The nofollow has been labeled a tool used by SEOs to try to game search engines and has been given a bad name. This is the farthest from the truth. nofollow is a tool used to help all websites and although shouldn’t be used on all links, it should definitely be used on untrusted, unrelated, and links in comments.
- Giving dofollow links in comments helps no one. It takes PageRank from you and distributes it through all dofollow links. By doing so, each dofollow link receives only a portion of PageRank. If there are 10 comments, the 10 people must share it along with all the links on your page. This takes away from the links you should really promote, the links in your content.
- Using dofollow on all links will only hurt you. Search engines know everything you link to. If you are an SEO blog and linking to a car blog, Google knows. If you also link to a personal blog, a blog about cats, and a blog about dogs, Google knows. Chances are, you will be penalized for being a ‘link farm’. This will give your links less page rank and no one benefits.
- If a visitor comments on your blog and leaves quality information, reward them with a link from your post. Lets be honest, not all comments deserve a link, so why treat them like they do? If someone says something interesting, talk about it in a post. That way, the commentator gets “full” PageRank instead of just a portion.
- Nofollow was originally created for untrusted links, but Google themselves stated it should be used to ’sculpt’ PageRank (for lack of a better word). Use nofollow on contact pages, TOS, and unrelated links. Don’t send PageRank to a page which doesn’t need it or won’t benefit from it. It only hurts your page and helps no one.
- It isn’t just about trust. When you link to a website, search engines look at who they link to and who those link to. If the site you link to is OK, then they link to another site which links to a casino, pornography, or alcohol blog, you will still be penalized.
If you are still confused:
A link farm is a site which links to various types of unrelated pages.
A bad neighborhood is a page, blog, or website which links to ‘bad sites’ like pornography, alcohol, sex, drugs, or gambling/casinos.
The problem is, even if the site in the comments is related, you never know who they are linking to. By allowing dofollow in comments and all links, chances are you are linking to a link farm or bad neighborhood.
And this isn’t just about PageRank, it is about traffic. PageRank (the one you can’t see), helps generate the search engine results pages. This in turn allows visitors to search and find your pages for related keywords. If your page receives enough traffic, chances are your commentators will receive clicks. If your page doesn’t receive traffic, your commentators won’t receive as many clicks.
So by using dofollow, you end up hurting your commentators by giving less click-throughs.
PageRank is just PageRank, but traffic is what we all crave.
Written: Nov 7, 2008
tata
November 7, 2008 @ 5:55 pm
I’m intrigued. I’m definitely a sucker for link love – I am smitten by the idea of helping a fellow blogger. I’m interested in finding out more about nofollow, as I had nofollow for a long time until I found the dofollow “movement.” I knew that Google penalized users that dofollow, but what you are saying seems like dofollow penalizes everyone’s links?
Gary R. Hess
November 8, 2008 @ 2:36 am
@tata It doesn’t penalize your commentators website, just your own. However, the problem with this is that it ends up hurting your commentors indirectly because your website will get less traffic, thus less traffic through click throughs, which is far more important than the extremely small amount of page rank they would receive otherwise.
tata
November 8, 2008 @ 9:06 am
I’m afraid I don’t follow (erm, sorry! Pun not intended) the logic that my commentators and I will get less traffic if my blog is dofollow. I can sorta understand that PageRank might suffer, but there are a lot of people out there that embrace dofollow. If you want the proof, just Google “do follow”!
Carol
November 8, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
Truthfully, I get SO confused about this stuff. I try to do the right thing on my blogs, but I don’t know if I am hurting or helping sometimes. Thanks for explaining things so we can at least have an informed way to make a decision whether to use do-follow or not.
Carol
November 8, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
I’m not even sure I have the option of setting dofollow or nofollow on my blog.
baldeagle
November 9, 2008 @ 7:01 am
Write good content. The rest will take care of itself.
Gary R. Hess
November 9, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
@baldeagle that isn’t exactly true if no one can see your good content.
Texas Wanderer
November 9, 2008 @ 11:53 pm
Interesting twist!
Jordan
November 10, 2008 @ 1:54 am
What do you think of the following situation:
All links on my blog are nofollow except comments and some internal links and I don’t approve all comments.
Do you have snippets from the TOP post or comments from somewhere that you can share?
I’ve learned this week that the experts do what they tell others not to do. Just surveying the land and I’m glad you brought this topic up. In the past few weeks I’d been messing with nofollow.
Gary R. Hess
November 10, 2008 @ 3:22 am
@Jordan he’s written about it quite a bit, just look at his homepage and I’m sure you’ll see a post.
The comments are the main problem. If you don’t want to nofollow links within your content or site, that is fine. But the comments are what causes most of the problem since you don’t have any control over them. And as the post says, even if the page looks fine, you can’t be too sure about the other posts on the site or the sites it links to.
Jordan
November 11, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
Thank you for clarifying I hear ya’. I’m going to reconsider my comments now or be choosier which ones I publish. Especially if people try to link bait. Thanks again.