The fact that my blog comments are nofollow has been a real bone of contention with some of my readers.
So it was no surprise when I got an e-mail from Anthony of DFWRoofing who asks, “You have CommentLuv enabled but you still give nofollow links out, what’s going on?”
Oh boy. Here we go again.
If you read my blog regularly, you know my feelings on dofollow vs. nofollow and that I believe the average blogger’s obsession with backlinks, dofollow, etc. is getting dangerously near the point of insanity.
For the record, I’m not calling Anthony insane. After a couple of exchanges, he seems to be a very nice guy and admitted that he now understands my nofollow decision. So this is not a bash-Anthony post. I’m just talking in general terms here. This was certainly not the first e-mail that questioned my reasons.
As a blogger who’s achieved quite the following without actively hunting down dofollow links and only posting on blogs that allow dofollow, it’s really hard for me to believe dofollow comments make that big a difference overall. But maybe I’m completely off base here.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand why many blogs are dofollow…
1) It encourages more comments and can be a great idea if your blog is new and you want to encourage more discussions
2) It’s a courteous gesture to offer a backlink to people who take the time to comment on your blog
I get all that. I really, really do.
But there is actually a downside to offering dofollow links on your blog. Matt Cutts even posted a video about it. See below.
When you allow dofollow links, you are essentially “endorsing” every link on your blog by giving a backlink. And when you’re in a niche with a lot of scammy, seedy sites, this may not be the ideal scenario.
For the record, links in the body of my posts are dofollow. The same goes for my guest posters. These are links I endorse/recommend so I happily spread a little link love around.
So for me, it’s not that I want to be stingy or selfish by having nofollow comments. You guys know that’s not my style. It’s more about preservation of my own blog’s reputation by not linking out to sites on pyramid schemes, get-rich-quick programs, porn and who knows what else.
My blog comments are nofollow mainly because that was the default when I installed WordPress. And when I began reading about the pros and cons of dofollow, I felt the cons outweighed the pros so I left things “as is.” This is my personal decision and I believe you have to do what’s best for your blog.
Many people know my comments are nofollow, yet they still comment because they know there’s more value to commenting than just the “link juice” aspect.
And when you look at more popular blogs like ProBlogger and CopyBlogger, you’ll see they also have nofollow comments. (Hmmm…. I wonder if they get as much heat about this as I do?) 😉
So Why Use CommentLuv?
Sorry about the nofollow/dofollow tangent I just went on. Let’s get back to Anthony’s original point about using the CommentLuv plug-in when your comment links are nofollow.
Well here’s what I want to know. Whatever happened to people clicking links out of interest and curiosity because you wrote an attention-grabbing title that’s relevant to their needs?
Has this dofollow obsession caused us to disregard that important aspect of Internet Marketing?
You guys have to remember. I got started in Internet Marketing when there was no such think as counting/measuring backlinks and nofollow was unheard of.
There was so much more emphasis on writing powerful headlines that got the click instead of today where it seems to be more about get the keyword-rich backlink.
Call me “old school”, but I still value a good headline and will gladly click on one when it entices me. Don’t you?
That’s exactly how I found Jay of TheAntiSocialMedia (That’s a dofollow link by the way.) 😉 Whether the blog I discovered him on was nofollow or not (I never check or care), he still got the visit (and a few comments) because he wrote a compelling title that I noticed because of the CommentLuv plug-in (dofollow or not).
Anthony told me he thought “the whole point of CommentLuv was to offer a dofollow link to posters who leave useful comments…”
So that’s the whole point of CommentLuv? Do you feel that way too? Wow! That comment really made me realize how differently I view links from many bloggers and how little stock I put into dofollow comments. To be honest, I think the CommentLuv plug-in still provides value to my commenters, but maybe many others don’t feel that way.
Quite frankly, sometimes I feel like I’m stranded on some bizarre SEO island. Just me and my little nofollow links playing happily together in the sand. 😉
Whether the blog is dofollow or not, I’ve always thought the real value of CommentLuv was getting to display your latest blog post and attracting attention because of the headline. After all, I’ve clicked on countless CommentLuv links because the author wrote a compelling title.
Sure, I understand the importance of dofollow links to a point, but things just seem to be blown out of proportion today.
Am I really that old school? Do I need to step out of 1999, eject my “No Strings Attached” NSYNC CD and say “Bye, Bye, Bye” to my antiquated perceptions about links, SEO, etc? (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
I know many of you disagree with my stance, but that’s OK. That’s why I love topics like this because they bring out those hearty discussions.
So let’s get to it!
I am very much impressed with your post..
I agree with you, This will help in giving us true commentors..
Thanks
I agree too. I’ve never hunted around for blogs with do-follow comments.
There’s no doubt Lisa, that comment luv is a great way of appreciating your visitors for stopping by. For me i like it the way you set all up!
In the first place, comments should not be used just to get backlinks. It ruins the purpose of commenting.
For already established blogs nofollow should be the choice, as it will attract more spammers than a true reader.
Thanks for the post
Great post and great video
keep posting
Naturally everyone has the right to run their blog whichever way they want and if that means they want follow the nofollow route then that’s their choice. I choose to have a dofollow blog as it’s always been my intention to reward my commentators.
I’m not all that fussed about what Google thinks but having said that I check where the links go and if it goes to an undesirable site I remove the link. Which brings me to the point you raised in your post
By having commentluv you’re still linking to these sites anyway so why not just be 100% dofollow?
My CommentLuv links are nofollow (check the source code). I made a manual edit to the script.
I notice that they are now but when I checked before they were actually dofollow. Don’t ask me why but they were otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it in the comment.
Oh I know why. When I upgraded the plugin, I didn’t immediately go back to make the manual nofollow edit so you probably commented during that time. Makes sense now. 😉
Phew, I’m glad we cleared that up. I was starting to think I was seeing things and had to give up the old booze. 😉
LOL! No, you’re OK. 😀
I mentioned this before but it’s your blog and your rules, so I am not here to cast a judgemental eye on your nofollow/commentLuv link – especially since I agree with you: commentLuv links should appeal to potential readers regardless of being dofollow or nofollow.
Having said that, my blog is dofollow (using keyworLuv) and I intend to keep it that way to reward people who tooke the time to comment (to be honest I am very critical of the comments left on the blog and most that have gone through sound as if the person has read the blog post).
Also I wouldn’t trust everything Google says (even if it’s via Matt Cutts), because part of their strategy is to keep the webmasters guessing – and scared – to do things that would mess up their algo. And if all the blogs were to become dofollow, they would have their work cut out for quite some time.
One other reason they advise to have nofollow links on blogs is because overall blogs lifespan is very short and spammers and WP hacker can then turn this to their advantage by “turning” disused blogs into link farms.
At the end of the day (I hate this expression), the rel=”nofollow”, rel=”canonical” – and the scare tactics that surround them, is all done to disguise serious flaws in Google’s algo – even if overall it’s better than many others.
I like CommentLuv Its useful to see what other bloggers are writing about, before you hit the link –
and I just started CommentLuv myself and it does encourage more commenting, which is a good Thing
You should run your blog the way you want to.
I do the same. I nofollow comments but allow commentluv. But I also have a top commentator widget that is dofollow. It’s a reward for those who comment on a consistent basis. I do however ban comment spammers.
Lisa, I sure like your blog! Like so many others trying to build a successful web site the backlink is important. Likewise a quality site is equally important. I don’t fault you for protecting the quality of your site. That’s why I keep coming back.
FWIW, I’ve clicked a number of CommentLuv links on this very blog because the comment was interesting, the blog link text was interesting, and I wanted to hear more from this person.
It definitely is not all about do-follow no-follow etc. Remember the web is more for people than it is for search engines.
Awesome post to read
keep posting
thanks
Lisa
I have made a few comments on your site and others, regardless of the follow status, I have found that after a comment has been made on your site there has been an increase in traffic to my site for a short period afterwards.
For me, (must be old school to) I would rather a visitor to my site where they may subscribe to a RSS or bookmark my site.
I see this as the better option, mainly because I don’t credit the PR of a web page as the be the most important part of SEO.
I am in the process of installing commentluv as a trail on one of my sites…. minus the dofollow status. 🙂
Geoff
Obviously great minds think alike, as I posted a very similiar article last week, “Say Yes to CommentLuv and No to Do Follow”. All kidding aside, there do seem to be PageRank penalties being applied to do follow blogs. However, I have not be able to identify negative consequences associated with a do follow PageRank penalty, other than the perceived importance of the blog may be a bit diminished.
I too use CommentLuv on my blog and i know many other famous blogger who too use this plugin.Its like rewarding commentators.BTW thanks Lisa
Lisa, you’re listed as a dofollow CommentLuv blog on NetChunks list. When I read this post, I told the owner that you said you are not a dofollow blog. This is what he said:
Any ideas?
CommentLuv links are dofollow. I believe the whole fuss is always about the main link from your name field to you website URL.
I have been thinking about all this CommentLuv thing and I believe Google will disregard these links since there are so many of them, so it won’t matter if they are dofollow or nofollow.
I tend to moderate my comments pretty aggressively, so if there is any hint that it’s a spammer then I just don’t allow the comment to post. If I think it may be someone who just doesn’t know better, then I will strip out the links and post the comment. If someone just happens to post an objectionable title or post then CommentLuv gives a handy Remove Luv option.
With that level of control, I feel comfortable keeping the do follow links attached to comments. In the end, I doubt the link juice makes much difference, but I’m happy to send it on. Like you, I think the real value of CommentLuv is capturing the attention of readers with a great comment and a well written post title.
As a commenter, I comment regardless of what comment system or follow tags are applied to my comments. Either a post, or the author, deserves the comment or it doesn’t. Everything else, as they say, is just gravy.
Hi Lisa,
First, let just say I applaud you for your decision. And let’s make this clear… it’s YOUR decision and YOUR blog so if people don’t like it well … you probably can guess what my answer would be.
Second, I do have a dofollow blog; switched over a month or so ago. Have I seen more comments? Sure! Can I say it was the result of switching? Not really. Probably more about me marketing my site and connecting with others.
Lastly, if you ever where to do the switch, there is an option to ‘remove luv’ with commentluv system. So for those spammers who obviously leave a comment to get a backlink or have attached a shady link, you can take away their link privileges… better yet, ban that bad boy. 😉
making your comments dofollow will only mean links to scammy sites if you let them. Yes it can take time to sort through the rubbish but surely you do that anyway with nofollow?
If someone comments ‘great article’ from xxxxxx.com I am pretty sure you won’t accept it..?
Good points here. It’s a personal preference of the admin if it’s gonna be a dofollow/nofollow. And for me, dofollow has been overrated and a lot of dofollow blogs comments appear to be a bit spammy.
I use dofollow on two of my blogs, not on the others. Just a personal preference. You articulated yours well.
Hi Lisa,
You make some good points here. I like to have my blog do follow as a courteous gesture to my commentators. But you are right about being careful about endorsing spammy sites. I find that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the spam from the non-spam comments.
As for commentluv, I completely agree with your thoughts on the plugin. I don’t think it has anything to do with dofollow or nofollow. It really has more to do with giving commentators a way to display a small sample of their latest comment to possibly catch the eye of readers on other blogs. I’ve always thought if it that that way and figured that gesture was good enough whether the blog was dofollow or not.
Spammers wreck my buzz, as does the whole fiasco of people hunting down do follow/no follow blogs, when in my opinion, it does not really matter as only google really knows how these links are counted, and, as I check my stats, any blogs with no follow, the link still shows in my stats, so to me it is a myth.
I’ll have some banter with people who leave proper interesting comments, as for spammy whammys, just delete, simple. I’ll comment on blogs on people I enjoy reading and will have the same approach with people who leave comments on my blogs.
I’m old school, too. The content has to catch me. Yes, my blog is still small, and I have friends who are growing much faster than I am. BUT! My subscriptions and traffic doubled in the last two months. I’m pretty sure they’ll double again. Why? I hope it’s because of the content. It certainly isn’t because of link frenzy.
When I started to read I thought…
“Oh boy. Here we go again.” just like you.
I’ve read posts that tell you not to use dofollow and posts that tell you that you must use dofollow, but…
That 2.35min video from Mr Google has to be the clincher.
I’ll stay with my CommentLuv and nofollow.
I feel you on this one. I completely respect the fact that your blog comments are nofollow. Even though you have many genuine followers, there are still spammers who will take your kindness for weakness.
By moderating spam, your influencing webmasters that follow you to develop better networking relations. For those fellow bloggers that post on your site, it’s the personality that they show in their posts that interests me to follow their blog links.
Frank
Your decision sounds pretty reasonable to me. I think blog commenting should be more about the interaction than about the link.
Just don’t get sand in your laptop, now. 😉
I personally don’t care whether a blog has nofollow or dofollow comments. I too am “old school” in the sense that the it’s the headline that matters. If I get additional link juice from the search engines then so be it but that’s just secondary.
I feel you on this. I completely respect the fact that your blog comments are set to nofollow. Even though you may have many genuine followers, there will always be spammers who will exploit your kindness any chance they get.
I think by building a networking community where spam is moderated, webmaster learn to build quality relationships on the net. Especially, if you’re in this for the long hull.
Frank
Hi Lisa
I have read so many posts on this topic and find it very interesting. Whatever a blog owner chooses to do will be justified by a reasonable argument. At the end of the day all blog owners can take the stance “My blog, my rules” and readers then make the choice whether to stay, go and/or whether to return.
Good on you for coming out and telling the commentluv community that you are a nofollow blog. A lot of us when we joined thought all were dofollow. I was a complete newbie to blogging and I have found that it has helped get my blog out there by people clicking through. Also many in the community have been incredibly helpful and supportive of my small niche blog too. I personally don’t check if blogs are dofollow or nofollow when I visit a blog.
I’m interested in quality content that will bring something to my blogging journey. And I love networking, so if I visit a blog regularly and there is interaction happening, that’s another reason I would want to stay around.
If someone comments on my blog for the first time, I always check their blog before I approve the comment; unless I know the commenter. I don’t hesitate to delete what I see as spam or from a bad neighbourhood.
Thanks for sharing your stance Lisa. Appreciated.
Patricia Perth Australia
My blog used to be dofollow. Sure, I got comments, and some were on the spammy side, but I didn’t feel like any of the commenters were really interested in my content, so when I switched to Disqus comments, I decided to go back to nofollow.
Very I interesting view on dofollow/nodollow links here. I wasnt even aware that commentluv can be made to have nofollow links…I thought they were all do follow.
But I agree with your standing on the subject. People do focus too much on getting dofollow links that they’re forgetting about the value of impactful headlines and content-filled comments.
People post quality comments on my blog because I am an authority in my niche. They are usually asking a question or expressing a valuable opinion on the subjects I write about. Very few of them even have a website.
I do not like all of the short, irrelevant, automated spam comments that occasionally get past my filters. Why would I want to open the door to more of the same by making my blogs DOFOLLOW?
I build links by writting articles, participating in forums and through requesting them from webmasters.
I do not link build through trying to find DOFOLLOW blogs. They are too few and far between to even try and find.
There is definitely something to be said about content driving traffic instead of spammy tactics and worrying about dofollow vs nofollow. There’s better things to be spending time on, like making content people want to see.
@Glen: dofollow is preferred, but I’d go for any kind of links, irrespective of the dofollow or nofollow status. That’s only natural in the eyes of the big G. 🙂
I think that you will protect your site a bit more from the spammers. The spammers that know about the nofollow attribute will probably move on and not leave a so called comment. I have noticed a worrying trend recently though. There seems to be an increase in broken English comments which have no relevance to the post. The name section features keywords even though the link is a nofollow link. I don’t know if these are automated comments or just low paid drones but I am sick of the spam and stupidity.
I have my own business and I am trying to make a money but in a way that gives value back. In conclusion I don’t blame you for adding the nofollow attribute but high 5 for the commentluv link. Thanks
Your opinion here Lisa is definitely not the most popular one but i understand your reasons and respect that. It does not bother me as I’m not here for links but to learn and share.
Thanks!
Hi Lisa,
If one only really understand what Matt Cutts is saying one would be so heated about about dofollow/nofollow links. To me each one has to decide for themselves whether to take the do/nofollow option for their blog. It’s where your blog is at in the evolution of a blog.
A blog can start out as dofollow just to get more commenter’s traffic… but I’ve come to the opinion that comment links have very little SEO juice value. CommentLuv generate a certain type of traffic, generally other bloggers: but is that your target traffic for your product or services?
The next thing is, why are people commenting? Just to get a link or traffic (which is essentially selfish) or to add value and to connect with the others? I keep from commenting if I have nothing to add.
I do not check if the a blog is follow or nofollow before I comment. I only comment when the subject of the post interest me and I can come up with a meaningful comment… that’s take time and effort (for me at least).
Ben Wan
the more back-linking strategies are abused by marketers, the more importance this question will have and scrutiny around it.
agreed with no following all comments – but if comment luv does it anyway, why should any subscriber have a beef with you as the blogger?
perhaps this needs to be explained to the Roofer to provide comfort rather than make him resent?
Since the Comment Luv links are still do-follow, does that mean you visit all the sites and remove their links if they lead to a site you’d rather not endorse? I do on my blog, but, well let’s just say i get a LOT less traffic than you do.
Regardless, you make a good argument for using no-follow links. I think that’s a point every blog eventually comes to, when the traffic and comments become unmanageable otherwise.
Hi Cindy,
I made a manual edit to the script. My CommentLuv links are nofollow.
Lisa,
I totally respect your choice. You’ve worked hard to build this site and there’s nothing wrong with withholding a backlink.
There are so many other benefits to commenting on this blog besides a backlink: there’s so many networking opportunities here (if you take the time to check out other people’s links), there’s the potential traffic you gain, if you have an interesting last post title – those benefits are more than generous.
Some popular blogs have chosen to close comments after a week, but you keep yours open – so I think what you’re doing is totally fair. You provide so much value here, I don’t believe people still have the audacity to complain.
I don’t think I have ever use dofollow on my blog. The CommentLuv plugin is the only thing that provides a dofollow link.
I also notice that many people would leave spammy comments because of CommentLuv, so I tend to police the comments a little more now, and delete the ones that look spammy.
I used to use a plugin that automatically change a commentor’s link to dofollow after the commentor left a specific number of comments. I have since removed that plugin.
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for this post. You have me rethinking a few things about my site.
The new google page ranks are out and I know my page should probably be higher than a 2, so I’ll be making some changes.
I love how you always keep it real!
Take care,
Evelyn
I think you are right. I think comments aim is above all to discuss the topic and not to acquire dofollow backlinks.
I have three main blogs. All have CommentLuv, but only one is DoFollow.
I’m DoFollow on my main flagship site because I want to encourage comments and subscriptions. But there’s definitely the downsides you mention here. I’ve had a couple of comments from potentially shady websites; in those cases I manually made the links to those sites NoFollow.
Why am I not DoFollow on the other two blogs? Because they are very specific — my freelance writing specialty and hiking in northern California — and I don’t want drive-by commenters dropping by with a vague comment hoping for a backlink. I reply to most comments, and I also want the discussion to be focused and relevant.
I agree too. I’ve never hunted around for blogs with do-follow comments. I comment on the blogs that I like to read whether the comment links are follow or not.
Even I too… I just keep on reading the blog that interests me instead of checking its attributes
Having do-follow comment links on a blog certainly attracts spammers and “clever blog commenters” wanting to get a link back to their “cheap tickets” website and what not. I have do-follow links on my blog but I’m very strict regarding who I’ll let have a do-follow link.
First of all I don’t allow keywords as a name. Name is for NAME, not “cheap airline tickets”. So if anyone enters keywords there, I simply remove the URL complete – no link, no do-follow link, no no-follow link. Nothing.
If it is a name but it’s clear that the user only commented to get a backlink back to his site for whatever product/service, then I might “nofollow” it manually.
Most of the time, my commenters are regular and real humans with real websites or blogs, and they get do-follow, including CommentLuv.
It does involve some manual work and I might switch to no-follow eventually when I get tired of doing it, but so far it’s not that bad and I still feel it has more pro’s and con’s for me.
OK, this one is gonna be big, Lisa, you are messing with the comment-for-link-only people 🙂
I totally agree with your policy, I think you should never change it and I do the same thing!
There are plugins you can use to offer certain people a dofollow on their comment (I used this one on someone on my blog) but I am still never going to make my whole blog do follow.
I get some comments that are not spammy and the blogs are not spammy (that much) but I personally would never link to them. So why would I give them an extra do follow link?
My blog is there for people to read, it’s sole purpose is not to be a link source. I have pending comments that I will not approve until the blogger that made them makes his blog worth linking to. Seeing a blog with one page that has nothing to do with anything…sorry…no comment approved for you…
I don’t see your CommentLuv possibility as my way to get a back link. I see it as a privilege that I am thankful for since it brought me some visitors.
If you would remove CLuv and website URL from the comments, leaving our names with no links, I would still come here and comment.
Your CommentLuv made it possible for me to go and check out some great blogs out there and I think everyone should keep in their mind this: a blog owner is that – a blog owner. He/she can do with it what ever he/she wants. It is their good will if they will allow links or not.
Be thankful for what you get and stop thinking it is your God given right to get links back to your blog. Just start working, writing good content and you won’t need any do follow back links from comments, cause you will be getting thousands of them from people that think you have something to say.
Lisa, thanks again for the opportunity to use CLuv on your blog.
P.S. I love Jay’s anti-social blog 🙂
Lisa, I like the stance that you take, popular or not. When you have arrived at the position that you are at, there is no need to jump on every band wagon out there. Your strength lies in the quality of your posts, and this should serve as a model for others to follow. If your blog had dofollow links, what would be the incentive for others to go out there and write powerful attention-getting stuff?
I do have “dofollow” links on my blog, but I operate in a relatively small niche, and attract just a handful of visitors to my site. Because of the relatively small amount of comments I get, I can easily weed out the undesirable comments and links to bad sites. If I were to get inundated with a large volume of comments, I can easily pull the plug on the “dofollow” plugin.
Keep doing what you are doing, and for the record, you are my inspiration.