All you want is a little link juice

When you take the time to read an article and make a legitimate comment its only fair that you get a little link juice. But with many blog platforms the rel=”nofollow” attribute is automatically set. On Success For Your Blog and many other blogs there is a movement to allow comment links to be followed. Before I go any further let me explain what this follow / nofollow thing is all about.

Here is the NOFOLLOW definition according to Wikipedia.

nofollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.

I think that is a pretty good description and purpose of the nofllow attribute. But the thing about it with regards to blogs is that if you have Spam filtering and moderation in place there is no reason to use rel=”nofollow”

If you have a blog and want to allow comments to be followed for WordPress the solution is easy. Use the DoFollow Plugin. Just make sure you have a way to combat any spam comments.

Some blogs advertise that they follow comments with a “U Comment I Follow” badge. The problem is they either don’t really follow or they don’t know how to follow. So I have an easy way for you to catch this and call them on it. Just grab the Search Status Firefox Plugin. Once installed you can have all nofollow links highlighted to see if they are actually follow or not. You can also check by right clicking and looking at the link properties to see what attributes they have.

So if you decide to leave comments here at Success For Your Blog you can be sure that your link will be followed. However if its a spam comment you can bet it won’t show up.

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