This morning I was thinking about SEO, google rankings/SERPs and all that jazz. One way to get higher page rankings in google is to have a lot of backlinks. Even better a whole lot of backlinks from sites in related niches. And even better backlinks from high authority sites that have high pagerank.
As a person who uses Google to search for information I like to see top quality sites ranking in the first 10 pages. Sites I can trust, sites that I know the information will be accurate, sites that aren’t misleading.
Bad Tony – A Fictional Tale
Let’s say for example I have just bought a new puppy and I want to teach and train it myself. So I do a search for ‘puppy training from home’ or something like that. I click on the first link that Google gives me and I start reading the site and applying what is said on the site. It must be accurate info right? It’s ranked number 1 on Google!
So I’m training my puppy and nothing is working. I look deeper into the site and find out the page has been created by a 15 year old kid (let’s call him Tony) who has just been regurgitating information from different places all over the web. They themselves aren’t even interested in puppies, have no experience in puppy training at all – they’re just trying to make a quick buck from their site. (or so it seems)
It would seem the way they reached to the top of the Google search rankings was by spamming a lot of forums and blog commenting section that had ‘do-follow’ implemented. This means that Google will follow the links left behind by our fictional friend (or fiend) Tony bumping up his ranking for keyword ‘puppy training from home’.
No-Follow For A Reason
There is a reason Google created the ‘no-follow’ tag. To prevent un-trustworthy sites from ranking. Just imagine if sites like Facebook and Twitter were do-follow. It would be a horrible place to be. A total spam-fest (ok, just imagine the spam you see on those sites now but 100 times worse). SEO gurus would be spamming it left right and centre getting quality backlinks to their site. By implementing no-follow on such sites it prevents people getting any benefit from Google by posting their link up there. Google will just ignore any site with the ‘no-follow’ tag attributed to it.
Is Your Blog Do-Follow? Be Responsible
If you’re a ‘do-follow’ site owner where it’s easy for others to post a link to get some Google credibility I hope that you’re monitoring all links that are left behind. We should be striving to get the best quality/most trusted sources at the top of Google. As site owners, one way to do this is to make sure all the links we have going to external pages are truly quality/trusted resources. It’s our responsibility.
It’s Our Own Fault Really
At the same time however, as consumers we should make sure we are doing background checks on the information we consume, and see what others are saying about the author/owner before we can truly trust what we’re reading will be accurate and quality information that we can apply to our lives. We shouldn’t just jump on the first site we see and take all the information in to be 100% accurate. It’s too easy to create an information site and claim it to be true. So it’s our responsibility as consumers to make sure we do our research too.
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Great article. I have a do-follow blog, but I moderate heavily and don’t advertise that it is do-follow. I want to say one thing about this (there are many things to say but will stick to this one point), a link in a comment doesn’t seem to have much weight to Google, at least not near the weight that a natural link does (one that is in the body of the article). So, while some may think that these do-follow comment links are gaining them rankings, I don’t believe that to be true. Dropping hundreds, maybe even thousands of comment links doesn’t equal one natural link in my eyes.
Hey Keith – Really appreciate your comment! I think it’s a great idea that you haven’t advertised the fact that you don’t have a do-follow blog. I tend to agree with you (or at least I hope) that links mentioned in the body of a post have much more weight than those in a comment, but how does google differentiate link weight on a page? Is it because once the post has been published the first time all links/text on the page has more weight than all comments after are re-published in a way after the body content has already been published?
Out of curiosity – why do you have a do-follow blog if you don’t advertise you have one? Is it your way of giving back to those that are nice enough to drop by and leave a comment? Just trying to see the value of having a do-follow blog if you don’t advertise that you do
Mainly because it would seem people advertise they have a do-follow blog to get more comments on their blog.
I have a couple of dofollow blogs and I do monitor comments heavily, but I have to disagree on one point:
Sorry, that’s just not in my job description. That’s Google’s responsibility, not mine. Since Google doesn’t even tell us what their algorithm is, it’s not like any bloggers pull much weight. Even if we did, I doubt there are any bloggers who do this. Do you? For example, is your goal with your blog to get a high ranking or is it to UNDERrank all the competing blogs that are more trusted and/or higher quality?
IMO, my “responsibility” is to write my best stuff and be honest and up front while I do it.
Hey Alison – Good point – it’s not our job description. The idea was that people that as site owners we have CONTROL of what is given some google boost juice. If someone is commenting on your blog and linking back to a bad link/untrustworthy link it should be monitored.
I think the approach that I’ve seen some bloggers use is they reward people that stop by and comment regularly with a do-follow link on the sidebar or footer or something.
I’m not trying to underrank anyone. I gladly link off to external sites in many of my blog posts to trusted sources. Would I like higher rank on my blog – sure, what blogger would say no, but I’m not going out of my way to underrank others.
Definitely agree with your last point. Just be honest and write quality stuff.
I love the idea of DoFollow (reward your readers, etc.), but unfortunately
- DoFollow comments attract spammers
- DoFollow comments attract those that “want a link”
…and because of this, the trustworthiness of your site, running DoFollow comments, WILL GO DOWN over time, unless you manually remove/moderate all the comments and links that lead to spam blogs/sites. Is that really worth your time?
People who leave comments on DoFollow blog are very, very likely there to just get the link, and even if they come up with a comment that’s not just “nice post”, they’re probably still there for the link, not the post, not the discussion. Heck, most of them probably don’t even care about your post, you or your blog. The same goes for “CommentLuv” and “KeywordLuv” too, not as much as DoFollow, but still…
Just as I said on Twitter the other day, I choose to use Disqus, because it encourages discussion & increases community engagement. And like to have people like that on my blog comments more than people who just want links. And I can reward the awesome people of the community by linking to them from my posts instead, with good, honest DoFollow link.
Antti – HEAR HEAR! Totally agree with you man. I did try and use disqus on this site a while ago but people complained they couldn’t comment. I may try and implement it again in future when the redesign comes around – it’s definitely my preferred way of commenting on other blogs.
If your blog is dofollow then along with a lot of comments, you will have to get ready to get a lot of spam. But with WordPress Blog Platform, you can counteract this by utilizing plug-in such as Akismet.
This post raises a nice question that by making your blog dofollow, you end up sharing the positive benefits of linking. Not necessarily a bad thing, but why give away what you’ve worked so hard to earn?
Answering to this, I would say, we should make the blog dofollow because commenter must achieve some benefit if he is visiting your blog because you are also getting some benefit on the visit of every commenter.
Oops.A bad mistake. Please Sarge update the name in above comment to Typhoon..I added Typhono..lols
and delete this comment.
Typhoon – I would argue that there shouldn’t be a benefit for those that comment on the blog. They should come to the blog because they like what they’ve read and want to add to the discussion. Much like a forum.
If people came to blogs to comment and felt like they should get a link back for commenting than only those that have blogs already would comment. I would love it if some people that visited Beginner Blogger DON’T currently have blogs but are looking for inspiration and advice on how to get started with a blog.
The whole announcing to the world that you have a dofollow in my mind is only attracting more worse than good. As Antti said the idea of dofollow blogs is a great thing but it is abused and is a huge time commitment to monitor well. I would much rather reward people by linking to them in blog posts or in a blogroll than moderate a dofollow blog. I would like to encourage awesome discussion and engagement here
I’ll readily admit here that I have no idea what a Do-Follow blog is all about. I also would like to say that it’s true that it’s our fault and we should be the ones taking action to see for ourselves if the information is actually true or not.
That’s why commenting is so great because actual real people will all have different opinions on different topics and hearing what readers have to say is what actually basis the trust around a person, I think.
What do you think?
Hey Eric – A Do Follow link basically means that the google bots will follow that link, thus giving your page a bit of a boost in rank especially if it comes from a highly ranked site.
A Do Follow blog usually means that a blogs commenting section has do follow links, thus it’s attractive to site owners to go and blog there because it means they’ll get a bit of a boost by doing so. But people take advantage of this
By default wordpress commenting is no-follow.
People should comment because they want to join in the conversation/add additional value to the article posted. Not to get a link back. Simple.
As some of you probably know, I’m in total agreement with Antti here. Putting aside the Google issue, do follow, comment luv, etc. only muddy up the *true* authenticity in conversation. Sure, many of your readers will care less, but how do you really know? I’d challenge any one of the staunch dofollow advocates to switch to nofollow & turn off comment luv for a month and see if anything changes. I’m guessing the comment count will go down significantly… but the comment *quality* may actually improve.
For those stating the argument of “reward your commenters” – Sure, I believe this is a good thing. You know how you can do this though? As Antti has mentioned elsewhere… link to their blogs in the actual content! In future posts, throw in some nice anchor text for a loyal commenter’s blog. (this is exactly what I try to do)
This may sound like a harsh opinion, but you know the reason why many don’t do this? Because it requires more work. They’d rather enable a Comment Luv plugin, make links dofollow and then forget about it. That’s all. No further effort needed ever. It’s just something to think about – are you truly rewarding your readers/commenters if you’re not even willing to take the time to do anything past this?
Sarge, looks like you have a great conversation going on here on the this topic. To answer your question from above about why I don’t advertise do-follow. I don’t advertise it because I don’t need to. There are plugins for Firefox that can tell if links are no-follow or not, and I figure advertising it will get you more spam anyway.
Also, some of the plugins like Keyword Luv require you to be do-follow (I think
) and that makes it obvious you are do-follow.
The common misconception is that if you allow these links to be do-follow, you will lose your pagerank, NOT true. The same amount of pagerank will be passed from a page regardless (unless you don’t link out to anything, and I don’t recommend that because that makes your page a dead end), so letting some of that PR pass from the comments is a great way to give back to commentators.
Personally, I comment on so many blogs, I don’t pay attention to whether or not they are Do-Follow. But I do look at every link left on my site, if it is in a “bad” neighborhood, it goes to the spam box, or the link is removed.
I was reading through the comments on a reasonably popular dofollow blog in the “blogging” niche. There were around 40 comments – it seemed impressive but when I started actually looking at the comments, half were just “good post blah blah blah im just promoting my blog”. The other half, bloggers were linking to specific “spam blog” posts. There were around 2-3 genuine comments.
I would hate that if that happened on my blog. I love the discussions, arguments etc. that happen in my comments. I use the Top Commenters plugin on my blog, and all the commenters listed in the widget are awesome! I;m proud to have them their
And btw. I’ve found that if I only comment on a select number of posts that I actually want to contribute too, I often make a really good connection with the author.
Your thoughts are so valid Sarge! Do-follow blogs come with great responsibility. In fact, all blogs come with great responsibility. When our readers trust us, we better be careful about whom we link to. Even in comments.
One more thing, your hypothesis about Tony is very valid but Google has outsmarted that. Had it been just link and niche of the site the link is coming from – it was ok. But there are so many other factors which will make sure that the true one stays on top. If people like you – Google will like you and where people rule, fake can’t stand for long.
Even if Tomy somehow manages to fool google and get top ranks, bounce rate because of his hopeless content will do the justice.
@Jordan – Good challenge issued there to the do-followers! Would only work if they tell everyone they’re going to no-follow but it would be a great experiment to see who is really an authentic commenter and who’s just there for the link juice.
Definitely linking in posts is one of the greatest way to reward a commenter. I love doing it. Not just for rewarding a consistent commenter either, just good content in general that I’m aware of will get a link
@Keith – Out of curiosity what are the firefox plugins that you are using to see if a site is do-follow/no-follow?
@Anthony – Is that a coincidence that I was visiting your page then I see a comment from you here on my blog? Amazing! Anyway, I totally agree with you. Commenting section should be about discussions and adding to the article. In fact, we should rename comments to ‘discussion’. Perhaps it will get the message across a bit better about the type of ‘comments’ we want left on our blogs.
@King – I know there are many other factors involved to get high rankings in google. There’s probably a ton of variables that people haven’t considered when it comes to ranking well. There are some sites I would consider quite junk though that rank really well and that was my point when it came to the Tony example. As I titled it – it’s a ‘fictional tale’
Not sure if something like it is out there but I think there should be an easy way to report sites to google that are ranking well but perhaps shouldn’t be. If google get enough complaints from a particular site then they will check into it and adjust accordingly.
Sarge,
Great post. I have to agree, DoFollow blogs need to take responsibility. My blog is a DoFollow and uses commentluv. I spend a lot a lot of time monitoring and removing spam. If someone leaves a comment that looks real but has a link to crap, I remove it, I think its crap I remove it. I also advertise being a DoFollow Blog, that is only because its a new site and I am encouraging people to comment. Once I start paid advertisements, I will remove the DoFollow Advertisment and let people figure it out.
[...] about DoFollow blogs and comments written by Sarge from Beginner blogger. He’s wondering if DoFollow blogs create dishonesty? JohnLuffa wrote a short but important article about 4 Things To Check Before Hitting The Publish [...]
Great post man//
and making your blog dofollow is great way to reward your readers…and commenters.
I find it interesting that you argue against rewarding commenters with DoFollow links but implement a DoFollow top commentators section, which gives sitewide DoFollows to people who comment. Granted, on a blog like this where you have a pretty active commenting community, it’s harder to game the system, but the point is still the same.
I also implement a DoFollow top commentators section, specifically to encourage comments, but it’s frustrating when you look at your analytics and see people searching for something like:
inurl:keyword “top commentators”
Then they go and post a comment like “great post,” and use a keyword-rich name. The goal is to encourage real discussion.
thanks for the post. dofollow blogs actually take more work b/c you have to weed through the spam and whatnot. but it is a reward to visitors and can increase traffic.
Do follow blogs work just like a magnet. Bloggers post comment on site with dofollow enabled. I think its a good idea for generating comments.
Your thoughts are so valid Sarge! Do-follow blogs come with great responsibility. In fact, all blogs come with great responsibility. When our readers trust us, we better be careful about whom we link to. Even in comments.One more thing, your hypothesis about Tony is very valid but Google has outsmarted that. Had it been just link and niche of the site the link is coming from – it was ok. But there are so many other factors which will make sure that the true one stays on top. If people like you – Google will like you and where people rule, fake can’t stand for long.Even if Tomy somehow manages to fool google and get top ranks, bounce rate because of his hopeless content will do the justice.
+1
Recently bought a link on a blog with the intent of getting some anchor text. The blog was having TLA links so I thought would directly go through the blog rather than TLA.
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An important write-up which does make you imagine about the larger picture here. I agree with the previously mentioned remark and despite the fact that I would probably consider myself to some degree much less leading-edge in terms of awareness on the topic he obviously understands precisely what he is talking about as do you.
First of all I want to thank you about about the great blog and post that you created. My opinion is that do-follow blogs bring mutual benefit to both readers and site owners. It is a great way of communication and promoting. Of course the comments should be moderated because of many SPAM people who ruin the nice purpose of the do-follow comments- to bring more quality and information to the future visitors of the site.
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I don’t really understand all of the “you must take responsibility” if you have a do-follow blog. Why? I mean, I can see where you should read the comments and delete those that are not appropriate to your audience, but I don’t get the whole responsibility angle.
I’m really new to blogging but I am trying to learn. I don’t have any idea how to tell a do-follow from a no-follow. I’m guessing that it might be by the blank in the comment’s template that asks that you leave your URL. Is that correct?
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It is the internet after all… and we really shouldn’t believe everything we read, but we do take alot of it for face value and do believe it. It would definitely be a different scene if google did not implement the nofollow tag as you said!
-Jean
I think do follow is ok as long as comments are moderated properly and strict anti-spam policies are in place. Solutions like Captcha for instance go a long way to keeping it relevant and spam-free.
Such willful intellectual dishonesty and deceitfulness is then forced into the minds of the young and gullible amongst them, stifling their development and creating even more intellectual and emotional hurdles in an already challenging world.
We bloggers should be careful for our external links. Becasue dofollow links can be decrease the rank of the blogger pages if they are broken or not valuable. As we know that the most of exit links are comments link, we should check the quailty of every comment before approve it.
A great post about do follow and no follow. There should be no wrong in maintaining a do follow blog provided that the blog owner is also responsible in checking all links placed in its pages. It really takes a lot of work to be the top ranked in Google. However, still the reputation of the blog or site is the most important.
I do think that it is up to use as intelligent individuals to decide what we take as fact from what is not. Manky wiki sites a lot users to add their own thoughts on different subjects so you really have to take the information with a grain of salt.
- Robert
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Do follow links are handy to all.I love to visit all niche blogs and leave comment their link indicating to my site.I always target do follow blogs.It gives me double benefit good back link and knowledge too.
Everyone searching do follow blogs on all topics.If your blog has support of do follow links then you have high chance to get immense traffic.Nice post shared here.
I search a lot on Google to find do follow blogs on different themes.I think these are very handy to increase back link and also get good ranking in SERP.Google only consider these and bypass the no follows.