The Unhealthy Obsession With DoFollow Blog Links
If you don’t know what ‘dofollow’ means, read this first before continuing.
Many webmasters or bloggers are infatuated with dofollow blogs. Not everyone is obsessed with them, but there are many who spend time or money trying to leave keyword comments on dofollow blogs, in order to improve their website’s search engine rankings.
They sell tools to find these dofollow blogs, they build apps to auto-fill blogs with pre-prepared generic comments. Some enterprising individuals offer blog commenting services: you can buy hundreds of dofollow comments left on blogs with your choice of keyword anchor text.
It is one of the easiest ways to get your link up on a webpage but this mass fetish with dofollow links conditions webmasters or marketers into thinking that blog comments should only be used for the sole purpose of getting immediate benefits like backlinks.
“Well, a link is a link. It’s better than nothing.” So they think to themselves at the end of an hour spent clicking on the auto-fill button and paraphrasing articles to make comments look ‘natural’. Don’t want to trip the spam filter now, do we?
Everything is streamlined towards one goal, to get that keyword link up. The bulk of one’s efforts are spent running some crappy do-follow search tool so one can go over and ejaculate comments on hundreds of blogs, discarding most of them once the deed is done.
Such promiscuity. And perhaps, such a waste of time and money. Why? Because these dofollow comments are junk compared to a high quality link recommendation within a relevant blog post. A blog post providing exposure that may result in a snowball of more citation links.
To be fair, the tactic of using dofollow blog comments as a link building tool is not entirely useless. They can direct some juice to websites you don’t care about, the ones you don’t intend to develop as a reputable brand. Basically, adsense or affiliate sites where you just want visitors to go in and come out via your referral link or ad click.
But even in these and other scenarios, blog comments can do more than just give you a few easy links. After all if your goal is to rank well in search engines, you should be pursuing a method that gives you a higher returns on investment. And such a method exists.
But to achieve that, you need to first do two things:
- Abandon the obsession with dofollow comments. Focus on all blogs equally even if they have ‘nofollow’ turned on and don’t directly influence your rank. Blogs you comment on should only be selected based on factors such as their relevance and audience size.
- Use blog comments as a first step to get more. Comments should be a preliminary and foundational step in an overall link + traffic building strategy. They are part of an overall plan to extract more valuable links from selected targets in the long run.
I used to think that in order to build links to my new niche site, I should just go find dofollow blogs and comment spam them. That’s all they were good for. After I gained some experience in site building and marketing, I eventually dropped this myopic focus on link building. I realized that there’s a much better way to use blog comments.
I’m not even talking about warm and fuzzy stuff like ’contributing to the discussion‘ or sharing knowledge, even though that’s a nice thing to do. I’m talking about a better way to use comments to get long term links that are better than dozens of dofollow blog comments.
You must be wondering: is there really more to blog commenting as a link building method?
The answer is yes. Having been a newbie before and gone down this path, I will offer some useful advice: If you only see blog commenting as a way to get instant links, you’re not maximizing their full potential. You are missing out on a lot of good stuff.
From my point of view, comments should be used holistically within a masterplan for getting what you really need: direct link recommendations from bloggers or site owners with a loyal audience, sending you high quality visitors that will convert well.
That’s the jackpot to aim for. That’s the ultimate goal. Not a bunch of approved comments with your precious keywords on a hundred semi-irrelevant blogs. Or even a thousand.
I’m not going to leave you high and dry. Next week, I will give you the exact comment strategy I use to build new sites into reputable authorities in their niche.
You’ll learn how to integrate blog commenting into a marketing strategy that gives you quality links and traffic. If you don’t want to miss that, consider subscribing to dosh dosh.
So what do YOU think about using dofollow blogs as a link building method? Do you do it and how well does it work for you?
P.S. Please don’t pitch any dofollow products, blog lists, commenter tools or search engines in the comments below. As you can tell, I’m trying to de-emphasize link building/spamming via dofollow blogs. Just a note for those who love to drop links without reading the post. ( ^ _ ^)
well said.
Another point is that nofollow links can still help with rankings. I’ve seen this happen plenty of times.
My reasoning is that nofollow links do not pass authority, juice or what some may call ‘PR’ and therefore it doesn’t help with the trust and authority of your entire domain with Google, BUT it does pass relevance and Google seems to use it to help decide what the page is about and what it should rank for, so it does seem to help push up rankings based on the relevancy and keywords used in and around the nofollow comment link.
I’ve seen this happen very often where a page will start rising in the rankings for a term it does not even contain, just because it got nofollow comment links for that term. The common example is obviously a homepage ranking for your name, even though the homepage does not contain that name, but is ranking higher for your name as a result of commenting on blogs.
Hi Maki,
I have a confession to make. I did use to spam to death those do follow blogs to build links, because it’s the easiest link building method there is (and it’s free to boot!), especially with the help of those free software for finding do follow blogs (enter your favorite software here …) which makes it even darn more easier!
For now, I think do follow comments are pretty much worthless. In my opinion, any free and easy made link building techniques are bound to be valued poorly by Google.
I don’t generally comment on dofollow blogs. I do have one exception, (isn’t there always?) and that is because I personally know the blog owners well. I also don’t recommend my clients do so either when asked.
Why?
Because the SE’s aren’t stupid. Watch one of Matt Cutt’s video’s on links or read through the guidelines of the big three. They take into account the value, relevancy, and quality of the originating site as well as the link’s destination when determining link value.
Personally, I don’t think all of the comment spam does anything positive for it. The other thing to consider is the ever increasing importance of quality content and the long tail. Still a ways off, but not something I would ignore.
Some good quality dofollow blogs do exist. The reason they are often a good quality is because their moderation is much tighter than many nofollow blogs. As a result, very few comments actually get published.
Like you, I’d rather build a ‘working relationship’ with the blogger; I’ll make more from future quality business than I ever will with a single link. Other readers see your comments as well. As they become familiar with your quality, voice, and addition to the posts, they feel comfortable with you and start to build a relationship as well.
You get an increased reputation and links (even if they are nofollow, they still count for something!), the blogger gets added material and insight, readers gain from your point of view or added interest.
Everyone wins.
Angie Haggstrom
Freedom Freelance
Some colourful points there, Maki. I can agree with everything you’ve said for quality websites, but I think you’ve missed a lot of the point that most blog spam is aimed at getting links for the armpit sites of the web. The kind of spyware dishing, pop-up loving, affiliate stuffed pages that would never, ever get natural citations – despite trying to form relationships with bloggers.
@Angie – SEs are stupid I’m afraid. You’d be suprised what can be achieved with some intelligent forum/blog spam and gaining a good flow of incoming links. I don’t think you can say search engines take into account “value, relevance and quality” – even that statement overlaps, surely value = relevance + quality, you’re also missing pure attrition – it may raise eyebrows and make people feel sick, but attrition works. Quality doesn’t give an indicator of popularity, which is a pretty important thing for SEs to get a handle on – and relevance; that’s just a joke and easily solved by using Google to decide relevance of your spam for you.
So my two cents: If you have a site that’s actually worth reading, follow this advice. If you’re trying to get a POS site to rank, it’s quite possible.
I completely agree. I too got sucked into the whole “comment on X number of blogs and increase my backlinks” strategy when I launched a new site and quickly realised they didn’t work.
Incidentally, every site I author is hammered because I once followed the “DoFollow” movement, comments are nearly all useless.
When I harmlessly linked back to my tech site on a LifeHacker article suggesting an alternative way to grab a Windows 7 license key. In just five hours, I received nearly 10,000 uniques and a huge number of informative comments and suggestions on the article itself, far better than the stragglers you might get from the comments section of a small blog.
Being a writer for MakeUseOf.com, I am fortunate to have a high PR website linking to my sites (now PR4 and PR5 after the recent update), this has been infinitely better than the crap you go through commenting on a supposed “DoFollow” blog.
Really well said, leaving keyword rich usernames really does grate against me when I go through my comments (although mine usually say Shark SEO because, you know, that’s my name). But things like “Car Insurance Guy”, it’s so blatant and instantly devalues whatever they’ve said. It makes me angry. Then I smash things.
Yes, generic comment spamming is bad. But many bloggers don’t understand SEO very well thus delete worthy comments.
For example, an Internet Marketer might had taken time to write an unique relevant comment thus creating more content to the post. The blogger see the anchor/URL and delete the comment. They forget that more content bring more traffic from search engines. I see it on my own flagship blog(nofollow).
I also have secondary blogs that were being spammed a lot using generic one line comments. I was using WP but replaced them with MyStarterBlog for many reasons and comments was one of them.
With MSB, a person can still comment on an individual post but it’s not seen by others thus not worth it for comment spammers. Plus, the conversation is more 1 on 1 with the commenter. If the comment is good/related, I can still add it to the post after(more content).
Disclosure: Maki, MyStarterBlog is my software(Windows). MSB has a free/paid version. The link is to myflagship blog and not to my software. Yes, I still use WP on my flagship blog for now.
As one who is the recipient of MANY comments from these spammers, I certainly appreciate your post. I’m on all kinds of lists for dofollow blogs, and I know that every time I write a post the overwhelming majority of the comments I receive will be from people trying to get a link. It’s really frustrating and rather disheartening. I delete a lot of comments and often do not follow the ones I leave.
@Chris Tew
I’ve noticed the same thing as well. I think I read about it in some SEO blog a while ago.
I’m not too hung up about whether nofollow links can help with rankings or not, because even if they do help with relevancy, it doesn’t matter a great deal in the actual field of competition (Google page one results). The main goal is using comments as a stepping stone to get those high quality recommendation links that will really help you rank fast.
@ Ditto Rahmat
And so did I. I stopped doing them completely. It was interesting to see what happened to my new sites, the ones that started off with a quality link profile. You’ll be amazed to see how fast you will start getting some solid Google traffic when you employ a laser-like focus on only getting high quality links from authority sites.
Free links are a dime a dozen, anyone can fire up an automated bookmarking tool to get thousands of scuttle/pligg/social links. The same goes for blog comments.
@ Angie Haggstrom
True. The reputation building method is the hard way and many people don’t like the hard way. Being known and seen as the expert on a certain topic can lead to a very high payoff but its a heck of a lot of more work as well.
@ Mark
I don’t disagree with you at all.. which is why I mentioned that dofollow blog links are not completely worthless:
Actually, there may be ways to work around the problem of natural citiation links. If its not particular nasty stuff, a mullet linkbait could work. Or you can build buffer sites that are purely whitehat and content-focused, get links to them and the link to your crappy site. Or you can build a legit site first and then convert it after getting links.
Then again it depends on what you’re trying to do to make money/what you’re selling…
@ Matt Brian
Cool. Nice to hear you’re getting some juicy links from quality sites, they can really make a big difference. Commenting on the right high traffic blogs can easily get a few hundred visitors to your site in a day and these are people that may pimp your stuff too.
In any case, traffic > link value when it comes to using comments as a marketing or even link building tool.
@ Shark, Steve McGrath
I know what you mean. Comments are great when they’re good, they do add a lot of value to the post.. the author just adds one perspective on the topic but commenters can bring a lot of diversity to the argument. Looking at something from all angles is good.
I’m actually pretty relaxed about keyword names even though I don’t like them at all. I just understand that some people want to use their brand names instead of their real names even though brand names are somewhat different from spammy keyword names/phrases. But I tend to look at people who use keywords in URL a lot more closely, if their comment is just regurgitated BS or if they consistently say stuff like ‘great post’ or they love dropping signature links… they’ll get deleted.
@Randa Clay
It sucks when you have so many leeches trying to get a dofollow link. Some of them might write good comments but the heavily keyworded name just betrays their intentions. Blacklist or delete them. They don’t care about your site or content and neither should you care about their off-topic comments.
I’ve read some posts from dofollow bloggers who went back to nofollow because they were too annoyed by the constant spamming.
People who leave spam comments in an attempt to get a dofollow link fail to realize that their efforts are pointless. There is nothing that I hate more then continuously deleting garbage comments from my blogs and I’m sure others feel the same about this.
People aren’t going to visit your site if you aren’t providing any useful information and further more I’m pretty sure that the blog owners are not excited to see that you have left a comment either!
Great points. I haven’t done a search for dofollow blogs in quite some time. I just focus on commenting on the 100-150 blog posts (dependent on updates) that occupy my rss feed everyday. However, I’m also trying to build a reputation within a community. I’m surprised more people haven’t followed this model… But I guess a lot of us are still after the quick fix these days.
Yes it is a lot more work to build a house brick by brick, but I’d rather live in a brick house than surrounded by drywall any day. Well said.
I recently changed my personal blog to dofollow because I wanted to give people more intensive to want to get involved with the conversation. Now that I read this post it makes me want to pay very close attention to the comments.
I noticed that people also exploit blogs with comment luv and top commentator blogs as well for the same purpose of gaining links. It is kind of sad really because it takes something out of blogging and it seems like the internet is now only filled with mostly people looking to exploit it for money.
What is something like over 80 million blogs out there now.
@Writer Dad – Not when you live in California. When a big earthquake comes I would rather have drywall fall on my than bricks.
I just thought I’d drop a line to say I concur.
I used to be dofollow but I got on so many lists of dofollow blogs (like Randa Clay above) that I was continually deleting comment spam (“nice post, dude”) from people with keywords for names.
I think these people who leave these comments must waste a lot of their time on this as they mostly get deleted. My blog has been nofollow for months now but still they come!
If any dofollow bloggers want some love from a Russian man named “Your Pieter”, I’m happy to get him off my back.
He’s persistently off-topic, hardly literate and I do believe he’s got lots of V*agra to ship your way.
Any takers for this precious robot? Really – he’s all yours!
From what I’ve seen (still a newbie), most of the ones who use the “autobot” comment machines don’t have a clue as a lot of the links I see are not keyword anchored. Well, at least the ones who’ve found my sites. Also, the generic comments are not very well crafted and they come in groups of 5 and 6, all with the exact same message.
My guess is that the only reason this technique works is because there are a bunch of abandoned or unmonitored dofollow blogs out there.
I am looking forward to reading your follow up post with the exact strategy that you use to build an authority site. One technique that I have found useful is to write high quality guest posts for other blogs/sites in the same niche as the site I am trying to market.
And there are some bloggers who make a big, fat list of dofollow blogs.
I’ve just recently figured out the power of commenting on forums. I didn’t even know anything about spammers, in terms of how they use software to spam, etc. When I first began, I didn’t really think much of commenting. But lately I’ve been commenting on blogs that I find interest in, and guess what! I’m actually building relationships with other bloggers. Most prominent bloggers are sending me 4-5 highly relavent links per day. How do I know they’re relevant? Because of how long their spending on my site, what they’re reading, and whether or not these individuals are subscribing to my mailing list.
Is commenting a viable strategy at all is my question? I have found most people don’t read the other comments in the post, they read the article and have their say and then leave, so the traffic/brand recognition benefits are minor. The only person whose attention you may catch is the blogger himself, but I have also found that more than a few bloggers don’t really care who left a comment, as long as they get a comment that looks fairly legitimate they’re happy (depends on the niche I guess).
I too have noticed by the way that there is little difference between dofollow and nofollow, google seems to take nofollows into account especially when there are a lot of them as far SERP rankings are concerned.
I would be really interested to learn some good strategies regarding connecting with other bloggers in your niche without seeming spammy, link-whorish.
Use blog comments as a first step to get more is good idea.
i have blog in april 2009.
so.. i will begin with blog comments to get your link up on a webpage ;P
People obsess about do-follow blog links because, getting them with keywords in the anchor on the right sites will directly improve for your rankings…which if you are targeting good terms will make you money. That’s what people care about.
Blog owners can make their blogs a do follow and no follow any time. I agree with you actually I take time to read post and comment not just to do follow blogs but also to no follow. I can somehow say that both drive traffic in my site:-)
Hi Maki,
How true.
Blog comments, as you said, are purposed to give value to fellow blog post readers, in such a way that they will voluntarily click on your link to visit your website.
Dofollow/nofollow is good, but not that important anyway. If you can’t SEO your site well / doing practices that the search engines would avoid you at all cost, doing even a thousand dofollow blog comments can’t help you (in term of passing link ‘juice’ to your link)
Take my http://www.noobpreneur.com/ blog for example. It has about 90,000 back links (!) – yet, it’s dropping from PR5 to PR3 6 months ago, although the traffic is quite OK. Why? Because I sell advertising with dofollow and doing paid review – those two are some of the culprit of the dropping in Pagerank.
So, yes – comment on blog posts that provide you some kind of value, and leave a comment that is equally valuable – nevermind the dofollow stuff!
My 2 cents…
People are thinking that comment in dofollow blog could bring them quality link juice, I think you would see tonnes of useful comments in dofollow blogs, it’s not a healthy practices. In my opinion, writing useful and unique content, let’s other to link you, that’s the healthy way to build links.
Well said Maki!
Regards,
Lee
I use to find and comment on dofollow blog half of my day when i started blogging. i did get few good back links and amny new readers for my blog. but all those readers were freaks like me, all they care was free link (you get what you give) it took me long time to realise what i was doing was wrong (batter late then never) since then i have stoped finding dofollow blog.
now i look for intresting blogs with community intrested in quality content, not quantity back links.
i still get tons of spams every day but i do get qualety comments that helps me batter me blog.
There are two points here 1) Should you focus on ‘do follow’ sites so as to increase your Google juice to your own site. 2) Link building via blog comments in general.
->About ‘do follow’ sites as a focus. I agree, this does not matter much. Why? Link building should be organic and natural and do only comment on ‘do follow’ blogs is not natural. I doubt Google has something in their algorithm to check for something like that but you never know.
-> Much more interesting is how to build links from blog comments. Google does look for comment spamming, and, I have not made this a strategy as I guess I do not really actively build links. But I am very curious about your next article and your recommendations about this.
A half agree with this . My perspective is that Dofollow is a starting point, a directory of places where you can start to build relationships. It is absolutely not true that there are not quality blogs that are dofollow blogs, they are not mutually exclusive. I have on my google reader over 40 dofollow blogs with good PR that I comment regularly with because they are interesting and informative. It however took me over 500 blogs to find those 40 and I now have some really good friends in my community.
Summary: dofollow lists are a starting point, not the end goal.
Great post. I agree that “do-follow” is a highly overrated strategy. When blog commenting, I focus on the overall relevance and quality of the blog. I think you hit the nail on the head with this:
“From my point of view, comments should be used holistically within a masterplan for getting what you really need: direct link recommendations from bloggers or site owners with a loyal audience, sending you high quality visitors that will convert well.”
Agreed. That’s where it’s at. Looking forward to your next post!
@Maki – Yep, that’s exactly what I do. It’s funny- even though it’s right above the comment form on my site “use your name, not keywords, or I delete”, they still do it.
I look forward to your next post on how to be targeted when you are commenting, rather than haphazard. It seems as though the blogs you choose to follow and comment on should be within your niche. Having said that, however, I still enjoy and subscribe to other blogs outside my niche that lead to my continuing self development. For example, this one
I’ve used software to find dofollow blogs but being the impatient kind of being that I am, 15 minutes is enough and finding relevant blogs is hard work.
I’ve had far better responses when I’ve provided valuable and genuine feedback and on two occasions, I’ve actually attracted a new client … one of whom was via a comment read on Stephen Pierce’s blog.
And, whilst I hate pitch keyword names, I do encourage people use “pen names” just for branding and recognition. If it happens to have the keyword in that’s fine … like mine does “The Blogging Queen” but, “Blogging eBook, I wouldn’t accept.
Trish
I do it, mainly because that’s what my job requires me to do. But I do believe that nofollow links still serve there purpose. I know they don’t build backlinks in google’s eyes but somewhere in the depths of my gut I feel as though Google knows.
I feel like google can tell where the comment sections of blogs with rss feeds are and because of that they might value the dofollow blog comments less. I also feel that google somehow must know when a blog takes of nofollow one way or another. I dunno, I always say the search engine may be an algorithm, but people run the algorithm. I know google knows the techniques people are doing for seo and is keeping up with them.
I’m too lazy even to leave comments on good relevant DoFollow blogs!
It is definitely attracting the right audience to your site via witty comments that’s the goal of commenting these days … oh well definitely not suitable on here : ))
@Brian
That’s true.. most people who spam comments for links are not interested in getting traffic anyway, that’s why their comments are usually generic and crappy.
@ Stuart Foster
You’re doing the right thing. Commenting widely and heavily on blogs in your niche is a terrific way to build a strong reputation.
@ Ben Moreno
The underlying motive is money. To get rich, you need to rank wel on search engines and get traffic. To rank well, you need links. To get easy links, you ‘need’ to spam dofollow blogs.
But if you show someone that you can get rich faster by doing proper comment marketing… that might change their behavior. But this does depend on what site you’re running and what plan/skills you have for making money.
@ Rob Cubbon
Some of them don’t bother to check actually. I do get keyword comments too because I think some dofollow search tools are erroneously listing my site as dofollow, which happens far more often than you think..
@ Lauren
Haha. Sometimes they do spout beautiful poetry though. The other day I had a guy quoting Yeats in order to bypass the Bayesian spam filter.
@ Norm
Yes, although abandoned dofollow blogs are still protected by the requirement for the first comment to be manually approved. I have some blogs I don’t update anymore and after months of not logging into them, I see a ton of comment spam waiting to be approved.
@ Domain Superstar
That’s actually part of my strategy as well, I’ll explain my way of doing it in greater detail.
@ Parth
Forums are certainly an underused method of marketing one’s blog. The other downside is that forums do not necessarily contain webmasters/bloggers unless of course you’re posting in a webmaster forum.
Hence, you will get readers but not linkers. That’s a reason why people focus more on blog commenting since its a given that they’ll get a link, not a possibility.
@ Alan
It is definitely a viable strategy if you do it right. A few well placed high quality comments on high traffic blogs can easily net you a few hundred visitors a day. It’s really do-able, not just theory.
And the power of commenting is that you’re presenting yourself to the blog owner in question, the person who has the power to link and promote you. Commenting repeatedly cements your value or expertise in the blogger’s mind. Definitely beneficial.
@ Noobpreneur
Hmmm.. yeah paid reviews and dofollow ads might be a reason for the PR drop but its difficult to really confirm that. There might be other reasons as well for Google to devalue the importance of your site in their eyes.
@Lee Ka Hoong
True. Content gets links. Sometimes, a lot of links. And traffic too.
@ Sunil Pathak
Good for ya! It’s great that you’re focused on the communities and relationship building.
@ Mark Biernat
Many have suggested, like you,having the bulk of your links come from blog comments leave a footprint that doesn’t bode well with Google.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to confirm that but I have gotten equally fast ranking results by getting links from quality sites so I don’t really see an advantage in dofollow comments as a link building method.
@ GregR
Just to clarify, I didn’t mean to say that there are no quality dofollow blogs.
There certainly are great blogs that are dofollow. I was referring to the quality of the link. It’s a simple comment link and the value is weak compared to something like blogroll or in-content link.
@ Randa Clay
Hah. Imagine if you didn’t put the warning above your comment field, you might have gotten a zillion more spammy comments. ^_^
In any case, strict moderation is a must in these treacherous waters.
@ Steve
If you’re looking to get the best links you should probably try to comment and focus on blogs in your niche because your getting what Google sees as relevant links.
But if its just for fun, leisure and self-improvement… feel free to read and comment on any blogs you want!
@ Trish Jones
Cool. That shows the importance of demonstrating competence in the comment section of other blogs. You never know who might be reading. Potential clients are everywhere.
@ Chris
Yeah, the thing is we never really know what the search engines think. We can test on our own but our findings may be isolated occurrences. And even then, the algorithm may be changed or an system might blacklist sites who fit a certain criteria.
But what we do know is that to rank well and get visitors, we need links. Relevant and quality links… and dofollow comments don’t fall in that category. It kinda obscures the potential of commenting as a marketing strategy IMO.
@pktan
You’re welcome to be witty here anytime though.. don’t hold back! ^_^
@ Everyone
Thanks for your comments. I’m a little busy at the moment so have decided to publish my followup article on blog commenting next week. It should come out in first few days (monday – wednesay) so look out for that!
Very interesting overview about dofollow links and software or tools to find or to spam that dofollow blogs.
I’m not interesting with any of that tools, just build my blog links naturally
I think these people who leave these comments must waste a lot of their time on this as they mostly get deleted. I recently changed my personal blog to dofollow because I wanted to give people more intensive to want to get involved with the conversation. Now that I read this post it makes me want to pay very close attention to the comments. THANKS
Maki,
Great post.
Interesting how the comments all seem to be nice more meaningful here. So just writing about it either gets more people to give a nice comment or they are intimidated into not even leaving one, lol
I agree with you on this point, we need to remember that it is real people that we need to be catering to not some tech stuff. I actually read this post a couple of days ago initially and was inspired to add my own thoughts to it on http://successfool.com/do-follow-blog-links-are-you-fooling-yourself
The same thinking goes for articles as well. Many people use articles to get links alone without making sure they are readable and of value to a real person who may be a live click through.
What about a plug in where number of words can be set??
Hi,
A couple of months ago I thought about adding the “DoFollow” widget to my blog, but as far as I can remember and if I’m remembering correctly, the HTML snippet wasn’t availabe for Blogger.
And since I know little about HTML, I just skipped the thought.
When I comment on other blogs I try to say something useful because I don’t comment to get backlinks and but have people read my commments, find them interesting and eventually visiting my blog.
I believe that writing quality and relevant content, having a good interaction with visitors and a healthy relationship with fellow bloggers is the best way to get visits and eventually get a fair rank in searches.
Recently my blog was accepted into the DMOZ directory and that is a proof of my work.
I like reading your blog because instead of dumping all those SEO theories that everyone talks about, you write with creativity.
Have a nice Easter,
José
Maki,
This is kind of like the same concept of creating blog posts with certain keywords and having your blogs pumped with many keywords to help with your rankings. Don’t focus too much on this and just keep doing things naturally and success will surely come, great spin on the do follow blogs!
Very nicely written. I hate when people obsess over the stupidest stuff, worrying about this ranking or better ways to link, when, in my opinion, if they really care about the topic just comment and be done with it, but at least say something in the comment that addresses the post. I could care less whether a blog is dofollow or nofollow; I just want to be able to comment easily when I decide to do it at all.
My blog is a dofollow one, but I don’t advertise that fact nor did I joined any kind of dofollow directory.
Having a dofollow is my way to thanks my readers for commenting by sharing part of benefit I get this way.
I do filter all the comments on my blog, and won’t let anything that is not contributing or sound suspicious pass. If I find some that I mistakenly let go, I will remove them later.
So unless you actually have something intelligent to say, dofollow or nofollow, I won’t let your comment be seen.
I actually just wrote an article where I tend to be inclined against the use of the nofollow, but for reasons different than trying to build a link campaign around it. I found this article good as it’s offering a different angle to what I wrote and therefore did recommend it to my readers and made a trackback to it.
I think do follow blog links are not entirely useless. It is how we do it, say using a software and making generic comments that abuses the system.
If a blog is interesting enough for me to comment, I wil do so regardless of its status.
yea, maki, I used to dofollow blog comments as well. But I have learned comment on blogs is meant sharing thoughts and ideas to the site owner rather than spamming them for keywords.
There are many ways to build links, writing articles or blog post probably are better ways of link building. Anyway, nice blog post and I will keep comment in this blog.
Wow! you give a different perspective to newbies.
Great post. I would like to share my thoughts on these.
It is true that many are obsessed with the do follow policy. In fact they do not realize that the quality is low and blog commenting on do follow blogs only with 100’s of other comments are not worth the pain unless the blog post page is PR 8 or 9 or even 10 LOL!!! The page strength is shared equally by all links. I think google can easily find out if the link comes from comments of from natural blog posts by just seeing the fields and checking if they appear site wide.
I have seen many opportunities on freelance sites for do follow comments. Little do they know that it will end up sending their links to spam folders. I try to comment on every project that is posted with such an intend. Most people do not even try to respond.
Do follow blogs comments are not entirely useless. You can get some link juice. But you may need 100 or even 1000 comments to equal a quality post link.
One good thing of being a do follow blog is increase in traffic. I have seen an instant jump in traffic and blogs linking to me for being a do follow blog. I get many comments a day. Around 50% of them are spam. yet I get some quality comments as well.
Cheers to your article.
Sometimes when I am browsing blogs and leaving comments on them, i notice some non-blog related contents. Even as a reader myself, I find these ‘nonsense’ comments irritating. Like you are just jumping on the oppurtunity to credit that site that you are advertising yet you are offending the writer of the blog or creator of the site by doing so. Although I have to agree with Angie Haggstrom that there are also do follow blogs that are in high quality and rich in content.
I couldn’t agree more!
I don’t worry if the blog is DoFollow. I just comment on blogs that I like to read.
I appreciate your article, but I guess this is just more like teasing a dog with a bone, as I have read this and completely interested in what you are saying, but I cant drive home the point. When are we going to see how exactly you want to show us how to achieve what you are suggesting because It’s more like abstract prose at the moment.
In actual terms how exactly can we do this….
Cheers.
Lol, I love the last part
. This is actually really interesting. I noticed that commenting does seem to push some visitors to my blog, but it’s usually only the really good comments that actually get people coming back. A few good comments got me some link action on the blogs I left the comment on too, which was very cool. Great post!
Couldn’t agree more, the obsession with dofollow comments is a sad state of affairs. It’s not all about link juice. It’s about genuine participation with sites that are of interest.
I think it’s good for people to comment on blogs if they care about the topic. I have only written on posts where I have read the whole article. In fact, I find it quite enjoyable to take a few hours twice a week just to read blogs. This way, I have some enjoyment and derive some accidental SEO benefits.
I think blog commenting in general is a tangential link-building approach that should definitely not be your #1 tactic and to hire people to do it for you, as apparently some people do, is outright silly.
Well Said.. there are still people (example above mine) trying to anchor link in a no follow blog. How funny.
Nice article
Hi
I totally agree with this. Commenting on a blog can be the start of a useful/rewarding relationship. Don’t just comment and leave, but subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog if it interests you.
Neil
Great article! I’ve been doing web content for a while, but new to the blog world and have to say the doFollow movement has always struck me as being sold by two types of bloggers – 1 – Those that come across as pseudo-religious fanatics on the subject, and 2- Those that use them for spam. I made mine doFollow since it was hard to find a reason not to do so, but totally agree with all of your points!
It is true that many are obsessed with the do follow policy. In fact they do not realize that the quality is low and blog commenting on do follow blogs only with 100’s of other comments are not worth the pain unless the blog post page is PR 8 or 9 or even 10 LOl Thanks..
Maki,
You hit the nail on the head.
95% of commentators on DoFollow blogs are just spamming their keywords.
Well, I post on dofollow blogs mostly for optimization, but that doesn’t mean I don’t read the posts and try to comment on them with some thought. I like blog comments because I don’t always have a time to write an article to get a quality link. Also, reading blogs is just about the only enjoyable form of SEO I can think of. And if anyone ever happens to look these comment up, I want to look like we at least run a respectable SEO campaign. The real problem is that most of these comment spammers aren’t owners or even people working with the business. They’re outside SEO firms who couldn’t give a crap about anything. After their 6-12 months of spamming, they show their clients a number that represents incoming links. That’s all that matters to them.
I totally agree. I’m fairly new to blogging and not so much caught up on the making money online part of it. I’d rather have quality return visitors to my websites and build long-term relationships. My blogs have suffered from this obviously but I know everything takes time. Thanks great advice!
In order to get these quality visitors to a website, people must first become aware of the site. I view linkbulding as a pyramid. The more dofollow links the higher you site will be at the top of the pyramid.
I disagree.
I talk from experience and have no way to prove it. It’s a hunch, a drilled hunch which I have followed blindly and *seems* to be the reason for the success of my strategy. And that is – avoid NOFOLLOW and DIRTY LINKS like the plague.
Do not accept a link to your client’s site if it’s dirty.
I can’t care about my own though, since it is the only one I do not SEO “ironically”
OK the results for my clients fluctuate but overall seem persistent and permanent throughout the years. How come I manage to get my site client to show up on the first page of Google (and many #1) for sometimes OVER 20 relevant phrases??
Sometimes with just a few keywords? Not some long non-competitive string.
Because I adhere to this rule, passionately and blindly – call it ardent blind faith.
No, I will NOT accept a DIRTY or NOFOLLOW link. Don’t try and convert me. Because you GAIN and I lose. Pure and simple.
You get your PR points and my websites won’t. Pure and simple.
You dilute the very keywords I am trying to drill into the search engines. Relevant keywords. They are for my clients. And if you don’t want to share it (Since DOFOLLOW is a SHARE) then you are the very selfish one.
You are the greedy one. Lusting for trafficking but not giving anything back.
And basically you – the hypocrite one, by labelling everyone as spammer, but forgetting that some of those spammers – when ethical are merely web-marketeers, web-promoters. They will try and add something useful to the conversation and yes expecting a “dofollow” link back.
Also you – AND by you – I mean the 2-faced BLOGGERS (not you yourself the author here) …
You are LAZY – because all it takes, it’s moderation and perhaps some spam-checking scripts.
I always try to add something useful to the thread. I am generous so much so that I often add extra links to other people’s websites with good tools or useful information.
Basically the NOFOLLOW Blog “tends” to be Lazy / Hypocritical / Greedy when they are aware of, and advocate against DOFOLLOW
I have no qualms however against the genuine Blogger completely innocent and unaware of the tag. His business is just for blogging. If by default – the blog was set to nofollow – so be it.
But the NoFollow ex-DoFollowers or anti-DoFollow – oh please give me a break. “Many” spit on the hands that fed them, made them rank highly in the first place.
I found somewhere in my travels a paid dofollow service, where you pay X ammount of dollars to be posted on the front page of a do follow site with the PR of your choice. The price goes up the higher PR site you choose.
The joke was buying a front page link on a PR 8 or 9 site was about $12.00…
I can’t imagine who possibly has a PR 9 site that is willing to sell a front page link for $12.00, i wonder how much these guys are cashing in on people buying these supposed links. I don’t imagine your ever told where you link supposedly is.
Do follow blog have their own importance.
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