« Easter Dinner | Home | Meta-Improvement For Article Marketers »
To Follow Or No Follow
By Mike Collins | March 26, 2008
This blog is brand new with only a handful of posts and comments so far, but I’ve already given a lot of thought to the content, structure, and mechanics of the blog itself.
One issue I had to consider was the nofollow tag. Wordpress themes by default attach the nofollow link attribute to all blog comments and trackbacks, and to get around it you have to install a plugin.
Seems like a pretty minor thing to consider, but you should remember that the decisions you make when your blog is young can have a major impact for years down the road.
For this blog, I decided to install the Do Follow plugin to remove the nofollow tag from all blog comments and trackbacks.
Here are my reasons…
1. The nofollow attribute was originally introduced as a way to stop blog comment spam. The thinking was that if spammers weren’t getting any PR link juice from their spam comments, they would stop spamming.
Well as anyone who has a blog with nofollow enabled can tell you, blog comment spam is alive and well. Nofollow has had no meaningful impact in the war against spam. Its just too easy for spammers to use software to blast comments to thousands of blogs in just a few minutes. Besides, even if the search engines ignore a nofollow link, there will still be human eyes to see it.
2. The Nofollow tag stifles participation, especially in newer blogs. Readers should be rewarded for offering useful thoughts and insights. Many times some of the best material a blog has to offer comes from discussion taking place within the blog comments.
3. Links are the lifeblood of the internet. They don’t call it the World Wide Web for nothing…links are meant to connect one page to another, one site to another. Take away the power of links and the internet loses its power too.
I’ve installed the Do Follow plugin and I invite you to do the same. Click here to download it now.
Topics: Wordpress Plugins |
March 27th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Good analysis, Mike. I’m still on the fence and need to learn more. But I can see why removing the nofollow tag (and faithfully monitoring one’s blog for spam) can be valuable. Thanks for putting these thoughts together.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Thanks for the feedback Easton. I won’t go so far as to say the nofollow tag is completely useless, but I don’t think it should be set as the default either. Many bloggers have no idea that their blog is set up that way or what it means. A little education is needed so they can make the decision for themselves.