Last week I wrote an article about using dofollow links on your blog. In this post I encouraged bloggers to use dofollow links on their blog but this comes with a word of caution which I want to go through today. I want to highlight the problem with do follow links and how enabling them can potentially damage your blog!
Why do I suggest to use dofollow links?
If you dont include the rel=”nofollow” attribute in your hyperlinks then you are using “dofollow” links. This means the search engines will follow your links to the target website you specify. This is great for the target website because you have just given them a recommendation to the search engines. By you linking to the target website you are saying “I like the content here”. On a normal website this is not a problem, you are in control of the websites you are linking to. On a blog, having dofollow links can be risky because of comments.
Why can a comment damage your blog?
Over the years there’s been a huge increase in spam comments. So much so, webmasters have decided to punish the good guys by specifying all links in comments to be nofollow links. This is the easy way to ensure you dont get penalised for linking to a bed website. When a comment is left, the commenter can use text links in the comment and also use a text link for their name. If any of these links point to a bad website then you will get associated with these sites and in turn will be seen as a bad website too. Not good!
So should you use nofollow links then?
Definatly not. Because everyone is using nofollow links you can seperate yourself by not using nofollow. If you do this, shout out about it. Let everyone know you are a good linker and also advise you expect the same in return when commenting on other sites. Point them to this post for them to see why they should be a good linker as well. This just leaves us with one problem.
How do you know which comments are good comments?
Unfortunatly, this is easier said than done. Luckily, Comment Luv Premium stops the majority of spam comments by ensuring the commenter is human and not a spam bot. Now all you have to do is check the comments submitted to your site.
As a rule, if you dont know the commenter and they’re trying to put a link in the comment itself, delete it. If the persons name is a keyword phrase like ‘SEO Specialist UK’ etc then delete that too. If the comment doesn’t add anything to the post then also delete it (eg “Great post <yourname>, keep up the good work”). Lastly, if you’re unsure, delete the comment. The reputation of your blog depends on you getting rid of the trash comments properly.
A dofollow blog can attract good traffic just because of this reason alone but also remember you will start to get targeted by the spammers because you are a good linker. Just stay vigelent and in the end, the human commenters will normaly give up if they cant get a dodgy comment past you.
