DoFollow, KeyWordLuv and Backlinks…Oh My
April 25, 2008 by Kenton Newby
First of all, hat's off to Steven Lohrenz for finding this great little plugin. He posted about it earlier this week but I'm just getting around to adding it thanks to a little Wordpress upgrade SNAFU. So here's the deal…
Search engine optimization (SEO) 101: Links to your site from other sites (i.e., backlinks) are good, especially backlinks that have text that include your keywords. You DO know what keywords you're trying to rank for, right? Comments on Wordpress blogs are one way to get these sort of links and are particularly good since you can control the text that's used, unlike some sites.
Problem #1: By default, Wordpress automatically uses the commenter's name as the text for the link to their site. That's great if I want to rank for "Kenton Newby", but seriously, how many could there be? 
Problem #2: By default, Wordpress adds "nofollow" tags to the links used in comments. Nofollow tags basically do you no good from an SEO standpoint, although people might still click the links and visit your site.
So up until now, if you left a comment on this site, you'd get a not-so-useful link to your site using your name instead of something targeted.
Solution:
I installed two plugins. One is the plugin Steven recommended which you can find at his Internet Business Systems site. That solves Problem #1.
The other is the "Do Follow" plugin, which gets rid of that pesky Problem #2 mentioned above.
So give it a shot. Leave a comment below, but instead of the usual "name only" in the name field, use something like this:
Kenton Newby@Online Business Blog
Fill in the rest of the comment form like normal and you're all set.
We'll see how well this works and if things go all SPAM crazy here. But for now, seems like a better way to run things.
P.S. - Another great comment plugin is this one: WP Ajax Edit Comments
It allows users to edit comments they leave for a specified period of time. Ya' know, to fix typos and stuff like that.
Popularity: 5% [?]
There should never be a nofollow tag put on any site. Do follow helps everyone.
I think I agree with that for the most part. Other than spammers, but there are tools to catch that sort of stuff.
And nofollow is good for keeping PageRank from being passed to internal pages that don't need it (privacy policy, disclaimer, etc)…or so say the SEO's.
But yeah, for the most part, it should be a "dofollow" world…that's how the web was setup anyway, right?
This is an interesting site. I too think more people should have followed links on their site. Thanks for the help.
You understood the essence of the internet, it is all about sharing…
Ajax Edit Comments is a good plugin as well. Do you know commentLuv? It is another great plugin that will add a link to the last post. This is achieved by parsing the feed.
I love this plugin. It really motivates me to contribute to the blogosphere on a more regular basis. Thanks for installing the plugin.
OOoh! Great post! And I really appreciated you mentioned WP Ajax Edit Comments. I have commented on some blogs that have that but could never find it. Thanks again!
fo rizzle mah nizzle! its about time theres a plugin that allows for comment links to be of some value. now they can help contribute to getting better rankage in the search engines. props.
How is this plugin working out for you?
Susan,
I think they're both pretty useful plugins but would suggest changing some of the default text if possible. I'm all for setting things to "dofollow" and allowing keyword-rich links back to people's sites. But some of the info from my web stats clearly shows that people found this site by searching specifically for terms that are defaults for those plugins.
That being the case, I have to wonder about the motivations for leaving the comment in the first place - a normal visitor leaving comments for a quality backlink or a pseudo-spammer leaving a "just good enough" comment, never to return again?
And nevermind the fact that you could also make software to identify sites with that type of default text too…making it even more important to change it up a bit, though I can't say that I've seen more spam as a result of using them.
Just my thoughts off the top of my head.
~Kenton