Avoid The NoFollow
Everyone knows (and if you don’t know, now you do) that commenting on other blogs related to your niche is a good way to get your name out there and drive a little human traffic to your site/blog.
Many new bloggers/webmasters assume that these “free links” to your blog will also help to increase your Google SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) and your Google PR (Page Rank). Well guess what? Many, if not most of these comment links will not squirt any PR-juice your way thanks to the NOFOLLOW tag – this is because by default, most blogs/forums automatically use the NoFollow tag. Recently though, many bloggers are getting on the DOFOLLOW bandwagon and removing the NoFollow tag passing the PR-Juice to all those that make comments on their blogs. This is a bit of a double-edged sword because although removing the no-Follow tag encourages visitors to post comments on your blog, it also invites spammers, so if you remove doFollow be sure that you’re using Akismet or some other method for filtering out the spammy comments.
OK – So… Whether or not you remove the doFollow tags from your blog, how do you know if the blogs you visit or comment on have the noFollow tags removed so you can benefit by posting comments? You can do it the hard-way by viewing the page-source and checking for the noFollow tag, or you can do it the easy way:
How To Display The noFollow Tag In Firefox: This is how i do it
If you use Firefox you can easily show all links with the noFollow tag in a different color, making them stand-out against links that do not have the noFollow tag by doing the following -
- Find the UserContent-example.css file in your
C:\Documents and Settings\Shared\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[randomprofile#].default\chromefolder. The application folder is hidden, so be sure to change your folder view to show hidden files and folders - Rename usercontent-example.css to usercontent.css
- Add the following line to the bottom of usercontent.css:
a[rel~="nofollow"] { border: thin dashed firebrick! important; background-color: rgb(255, 102, 204)! important; } - Restart Firefox
You can change the RGB colors to any valid RGB code to make the noFollow tags display in any color you choose. If you did it right, you should see a difference in the two links below:
This link does not have the noFollow tag: Wikipedia.com
This link does have the noFollow tag and should look different: Google.com
Happy-Blog commenting!
I have installed dofollow plugin, too.
My blog spread the link love!
BUT here’s how I did it: it will start removing the NO FOLLOW tag only one the third comment from the same email!
And I’ve made it clear just by looking at the ribbon on top left corner.
Also if you want to easily see if a link has no follow or not without installing a plug in, simply select the link and right click on it and select VIEW SELECTION SOURCE, this will show you the HTML used for that link. Easy to spot!
Hey I have been looking for a plugin to help me do that. Thanks for the information
On FanaticSpace.com I use a plugin that lets me set a time limit. After 2 days the no follow is removed. That helps me catch anything spammy that might get through my spam plugins. I explain that on the DoFollow blogroll page I set up on my blog.
Thanks for explaining this. And for the great trick you provide.
I always thought that this DoFollow would increase the pagerank in Technorati also, but ,in my very limited experience, they do not.
But I guess Google is a more reliable source of traffic than technorati.
I will implement the plugin also. I think it is a great way of advertisement
.
Olivier>> I think that’s because Technorati only crawls a post when it’s first published. Can’t have ready made comments, no matter how much some of us wish we could. *L*
My blog also increased in popularity after installing the do follow plugin.
Cool! I never really understood what was best, follow or noFollow ^^ I have always just posted comments anyway.. The free traffic is good and I like that people take my advice, at least sometimes.
I think it would be a wise move for all bloggers to use DOFOLLOW. It would mean a lot more traffic.
hi friends…
seriously do follow is onw way to increase our PR. anyway, lets together instaal this plugin. more bloggers do not know about this thing dude…
Along with Askimet, your blog should also only give out the DoFollow tag once a visitor has commented X number of times.
This will make sure you’re only giving link love to people that are regular commentators.
Great article though.
There’s actually a great Firefox extension out there called SearchStatus that also highlights no-follows for you as well. In addition to that it also has short cuts to several linkdomain: and site: commands in search engines as well as archive.org and whois links.
I use it dozens of times a day
hey Randy,
I found this post on google. Thanks for the easy instructions. Within about a minute, I had Firefox showing the no-follow links in magenta. Wish all of life was this easy! Thanks again!
~ Steve, aka the trade show guru