Many people have been wondering whether to have nofollow or dofollow blog comments. If you do not know what they are then read difference with dofollow and nofollow links first. This post will tell you why dofollow links were implemented and how you can benefit from having dofollow blog comments.
Nofollow vs. Dofollow
Nofollow links do not provide link juice to the page you are linking to. This means that the only reason why you should use nofollow links is not pass link juice to sites that do not deserve it. Google implemented the whole nofollow attribute for links, so that they people could prevent link juice flowing to spam sites.
The first implementation was blogs and blog comments in blogger, so that users could easily prevent people using blog comments to link to bad sites.
How nofollow links work with PageRank
Let’s think of it this way. There are two cases where you have a page that has a value of 100 ranking points. First, your page has 10 outbound links. If all of the links are dofollow, then all of the linked pages will get 10 points of value.
What if 5 of the links are nofollow and 5 dofollow? Does it mean that the five dofollow links get 20 points of value? – It does not. These five dofollow links still get only ten points and the nofollow links get zero points.
The reason for this was that hardcore SEO guys were taking an advantage of this, and increasing the rank of their inner pages by having all the outbound links nofollow. Now you know that by having nofollow comments, you will not get any more link value for your inner pages.
There is an excellent article from Matt Cutss from Google, where he describes how the nofollow links work nowadays. Read it to find out more.
Pros and Cons of Dofollow Blog Comments
Pros
- You get more comments, because people comment more to get the backlink
- Your inner pages will either way loose the value, so why not just spread the wealth
- You can reward the people who actively comment
Cons
- You may accidentally link to bad pages, if you do not pay attention
- You will get more spam comments and have to do more comment moderation
- Setup takes a bit of time, because comments bu default are nofollow
Conclusion
In my opinion the Pros greatly overweight the Cons. Even if the only thing you get is more comments, then dofollow comments are well worth it. Just remeber to moderate your comments and make sure that you do not link to bad sites. By bad sites, I mean spammy or very low quality sites.
- Similar Posts
- The Difference with Dofollow and Nofollow Links (65.2%)
- Using Blog Comments for Traffic - The Professional Way (34.8%)
- Blog Commenting Tips - How to Get your Comment Approved (21.7%)
- How to Get Backlinks with Blog Comments (13%)
- Community Effort: How to Get People Commenting on Blog Posts (13%)
I had never heard of this before. I’ve seen the “nofollow” in links sometimes, and asked my programming hubby what they mean. He just mumbled something like “they don’t matter. Old technology…” he’s always mumbling stuff like that.
Anyway, knowing about it now, I would definitely opt for “dofollow” links. I comment a lot (both of us try to “never read an article and scroll to the comments without leaving one) not only to add content and encouragement to the person’s site, but also to give my opinion (which in itself can get people looking at your site) and to get backlinks.
Generally, I want to give the same opportunities to my readers. When I do get a thoughtless junk comment leading to a junk site, I’ll often just delete it. I have Wordpress and use the wp-spamfree plug-in which works great. I only get real comments from people who take the time to fill out the form.
I always visit any links left in comments, including the person’s URL they give in their info. Generally people with crap sites don’t leave nice comments.
I love getting comments, and it’s the thing that keeps me going most days.
Leighann Garber´s last blog ..Guest Post by Pablo- Account of my first WOOFing experience
The nofollow affects just as much as it has been affecting for years. Now you can tell your hubby how they work
. Thanks for coming back and taking the time comment. I appreciate it a lot 
Very delightful post here mate. I’m glad that you wrote this up cause I was under the “old” impression. However, I do know that the ration of inbound links to outbound links is still something that is relevant today and important no less. As for comments, I don’t mind having comments and having the “name” used as an outbound link. Truth is, Google likes links in and out but no more then 100 or so per page. Having a thousand comments links on one page just looks gross to Google. So I guess as long as you don’t have a ton of comments and just enough to keep Google satisfied, you are okay. Otherwise, follow some of the bigger sites out there, you’ll see they that they limit comments and limit links on a single page.
SEO Writer´s last blog ..SEO Internal Linking Structure Tips
Great that I could provide you with some new info. You bring a good point to the table about limiting the outbound links . I think I will start to limit the comments per blog post to fifty. Hopefully I’ll just get that much comments some day
Thanks for the comment and taking part in the community and you are welcome back anytime
Definitely go DoFollow. Link juice is based on page (since PR is based on page) so it’s really tough link to bad sites unwillingly.
Also, plugins like Akismet and DoFollow will mitigate and eliminate the latter two cons for you.
Great to that you took the time to comment, welcome
.
You are right. Akismet and Dofollow plugins are golden
Hi bloggeri
I want to ask you something regarding to your pros points:
“Your inner pages will either way loose the value, so why not just spread the wealth”
what if a new blog like mine with no pagerank (i set it as do follow), is my blog going to loosing the value and in the end it will not get higher pagerank?
ysfirdaus´s last blog ..30 Sources to Find Ideas for Posts
It does not work that way. Having the links either dofollow or nofollow affect your pages ranking just the same way. Basically the more comment links your pages the have, the lesser is the value of your internal links. It has nothing to do with having the links as nofollow or dofollow. Hope this clears things up for you
Thanks for your comment and welcome
Personally, I don’t have dofollow comments, only on the top commentator list. This way, it gives regular commentators a reward, and gives non-regular commentators an incentive to comment more!
Simon | Teenius´s last blog ..34 Amazing Premium Wordpress Themes
That is not a bad idea at all, but I see it a bit differently. For having just comments you get a limited amount of traffic directly plus the link value. On the other hand people that do get on the top commentators list get potentially a lot more traffic. Also having a link on a mainpage will provide a lot more value for the actual link.
Like I said in the article, you loose nothing by having all the comments as dofollow. Your innerpage links compete with value of the comment links anyway and there is no added SEO effect for having the links nofollow.
Thanks for the comment Simon, great to read your comment
Here’s my simple thinking:
If it matters so much to a commenter that it’s dofollow or nofollow, then I probably don’t want his/her comments in the first place.
Is that too harsh of a viewpoint?
Jordan Cooper´s last blog ..Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Blog Contests?
Everyone is entitled to their viewpoints of course. I do not care why people comment, if they comment more just because of dofollow, then it is okay for me. This works great as long as blog comments have value. I moderate all the blog comments I get, so it is not a problem for me.
Thanks for the comment Jordan
Personally, I put little value on comment links any way, they are not “natural” and I think SE’s can tell the difference. I comment on “do-follow” (really no such thing, just means has been removed, the term do-follow is slang). But there seems to be a community in this “do-follow” movement in comments and I like that. I put do-follow and coommentluv on both my sites to encourage comments mostly because they are new sites.
Keith´s last blog ..What Browser Are You Using?
Just as long as we get more comments, it’s all good
Thanks for commenting Keith.