Every blogging platform has a field for your website in the comments section and I believe in rewarding people who comment on my blog, but that is just me. Again when someone says they are nofollow because they don’t want to pass page rank, how does that make them sound? Kinda self serving don’t you think? Not saying this is the only reason bloggers choose not to follow, I am sure we will hear from the nofollow perspective and why they prefer nofollow.
I would much rather share page rank in exchange for building quality relationships with like minded bloggers and are willing to give back something in return for commenting.Yes I do know it is possible to build relationships with nofollow blogs as well but it is my preference to focus on dofollow bloggers #justsayin sorry thought we were on Twitter for a second.
I know some people will say well I don’t want to reward crappy comments, my response to that would be hit that little delete button. If you are going to approve a comment then odds are you felt it added some sort of value to your blog, why would you not want to reward their efforts?
If you feel someone only commenting because they want to be rewarded with a backlink so what? As long they are leaving something worthwhile be appreciate of it don’t look down or question their motives. Who cares how they got there just be happy they got there. Also there is a difference between commentators who actually add value and spammers I am sure you can figure out the difference.
When you are linking out as a dofollow link you are not losing any of your page rank to that particular page your just sharing it among all the other links on your page.
As long as the comment link is not going to some spammy site or bad neighborhood sites you are not going to hurt your sites reputation. You can watch Matt Cutt’s video addressing this below.
Now I have seen bloggers interpret this video many different ways but there is nothing negative against dofollow links other than what I mention above linking to spammy sites.
According to Matt Cutts in regards to pagerank sculpting google changed the algorithm so each link that you link out whether it is nofollow or dofollow are being factored in the equation except the nofollow links do not pass pagerank points .So essentially the only way you can now hoard pagerank is not link out period. Of course Matt Cutt’s advises against doing that but doesn’t really elaborate on it. This essentially was the way it was done prior to the “nofollow” tag was introduced by google
This may cause some bloggers to go ahead an close out their comment sections which I think is absolutely the worse thing you can do. PR is such a small factor in googles algorithm why concern yourself with pagerank sculpting.
So here is the conclusion to this story
- Reward your commentators be do follow
- Don’t worry about linking out
- Build relationships with other bloggers ( I choose mostly dofollow bloggers but still build relationships with nofollow bloggers as well)
- Don’t accept comments or link out from spammy sites ( this one is tough because how do we know what is consider spammy in googles eyes? But for the most part I would say don’t link to any of those obvious ones you get with the hundreds of links)
- Have a Nice Day!
Keith from Hot Blogging Tips has a different view in regards to dofollow vs nofollow blogs please check out his side and why he prefers being a nofollow blog.
I just want to add I don’t believe there is any right or wrong when it comes to dofollow vs nofollow to me it’s a personal preference to be dofollow and stay committed to being dofollow.
I compare it to being a democrat or republican we may have different views but at the end of the day we all are the same people with the same goals.(well for the most part :wink:)
So what are your thoughts? Are you a dofollow or nofollow blog? What are the pros and cons and why do you prefer one over the other?