Call me a noob if you want, but I’m resurrecting the old u comment, i follow practice for SMO Blogger. No, I’m not one of those idealistic bloggers who think that commenters are basically good people–not that most commenters are even people–who are just misunderstood and have a right to be linked to. I don’t have a “Save the Comments” bumper sticker on that back of my green powered car. Blogs were social before social media became mainstream. Part of optimizing your social media universe is making your blog the social hub you want it to be.
Search engines use the nofollow concept to block link credit from going to spammers, even though to the human eye, it’s still a link. The only part of the code that’s different is ab HTML attribute which reads this way if you view source in your browser:
rel=”nofollow”
That one little link of code will single handedly shut down the link love spigots of Google from delivering even a drop of link credit to your site. Of course, you’ll find it trendy among social media and SEO types to post that building nofollow links pays link juice dividents. They are wrong.
I don’t recommend adding U Comment, I Follow on an established blog. Why? Because, if you haven’t discovered this already, spammers will rush in from the fields to drink from the comment troughs. You can infer from this that if SMO Blogger ever becomes an established blog, I will likely turn off U Comment, I Follow.
Here are the three reasons I U Comment, I Follow Blog:
- More content -granted user generated content is something that search engines probably want to filter out and get rid of because of it’s high volume and noise. I’m an experienced blogger but darn it, this is a new blog and I need activity, controversy, tension, etc. to help us get to the core of what social media optimization really does for us all.
- More friends -
- More Links – I’d like SMO Blogger to be added to all of the quality IFollow blog directories and lists out there for link loving consumption.
Lastly, what WordPress Plugin do I use? Of course I use WordPress for blogging. Doesn’t everyone?
It’s called FollowMyLinks by everflux and here is a snippet from the plugin author page:
Follow My Links is a very simple plugin that prevents WordPress from automatically adding a “rel=nofollow” attribute to the following two categories of authorial links:
1. links in the post author’s comments;
2. links to the post author’s URL (usually linked to from the comment author’s username).The default behaviour of WordPress (as of version 2.8) is to add a “rel=nofollow” attribute to all links in the comments section, including links in comments made by the post author and links to the post author’s website. The nofollow attribute prevents search engines like Google from following (indexing) such links, and passing “link juice” (including PageRank™) to the linked pages. In fact, nofollow was originally introduced by the major search engines as a deterrent or counter-measure to link spam in blog comments. For that reason, it doesn’t make much sense to have nofollow on your own links, when you’re the post author or blog owner, since those links are supposed to be “editorially given” (and therefore spam-free): that’s where this plugin comes at hand.
You Comment? I follow.
Let the commenting begin friends!
Google Web Spam Team chief, Matt Cutts talks about nofollow.
More SMO Blog Posts Like This
Tags: Blog Commenting, Blogging, Commenting, I Follow, I Follow Blogs, IFollow, Social Media Blog, UComment, WordPress Comments, You Comment
Matt Cutts has said that DoFollow links and keywords are not used by search engines. Due to spam, most business sites shy away from using dofollow, but general sites can think of it as a promotional tool to start the conversation.
.-= Peter@PSDs to HTML’s last blog …
No Follow should be illegal. Especially when sites put the ‘U comment, I follow’ icon on their blog and then don’t follow links.
I commend you for your attitude. thanks for the post. I’m thinking about using FollowMyLinks as well for my blog.
Update: It appears that FollowMyLinks does not nofollow all links but only author links, which seems silly to me. I have now switched to another plugin and nofollowed the above FollowMyLinks link in protest.
Dofollow is a great idea. It gives a little reward to people who drop by your blog and leave a comment. The drawback is all the moderating you have to do for spam.
I think Google came with the nofollow tag in desperation. they couldn’t find an automatic way to identify real votes(links) against spamming. so, with this movement growing, let’s see what they will come up with.
Ha ha, I think it’s great that you’re using the seo people to get free traffic and links and then plan to shut it off once you get a higher page rank.
Right now I’m giving and getting in return. And you know what, Michael? It’s working for both parties. I don’t have any plans to shut off the follows, I do reserve the right to shut them off, yes. For now and the foreseeable future, link juice flows for everyone.
Never heard about this. Your reasons looks good but I’m not sure that dealing with the flow of spam you’ll get really worth it.
And I have to tell you, the font you use make my eyes bleed…
So far, spam hasn’t been a problem. Hmm… is the font that bad? Too big? Wrong color? Wrong type or all of the above?
I’m still learning about this “Do Follow Movement” but it sounds like it benefits all who are involved…well as long as you’re not accused of spam, otherwise you’re wasting your time, I guess. Anyways thanks for the info. Maybe Gabriel didn’t like that you’re font was all bold. It might make it a little harder to read…however I wouldn’t say it makes my eyes bleed. Oh well. Best of luck with your site.
P.S. I so want to market “Save the Comments,” but I’m sure it’s taken by now! haha
I love that idea, “save the comments.”