Link-Backs: Make Sure They Count
In an effort to help spur on more commenting. I’ve decided to remove the nofollow tag that is attached to any links in the comments.
From Wikipedia:
nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.
The people at Wordpress decided to set the default to set the nofollow tag on all links in comments in an attempt to slow down comment spam. It was probably a good move for the default wordpress setup since that has no comment filtering enabled by default, and no challenge questions.
However if you have a blog and are moderating the comments, have a good spam filter or challenge question then consider removing the nofollow default. It’s just one more incentive for people to post comments. For this site, I’ve managed to reduce the amount of spam to zero by putting that challenge question in. I read every comment so any spam will be deleted quickly.
Any legitimate people that would like to comment and gain a link back to their site can post a quality comment on my site and will receive a link back that will be counted by the search engines.
I’m hoping that this attracts a few more comments to my posts
To do this on a wordpress blog just download and install the DoFollow Plugin. It gives you some control over the nofollow tag. allowing you to set time limits and treat trackbacks differently from comment links.
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Sounds like a good idea, but *how* do you turn off the nofollow attribute and where do you get the challenge questions?
There’s unfortunately no way to change the nofollow feature or add challenge questions if your site is being hosed on wordpress.com.
For this blog which runs on the wordpress software, but isn’t hosted by them I have complete control. You install a plugin by uploading the php files to the plugins directory via FTP, then go into the plugins tab on the control panel and activate the plugin.
I’l be interested to see how this works for you. I’m considering doing the same to try and get some more comments at my site.
This is something I’ve been thinking about but only thing worries me is… the Google PR Algorithm favors links coming in not going out… so what happens if you get 100 comments in one post????
I figure that it’s more important to have readers than good page rank. I’d be thrilled to have a post with 100 comments. Someone who’s taken the time to comment is probably more likely to come back and read the blog again.
Focus on growing the readership and page rank will come.