What do sheep and my blog have in common?

Aug 23, 2008

Recently, I installed the DoFollow plugin for WordPress—something I’ve been intending to do for a few weeks now. One of the first places I learned about this tool whilst reading the blog of London-based graphic designer Rob Cubbon.

Basically, for those of you who don’t know what this software is, the DoFollow Plugin is some code for WordPress that gives commentors credit for leaving comments in blog post, like this one.

The credit that is given is the absence of the ‘No Follow’ tag, which allows search engine spiders, such as GoogleBot, to follow the web URL to your site. In a nut-shell, if you leave a [unspammy] meaningful comment on any of my blog posts, your site (providing you entered your URL) will receive ‘Link Juice’—adding more web-authority and respectability to your own site.

I have done this to reward commenters on this blog, as by default, WordPress blogs treat links in posts with a ‘No-Follow‘ tag. If you have any thoughts on any of my upcoming articles, including constructive criticism, feel free to leave a comment—and benefit your own site in the process.

So if your wondering what sheep and my blog have in common, well, they both follow!

September Update:

Recently, I have discovered a better plugin than NoFollow. The Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin does the same basic function of the other plugin, but is customizable. I can set the plugin to keep NoFollow on my own posts, but set it to follow other peoples’ comments after they have posted a pre-determined amount of comments. I have done this to help prevent comment-spammers from gaining link juice, but still rewards regular commenters. If you’re using WordPress, I highly reccommmend it. Additionally, the comment-count of a commenter is displayed. Great!

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14 Thoughtful Comments, Comment or Ping

Doug C.

Bah, ram, ewe …. lol. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

DoFollow is a very nice plugin. I first read about this on a blog where they were talking about CommentLuv. For some reason whenever I left a comment on a blog with CommentLuv it would not properly parse my blog. After a week of searching around for a cause I discovered that the culprit was OpenID.

Once I removed OpenID from my own blog and deleted my account with them then everything was fine.

Doug C.s last blog post..Just the FAQs, m’am, just the FAQs…

Aug 23rd, 2008
Andrew Kelsall

Hi Doug,
Hmm, open ID? I’ve never heard of that one, I think I’ll look into it. I’ve noticed that my feed/posts don’t parse in some blogs, but do in others, thanks for the info…

Aug 24th, 2008
Rob Cubbon

Hi Andrew,
I installed the DoFollow plugin because I thought it would be a sort of nice thing to do as well as to get more comments. Nowadays I’m always wondering if a lot of my comments are just from people wanting link juice. Anyway, it’s definitely a good idea to reward your commenters. Thanks for the link.
Rob

Aug 25th, 2008
Andrew Kelsall

That’s Okay Rob, I’m always willing to link to quality sites.

I don’t think I’ll have the same problems as you (at the moment anyway), as I’m only PR1 as this is a new site. Although, I’ll keep an eye on how things go over time…

Aug 25th, 2008
Doug C.

Totally Irrelevant Comment: Rob, I loved your ‘eye-catching’ Illustrator tutorial.

Doug C.s last blog post..Your Opinion: New Blog Title?

Aug 27th, 2008
David Pache

The DoFollow plugin does sound like a real asset to any blog, hopefully something similar is available for Expression Engine.

Aug 29th, 2008
Funny Forwards

Andrew,
You not the only one who has decided to do this. (Doug C beat me to the “baa” comment) I decided to offer it on my site after reading Rob’s blog and seeing how people were interacting. Sure you have a lot of people who only come for the link love, but quality content will win quite a few over.

It’s been active for a month or so and no real comment or traffic increase yet…then again who wants a link form a PR 0? Plus I’ve found it’s more difficult than I thought to get listed on most dofollow directories.

Funny Forwardss last blog post..Childhood Picture of Michael Phelps

Aug 29th, 2008
Andrew Kelsall

David,
Thanks for your comment, I’ve visited your site before, I see that you have updated the layout – looks really good. Like you said, pity that DoFollow isn’t available for your format.

Funny Forwards,
For me, I wouldn’t even be wanted to be listed in DoFollow directories, this would only invite link-loving-commenters.

I looked at your blog, the ‘Water on Mars’ photo made me laugh!

Aug 29th, 2008
Richard

David Airey’s blog (davidairey.com) is dofollow, too, and his posts are pretty good – interesting, and well formatted.

There isn’t a ‘do follow’ as such; it’s more a lack of a ‘nofollow’ attribute in the link, by the way.

(PS, really love your logo, especially the colours. Have added this to my feeds!)

Aug 29th, 2008
Andrew Kelsall

What a poignant comment Richard — you wrote it just as I was adding my logo to my comments with the ‘Highlight Author Comments’ WordPress Plugin.

I comment of David Airey’s site regularly, but I never knew it was NoFollow — has he written a post about it?

Thanks for the compliment on the logo, and in return, the feather in your own logo sets your identity apart also, good stuff.

I’m amazed at the response this post has had over the past week. It’s only my 8th article on this new blog, so I appreciate everyones comments, thanks Richard for subscribing!

PS: I see what you mean about the ‘Follow tag’, my mistake, I’ll correct the wording soon, thanks for the heads-up

Aug 29th, 2008
Blogger Tips

I just posted some new Free U Comment I Follow Buttons & Badges on my blog for anyone who wants a dofollow badge that’s a little more Web 2.0

Blogger Tipss last blog post..Top 10 Ways To Get Banned By Google

Jan 2nd, 2009
brian

I’ve been thinking about turning off nofollow for a while. Thanks for posting this plugin. I’m going to install it on my site too!

brians last blog post..10 Terrific and Handy CSS Resources

May 3rd, 2009
Andrew Kelsall

@Blogger Tips

Thanks for the resource.

@Brian

I definitely recommend the “Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin”, which is great for setting the amount of comments made before Link-juice is given.

May 3rd, 2009
kamdrag

May 12th, 2010