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Removing the nofollow tags from comments
Can removing the nofollow tags from comments in a blog increase traffic and encourage people to join in? I have been thinking of ways to reward people who comment on my blog because after all, if nobody is visiting what’s the point of having a blog in the first place? I also notice the majority of people visiting but not saying a word (don’t be shy!)
So far the things I have done to reward my vistors are:
- Building a blogroll to reward commenters with sitewide link credits.
- Offering those who contribute articles to SEO Buzz Box a powerful link credit to their site within the text itself.
But what about the comment area of a blog that uses Google’s nofollow oompa loompa tag by default? I am lucky to be part of the Wordpress community and this is a Wordpress blog, there is a new case by case plugin that allows you to pick and choose “case by case” which comment you want to pass link love to.
I could start off testing it by picking one outstanding comment a week that I like and allow it to pass FULL pagerank to the persons blog.
The goal is to completely remove the nofollow tag at some point to encourage people to contribute because it is not about me, it is about all of you.
The thing not to do would be use people to build a internet footprint for “SEO” and give them nothing in return. I believe it should be about hooking people up with recognition to encourage the growth of new rockstars and authorities in the fields of webmastering, marketing and search engine optimization.
Do you believe this is doable or would I be giving away too much?
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February 23rd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I think it is a great idea to reward the poeple who post on your blog with a folowed link, I see far to much of this nofollow business these days.
February 23rd, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I don’t think you’ll ever be able to turn off the nofollow across the board. There are way too many “great post, man” type comments going around. Whether the sentiment is genuine or not, you don’t want to encourage this type of comment because in the end it’s just clutter.
But the idea of selecting the best comment per day, week, or post seems like a good compromise. Of course, you can’t let the rest of us decide for you. We’re all too self-serving to trust :-)
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:17 pm
It would definitely be an incentive for people to comment more often, but the ball would still be in your court because I’d only comment if you write something that interests me or I have something unique to add.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:53 pm
I just made the switch to not using nofollow. Cool people share link love.
I manually read every comment anyway, so it’s easy to either delete the comment because it’s spam, leave it nofollowed if it doesn’t add much, or remove the nofollow if it does add something to the discussion.
Remember, nofollow is to deter spam, not prevent bloggers from helping each other get good rankings.
February 24th, 2007 at 2:39 am
I don’t think blogs will ever just be able to ‘turn off the nofollow’. Too many people will post ‘me toos’ with names on-topic for their link to get easy links.
But letting quality commenters have a link doesn’t seem unreasonable - I haven’t looked at Case By Case, but if it can be set for eg only on the second post; only if post is longer than X (40? 50 char?); etc then it would certainly be worth experimenting with.
The perfect outcome is to encourage people to comment without giving people an incentive to leave valueless comments.
IMHO :)
February 24th, 2007 at 8:51 am
I like the case-by-case idea. A blanket solution either way doesn’t work because there are different links and different posters and thus different levels of usefulness to a blog in general. Why paint them all with the same brush?
“Me too, me too, me too!” (Sorry, Lea.)
February 24th, 2007 at 10:26 am
It’s pretty easy to tell if a commenter has something to add or not.
-If it’s pure spam, easy to spot.
-If it’s a SEO going for the easy link, it’s a “Great post!” comment with keyword rich anchor text instead of a person’s name.
-If it’s a SEO that is prepared to post something useful, then in my books it’s as good as a non-seo posting something useful.
I’m actually thinking of going one step further and adding a field for “anchor text” - that is, if I really like the comment, I use your chosen text for the link instead of the name.
But no way would this be rolled out for all comments - I only consider it because I’m manually checking anyway.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I’m an advocate of removing the NoFollow and have done so on my creative design blog.