I Follow, Do You?

One of my blogging goals for this month was to remove the *nofollow* tags on all links. I’m happy to report that this goal has now been completed.

Do Follow

Do Follow
Earlier this evening I installed the DoFollow WordPress Plugin and will now be sharing the link-love with all of the readers that take the time to comment on this blog.

The installation of this plugin is an absolute breeze. Simply download the plugin and extract the file to your plugins directory. Once the file has been uploaded to your host, enable the plugin through your WordPress dashboard and your readers begin to benefit!

Thanking the Readers
In an effort to give a little something back to everyone that takes the time to share their comments on this site, I thought that removing the *nofollow* tag was a little way that I can say thank you. Now when you add a comment on my site, you will receive a linkback from me.

While I am aware that this can be abused to receive free linkbacks, I have faith in the readers of this site because everyone has been so supportive of growing a real community and helping each other out whenever possible.

Hopefully all of you enjoy the linkbacks from my PR4 blog and are able to see some benefit to your own sites with the additional linkbacks.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to remove the *nofollow* tags from your site and join the D-List of blogs that follow - I follow, do you?

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22 Comments»

Comment by Court
2007-05-17 23:29:22
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Happy to hear that you have joined the dofollow movement! I’ll happily add you to the list!

Comment by derek
2007-05-17 23:35:08
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Thanks Court!

 
Comment by jennifer
2007-05-24 20:52:31
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Good idea to remove the no follow, im a loyal reader. Keep up the good work!
Jennifer

Comment by derek
2007-05-24 21:07:22
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You’ll have to forgive me but the double link is screaming spam to me so I removed the link in your comment as it did not pertain to the content at all, which I try to limit in-comment links to relevant pages only.

 
 
 
Comment by Leo
2007-05-18 00:25:06
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What is this Dofollow thingy?
Can you elaborate for us less geeky BSG fans? ;)

Comment by derek
2007-05-18 01:16:11
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Sure, my apologies for not going into it more in my post.

Basically, most blogs by default include a tag called the “nofollow” in their links that tell search engines to ignore the link and not follow (or crawl) that link. The “nofollow” was created primarily to try and reduce or prevent comment spam.

Now, the DoFollow plugins (there are a few different plugins available) basically just go in and strip out the “nofollow” tag in the links. It is possible to edit the files of your theme to do this manually but the plugin makes it much easier.

With the “nofollow” removed, when my site is crawled by the search bots, they will now index and crawl the links of the people making comments. In terms of the search engines, that will now count as a new link inbound to your site and that should help your site’s rankings.

Does that make sense?

 
 
Comment by Leo
2007-05-18 01:24:35
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Viagra bumblefrump? Cialis region franklestein.
;)

 
Comment by betshopboy
2007-05-18 03:08:58
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Hi Derek

I’m glad to share with you I’ve also remove the ‘nofollow’ in comments and join the Dofollow movement.

Feel free to check out my post and drop me some comments.

Thanks!

 
Comment by Brown Baron
2007-05-18 05:25:25
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It’s great to see that the dofollow community is still growing. Welcome to the community!

 
Comment by Angela
2007-05-18 11:00:30
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I removed my “nofollows” not knowing there was this whole movement thingy going on. I just didn’t feel like punishing my few loyal commenters anymore.

Comment by derek
2007-05-18 11:24:18
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I’d seen a few sites discussing the dofollow movement but I didn’t realize it was quite as big as what I have seen so far.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing that you have also removed it from your site and are rewarding your commenters.

 
 
Comment by Tyler Ingram
2007-05-18 11:57:07
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I followed the moment too. Though mine works a bit different, you have to have commented at least 5 times and the script will remove the nofollow attribute from the link on your comment.

Hopefully will cut down on useless comments ;)

Comment by derek
2007-05-18 13:45:58
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Yeah, I’ve seen a few sites that are using a similar approach although I know yours is custom code. If I see it is something that is being abused, I might have to look into that as well but so far so good.

 
 
Comment by Jason
2007-05-18 13:16:17
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Thats great, welcome to the community, although I am only a recent member myself!

Comment by derek
2007-05-18 13:47:52
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Thanks for the welcome and for becoming a member of the community yourself. I’ve still got to add the plugin to my personal finance blog to be a full-fledged member though. :)

 
 
Comment by Melanie Subscribed to comments via email
2007-05-20 17:58:02
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Derek - I see you’ve now been able to score this one off your to-do list!! That’s great :-)

 
Comment by Kelly Cho
2007-05-21 19:39:36
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Yay! Another Do-Follower! =)

 
Comment by derek
2007-05-24 16:30:50
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@betshopboy - Thanks for stopping by and for being another blog in the nofollow crowd. I’ll be stopping by your site when I can catch up on emails.

@BrownBaron - Thanks for the welcome!

@Melanie - Thanks, this was one of my goals for the month and that has now been completed. I noticed you are a member of the “nofollow” crowd as well so welcome to you too.

@Kelly - It took me too long but I finally got it down and haven’t noticed too much spam since then, although there have been some.

 
Comment by John Subscribed to comments via email
2007-05-26 14:28:14
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hi derek,
I read your posts and just wanted to add:
actually google follows and indexes sites linked with a no follow tag. It seems to just not spread PR through those links.
And that is not even sure.
Cheers,
John

Comment by derek
2007-05-26 15:15:03
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John, you’re right as I have read numerous articles that have demonstrated that the search engines are still indexing and following links with the “nofollow” tag.

Removing the tag just eliminates the possibility of people not receiving the credit for their links.

 
 
Comment by Programming Blog
2007-05-29 17:58:43
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I follow too :)

 
Comment by Andrew Mycah Subscribed to comments via email
2007-05-31 07:06:59
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Yes, that is true actually.Google follows those links.A no-follow atribute means just ” I don’t give credit to that link, is not on my site.”
Thank You,

 

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