon.
An Experiment On Dofollow, Trackback, Proper Blog Commenting And SEO All In One Swoop….
In recent days, I’ve been researching on how to remove the nofollow default in Wordpress blogs, trackbacking and commenting properly following the lead of bloggers like Case Stevens, Teli Adlam, Jim Morris, Andy Beard and so on. There are a lot o…
Comments Policy – NoFollow…
Why you should link back to useful comments on any blog that enhances the value of the content….
Case,
I am new to blogging, WordPress and SEO in general. I have read optiniche’s Tutorial on Trackbacks and also seen Andy Beard’s List of NoFollow plugins and the Experiment On DoFollow from Internet marketing Wannabe listed a few comments above. Somehow on one of those pages I found a link to your site. I am still trying to figure out this nofollow thing. The implications with regard to trackback or comment spam are still a mystery to me, but I am learning quickly. Thank you for your easy to read (for a noob like me) article.
Hi Bud,
It’s a pity you don’t have your name on your blog. Would make it more personal, especially since you share your story with your readers.
Great blog by the way.
In general, the no-follow feature shouldn’t be used to fight spam. Instead, it is meant to avoid passing link juice to the pages you refer to. Some great plugins are a better solution to fight comment and trackback spam. Check out Andy’s site too.
Andy Beard hates the Top Commentator but he used Dofollow Plugin. Any way blogging is part and parcel of an internet marketer. We blog to get valuable knowledge while building quality links. Of course good internet marketers do not spam and they only leave behind quality and valuable comments.
I think it’s very admirable that you allow do-follow links in your comments. It really shows that you care about your readers and you want them to come back.
A good blog that has useful info, and comments by readers that add to the message of each post create a positive environment that encourages thoughts and communications.
Thanks Case!
Just posted a comment on your post about twitter, it was only afterwards I saw the Comments Policy. And I have to say I 100% agree with it, because I don’t find it fair that readers of our blog are not encouraged to comment on and discuss our posts.
Problem is, one of my dofollow blogs suddenly achieved PR6 and now is being comment spammed. So I have had to introduce comment moderation which means a lot more work for me
. Never mind…
I’ve taken the nofollow off one of my blogs as a test and so far I’ve seen no appreciable increase in spam. The bots are relentless even if you are nofollowing comments, so it’s not like they care at all, so adding the nofollow doesn’t really address the problem it was supposed to be fixing in the first place.
My hats off to you for making your blog a dofollow. Such is a manifestation of unselfishness and the willingness to lend a helping hand to those who might need it.
As a newbie, my early understanding of nofollow tags was that they were put into place primarily as a deterrence against comment spamming. However, I came to observe and realize that nofollow tags did not really prevent it at all. Instead, they just discourage legit readers from leaving comments which could have been useful for the blogs and its other readers as well.
Comment spamming is unethical. It may be easy to spot a comment spam by the looks of its anatomy. However, there must be some other ways to really hammer the root cause of it.
Some people prefer comments that add value, others might only want comments. Whatever the reason, it’s up to the blogger in the end.
Your policy is not very hard to follow which makes everyone a winner.
Lol, I like the way you put it. We need to find better ways of filtering spammers instead of using the nofollow tag on everything. Thanks for allowing us to have our links on your blog!
I see the pros and cons of doing the no follow thing. I am just about to start a blog and am considering whether to use “no follow” or “do follow”. I seem to be siding with DoFollow for the reason that if somebody takes the time out of their day to make a comment on your blog at least they should be rewarded for it. Just as long as it is not abused I think its ok for people to post as long as it is relevant to their business/activities. I wouldn’t dream of posting on blogs that have no relevance to myself and my business no matter what sort of “link juice” I may generate.
hello,
this is a nice thing you`v got going here..
the no-follow tag is making it hard to do any linking from blogs nowdays.
but at the other end, the spammers take the fun out of blogging all together. i used to have some blogs as dofollow, and i was moderating comments all day long. it just wasn`t funny anymore.
anyway thanx for your efferd to help other people, and i surely wil come back to this blog to read up some more, you`ve got some nice post posted here.
greets roger
Hi Case,
I actually have had great success with defeating spammy comments by using TPAS (typepad antispam). I used to use Akismet and several others out there that have been mentioned here that do it in different ways. I just got tired of how much “chaining” the antispam plugins slowed down blogs that I switched entirely to TPAS. I believe it’s still in beta, but then again.. so is gmail.
AJ
Hi,
I personally will comment regardless of whether “No Follow” or “Do Follow” tags are used on a blog. However, I admit that it is always very nice to have that “Link” out there promoting my site.
For me, the main thing is the “content” of the blog post. If it’s something that catches my interest, I’ll likely leave a comment.
All the best,
Laurie
I am interested in knowing the trend in quality and quantity of comments after you made the links dofollow. It’s good you have maintained good standards regarding your comment policy.
~Sahil
Personally, I am not a big fan of dofollow thing. I tried this on one of my blog and unfortunately, I started getting 10s of spams every day. I believe spammers run some scripts to find dofollowing blogs and they found mine. It was so irritating so heaps of worthless comments every other hour.
Regards,
Rahul Bhakeja
@ Rahul
Right!
And that’s why you come here and comment on an old post with a PR4.
@Sahil
Great question. All the comments you see on this blog are about 25% of the total comments received.
Real spammers are easy to delete, using SK2.
The problem are those that post lousy comments or are only here to get link juice.
Takes time, but I still do it.