I’d mentioned in a recent post that I’m now using the DoFollow plugin as a way of rewarding commentators to the blog with a link that search engines will follow.
I just ran across a post about a DoFollow directory. The basic idea is that if your blog uses the DoFollow plugin, you can submit it to the directory. If you want to find blogs that use DoFollow, you can use the directory.
Finding other blogs that use DoFollow is helpful for two reasons.
First, supporting those blogs keeps them alive, and increases the chances that more blogs will use DoFollow.
Second, leaving comments on those blogs will have a positive effect on your blog’s page rank and and search engine results positioning.
It’s worth noting that keyword stuffing is considered to be impolite in DoFollow blogs, though. Keyword stuffing is using a keyword as your name instead of you name, in order to rank higher for that keyword in search engines. Some DoFollow blog owners will not approve comments that use keyword stuffing.
If you have a DoFollow blog, head over to the directory and add your blog!
Thanks for helping spread the DoFollow message. Its good to have you as a part of the directory
Thanks for the quick approval, Anthony! I’m sure you’ll get a lot more signups as people hear about the directory.
I have read about this before and now I am going to head over there and find out how I can do this on my blog. I noted that you said that they do not like it when people use key words as their name. I use my username which is also part of my blogs URL. I use this name because it is my six year old boy name. He died on 5/19/07 and I now use Gaje Master for everything, kind of like a tribute to his name, Gaje. I hope that you all don’t mind.
I think blog names are fine. Keyword stuffing would be something like “Make Money Online” if that wasn’t the name of your blog.
When you submitted to the DOFOLLOW list, did you get lots of extra comment SPAM? If so, was the traffic from the list worth the spam?
Installing DoFollow caused a jump in comment spam from automatic submitters looking for backlinks, but submitting to the directory itself didn’t have an effect. When it gets more popular, people might use it as a reference for the automatic tools. As yet, I’ve received very little traffic from the directory.
Do you think dofollow links will eventually get penalized by Google, or is it something that has a positive effect on the internet as a whole.
Here’s how I see it.
1. Many blog owners that want to encourage traffic to their site might let crappy comments that provide no real insight to the topic get approved just so that their impressions are up, which can help them sell more ad space. this however, cheapens their brand, and can hurt them in the long run.
2. then there are the blog owners that will only approve comments that are beneficial to the topic at hand, and provide a lot of value. This encourages people that want a dofollow link approved by a blog owner to write something very informative and helpful so that they get their dofollow link approved. This can actually be very helpful for the future of the internet, it’s growth, and the reputation of the actual blog.
95% of comments I read on blogs are either spam, cheerleader comments, racist ones, or a few lines of good info.
with dofollow incentives, useful information is encourages and the brand of blogs is increased.
I wonder what Google things of all of this … I’m a big fan of dofollow as long as the blog owner follows Option #2.
Joey Rahimi
I could see Google discounting do follow comments, because those comments aren’t technically under the control of the site owner, and aren’t contextually relevant to the topic.
I do think most site owners who care enough to use do follow comments, also care enough to only approve comments that are of a decent quality.
Google, at least, already does discount contextually irrelevant links to some extent, so the benefit of do follow is probably not a huge amount compared to a nicely placed contextual link in a relevant post. So an additional discount to do follow links specifically might be overkill.
But the number of do follow links you can collect adds up to a net positive effect, so it’s hard to say what they’ll do.
So I guess that’s a long-winded, “I don’t know” 😉
Hey, thanks for the heads-up on the DoFollow directory. I just recently made my blog a DoFollow blog, but not many people know about it. So, I’m trying to spread the word!
Thanks!
Thanks for the information about the directory bro
I was wondering whether backlinks from dofollow blog are also a temporary ones, such as the ones in posts, as Google will only consider links from the last three months, if I’m not mistaken.
Hence, permanent links at the sidebar is probably still better.
I’d need to see a reference on Google “timing out” links to be convinced. While newer links are often weighted more heavily, older links do still count, and relevancy is a far higher weighting than freshness, in my experience. So an ultra-fresh blogroll link still isn’t going to do as much good as an older in-context post link.
hello, thanks for your information. my blog is dofollow too and i want to submit to them.
Hopefully a great find!
Will take a look and start posting to some blogs, thanks for the URL 😀
What good is DoFollow in comments ; if you can’t use keyword stuffing as
your name ?
I just did a google search on “keyword stuffing impolite DoFollow”
Your site is the only one that showed up.
What is your reason for saying using a keyword as your name is considered to be impolite ?
Hi Lassar, thanks for the comment!
Keyword stuffing is what I define as using a name in a comment that is not your own and is also not your blog/site’s name. By using a keyword stuffed name in a comment you are blatantly telling the blogger that you are only leaving a comment for the SEO benefit, not because you care about the post. There are better ways to get more relevant backlinks that you can keyword stuff to your heart’s content than leaving comments on blogs.
Commenting on dofollow blogs has two benefits:
1) PR transfers regardless of the keyword you use
2) When you’re respectful, other people who read the comment will follow your link to your site, and perhaps comment on your blog
Apparently not a lot of bloggers blog about polite commenting, but many will not approve comments they feel are done just for the purpose of getting a link.
It took me a while to find the right search words to google for.
Turns out the google search words are “commenting etiquette”.
I did finally find it on the net.
Here are a couple of links to commenting etiquette sites:
http://cathlawson.com/blog/2008/02/28/the-new-spam-how-do-we-deal-with-it/
http://www.lostartofblogging.com/the-comment-etiquette-the-guide-to-proper-blog-commenting
Gives you a lot to think on doesn’t it ?
Thanks for the links! I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who dislikes keyword stuffing in blog comments.
I regularly delete a ton of comments that could make this blog look more lived in, because they’re clearly spam. I value the people who take the time to make real comments too much to approve comments that are clearly just for the purpose of getting a link back.
And maybe pagerank seekers should know this: quality content is also very important. After attracting the visitors and seducing Google to increase your pagerank, what will your visitors get from your site?
may the search engine gods for us
Cool directory.
I’ve switched all my sites to DoFollow and I see good results so far.
Very good article. For people like me, you’ve written in language clear and easy to understand.
I do my own websites and I am new to this world of SEO. Articles like yours make measier this SEO job.
Thanks for your wonderful article!
I love the idea of dofollow sites. My site is dofollow and I find it a little bit confusing that sites like blogger and wordpress automatically make their sties nofollow without really educating people about it. Thanks!
I submitted my blog to dofollow directory about 2weeks ago, now i get lots of spamm comments.
Hi Jay, yes you do have to have a strong comment moderation policy to prevent people from taking advantage of your doFollow status.
Good article. I’ve only recently become familiar with the dofollow concept and I like the idea, it’s much fairer than a blanket nofollow. Do you have any tips for handling the increased comment spam? I’m currently using akismet and it seems to do a good job. Hopefully it will be good enough when i switch over to a dofollow commenting scheme.
Akismet + moderating first comments works pretty well. The spam that does get through Akismet you simply don’t approve.
Thx for the response. I’m also wondering what would happen in the event that I inadvertantly dofollow a site that google doesn’t like. Would google punish my site, or would it be as safe as a nofollow would have been?
My SEO background is about a year out of date (which is a lot in SEO terms), so don’t hold me to this. But since you theoretically control links out of your site, there is a penalty for linking to junk sites. But I’d be surprised if Google hasn’t adjusted the algorithm to account in some way for user generated content.
Just to clarify something read in a comment on this post. Keywords in the anchor text of backlinks do actually play a part in the overall ranking of your website. Use any good SEO program and they will advise you that you need to have keywords in your inbound links anchor text. The reason for this that Google can’t gauge what is quality content and it leaves it up to other website owners to decide who is worthy of a backlink. I personally don’t think “keyword stuffing” is rude because the name (with your keyword) is the take and a nice information filled comment is the give 🙂
Not at all!I think G will penalize only that site,not yours….
[quote comment=”146090″]Thx for the response. I’m also wondering what would happen in the event that I inadvertantly dofollow a site that google doesn’t like. Would google punish my site, or would it be as safe as a nofollow would have been?[/quote]
Mostly of the wordpress blogs are no follow. Thanks for sharing your idea of setting do follow plugin.