DoFollow? NoFollow? Confused?
A few months ago I wrote about enabling both KeywordLuv and DoFollow on my blog…. and received what amounted to golf claps from the audience!
So it dawned on me… in that usual bolt of lightning manner that happens when a friend ask… but what does that MEAN!?!
… that maybe I got the cart before the proverbial horse…
Lets talk about these confusing terms that I’ve been throwing around and show you what it means for YOU!
(And if you can’t bring yourself to read the entire post, be sure to see the TL;DR (that’s “too long, didn’t read”) version near the end!)
So what is this DoFollow/NoFollow Nonsense?
If you’ve been reading about SEO, link building or backlinks you’ve probably seen people throwing around the terms “dofollow” and “nofollow” when talking about types of links.
Making a link seems pretty straight forward… you type some words (that become your “anchor text”) and then you add the link code (anchor code), that magically makes them clickable. For most people that means using the little chain-link icon in their text editor.
What you don’t see in the visual side of things – and sometimes not in even the editable html – until after its published and live on your page – is the little bit of information that sometimes gets tacked on that tells Google’s “spiders” (aka “robots”) whether or not they should crawl from your page to the page you linked to and give the page some of your “link juice”. Now I put link juice in quotes because its not something you can go to the Family Grocery and pick up a bottle of for breakfast! Link juice is a term we use to describe the SEO value or credit that your page has – and has to share with links you make.
If I make a link in wordpress that looks like this.
Then the code looks like this:
<a href="http://onetruejourney.com/">this</a>
Then, wordpress and most other blogging platforms, auto-magically add this bit of code to links in the comment section…
rel="external nofollow"
This tells Google’s spiders/robots not to follow the link, even though I didn’t specifically add nofollow wordpress does when it displays it on the page.
So now, if I would go to a regular blog post and highlight over the name-link of the commenter, then right click and select view source, I now see that the link looks like:
<a rel="external nofollow" href="http://www.microsoft.com">Bill Gates</a>
Now it turns out there is no real “doFollow”… that is simply the absence of the “noFollow” code being applied.
Fortunately, you don’t really need to understand that to know how to benefit from it…
Putting Your DoFollow Knowledge To Use
(Understand these numbers/totals are for illustration purposes and are kinda hypothetical but prove the point.)
All you really need to know is that, from an SEO standpoint, a DoFollow link may be considered 10x better than a NoFollow link.
Every time you leave a comment on a blog, by default you get one nofollow link from the name-url link. You also get a second nofollow if commentluv is enabled.
So a comment on a typical syndication-ready blog gives you 2 points: one for the name-url link and one for the commentluv link. (Total 2 points)
Now my blog isn’t fully DoFollow (see my post on Lucy’s Linky Love). The name-url field becomes DoFollow once you’ve left 3 comments. Lucy’s does not seem able to strip the no-follow out of commentluv. So essentially after 3 comments, your comments each of your comments become worth 1 point for commentluv (nofollow) and 10 points for the name-url link (dofollow), and a few more points, perhaps 2 if you used keywordluv for the anchor text. (Total 13points)
Now if you head over to Sire’s blog, where he is fully DoFollow, and get a dofollow for both the name-url (10pts) and commentluv (10pts) and also use his keywordluv (2pts), you’re sitting at a very pretty total! (Total 22points)
Now… here’s the simple part…
You only have so many hours in the day that you can spend leaving comments to get quality back links for your blog.
If you want to gain a hypothetical 100points in backlink SEO today…
Will you leave 50 comments on a typical syndication ready blog, 8 comments on a intermediary blog, or 5 comments on a full DoFollow blog
Looks like a no-brainer right? You’re going to look for the full/partial DoFollow blogs with commentluv & keywordluv to maximize your efforts!
TL;DR
DoFollow Links Much Better Than NoFollow Links
As promised, here’s the “too long, didn’t read” version:
DoFollow links are approximately ten times as good as NoFollow links. Any time you can comment on a DoFollow instead of a NoFollow blog you should. DoFollow is a great way to say thank-you to your blog visitors. Keywordluv works with DoFollow to give you even better SEO anchor text.
Summary
Hopefully this helped you get a better understanding of what NoFollow is and what DoFollow is and why they’re important to you! Be sure to check out my post on Keywordluv and Lucy’s Linky Love for more information on how to not only install those but how to use them here on my blog. If I decide to keep the math plugin, I will likely go full DoFollow as spam is the biggest downside. Please take a look at keywordluv and begin to put it into action. That’s a plugin that bloggers run FOR their visitors and it makes me sad when I see people not making the most of it! DoFollow links are incredibly valuable for SEO
Kimberly
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{ 52 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Kim,
I’m glad you pointed out that “dofollow” is basically the absence of the “nofollow” tag. That confuses the heck out of a lot of people, i know it confused me when i first learned about it. I’d also like to add that the SEO for Firefox is a great way to see if a blog’s comments are dofollow or nofollow very quickly.
.-= Josiah@Youtube Layouts´s last blog ..50 Cent: Blood on the Sand =-.
Kim,
You never cease to amaze me my Techie Hero! Boo to the golf clappers, I have surpassed them and am doing the wave in the stands of the Super Bowl for this post. This is the kind of valuable information bloggers need to know. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!
Krista
Kim,
You kind of lost me here, but if I go check out your links it should become clearer. Any28way you look at it, this info is great to know about. thanks for the heads-up!
Val
.-= Val Wilcox´s last blog ..Which Bridge in Life to Use… =-.
Hey Kim, Wow another great post with these little tricks that make a huge difference. I am not the biggest techie in the world but you spell it out so clearly, even I can understand. Awesome info thanks for sharing!
~Kara
.-= Kara Grabenhorst´s last blog ..Don’t like it? Change it NOW =-.
Kim once again you make it so easy even I understand it! Thank you! Going to have to look into installing keywordluv in addition to commentluv. thanks for the great info!
“Dream, Believe, Become…”
Tracey
.-= Tracey Keefer @ Free MLM Help´s last blog ..Mindset is Power! Own Your Life! =-.
Kim
That is just great. I knew some of that and it’s because of that I have similair to you with the nofollow. But I never heard it put into points like you did. It just made a lot more sense.
Thanks for this great post.
Totally Tweeting this out.
Steve
.-= Steve@Start A Online Business´s last blog ..In The Moment… =-.
Hey Kim, this is why I’ve always said there is nothing wrong in posting about a subject that’s already been covered by other bloggers, as your post shows you’ve been able to enlighten people who were still a little in the dark about this whole dofollow, nofollow idea.
BTW, thanks for the linkluv too.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..Stand By Me And We Will Become Better Bloggers =-.
I have two questions:
- How much important is the topic of the post related with the keywords you are using? So if the keyword is “Dietist” and the post has nothing to do with this topic, will understand Google that you are doing Spam?
- How do you find dofollow blogs with a topic related with your keywords?
Thank you and greetings from Spain.
Javier, welcome and greetings!
There is a number of subtle elements in how Google credits links.
1. The Name-URL link of a commenter is unlikely to be penalized for not matching the topic of the blog post. However, when it is given anchor text (as in the case of Keywordluv), that anchor text is compared to the context of the page it links to (the destination). So if we have Kimberly@Wordpress Help, but my url given points to a page about a great restaurant I visited… it will not get much credit. Anchor text and where they point to should always be congruent (related and in alignment). This alignment of the anchor text and the destination page’s content applies regardless of where the link is.
Links, besides the comment links, in the post contents (related text) must be congruent (related) to both the keywords you assign to the post AND to the links that point to/from the post.
So in your question above, if the post has nothing to do with Dietist and you assign Dietist to the post while writing the body-text of the post (and assuming that is not considered by Google as a closely related topic, and is not the name of the author field on the post), then the tag/keyword will be basically ignored. However, while the topic of this post here is on SEO/Technology/DoFollow, your keyword use of Dietest is unlikely to be ignored because it is congruent with the site it links to *AND* Google is “aware” of name-url/comment fields. While a bunch of unrelated keywords showing up on my page from commenters, could theoretically make it harder for my post itself to rank, the commenter is unlikely to be penalized.
2. Any DoFollow link is better than no DoFollow link, so if its the choice between not commenting, and commenting on an unrelated blog, I comment anyways. Now this is purely personal opinion, I DO favor related topic blogs. I do so not because I’m concerned about Google, but because they are easiest for me to leave valuable posts on. When I leave a valuable, thought provoking post, I begin to build a reputation on that blog -AND- readers on that blog are FAR more likely to click my links. When I leave backlinks I hope to generate both SEO traffic and organic click-through traffic. My links do double-duty majority of the time unless I’m just spending the day aggressively link building.
If I am on a blog about raw foods, and I write a post talking about my experience with them… it becomes much more likely that another reader on that blog may want to get to know me. I ALSO up the game by highly favoring commentluv enabled blogs, where I can leave a strategically chosen link to one of my favorite related posts. This gives me not only a second link, but a second (and higher) chance of a reader coming from that blog to mine. Its this blend of SEO and organic click-through that I strive for.
Hope that helps!
Kimberly
.-= Kimberly Castleberry´s last blog ..Make Fan Page FBML Welcome Tabs Easy! =-.
Thank you Kimberly for your long and complete answer.
I am doing a test right now: i will coment in some dofollow blogs (spanish blogs) during 1-2 weeks with the keyword “nutricionist”. For this keyword, my webpage is in the position 36 in Google. Let will see what happens after a month but I guess that I will improve my ranking.
Good Article.Do follow will bring a new link for other site…But No follow won’t.You will get the link building through the do follow link…keep sharing.
I think every blog should setup to have dofollow. However, owner must moderate comments or else it would be a spamfest.
Dofollows are linkable while nofollows are not linkable. The difference is if you place your link to those site with dofollow comments it will help you to generate more traffice to your site while nofollow will do nothing for your site. Anyway you’ve done a good job with this article, thank you for sharing this with us.
I also believe in sharing LUV.
and support of of these plugins…
wish every should start sharing LUV hehehe…
Thanks for sharing.
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I use Commentluv quite often and have found it very helpful for getting first page ranking on google for very competitive markets.
By default most blogs are setup so that the links to a commenter’s website are marked “nofollow” – that means that the search engines won’t follow the link and won’t count it towards the linked site’s PageRank or popularity.
Nice explanation! I want to make my blog dofollow, but afraid of SPAM. I get a fair amount now anyway, so I will probably do it soon.
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There is no need to get doubted in it. Nofollow is useless while dofollow is useful for webmasters like us.
Oh my goodness! I read this for the first time months ago! I can’t believe I didn’t leave a comment! I followed your advice, got my blog done up right~ thanks to your personal help~ and now I’m ready to teach other people the same thing! I’m ready to help other people get link juice!
Linda
ps. one of my favorite of your expressions is: TL;DR “too long, didn’t read” version: That’s perfect for me!!
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Nice post Kim….. hopefully someday CommentLuv will integrate into Disqus comment system.
Unfortunately though on all my blogs I stick with nofollow for comments and links because I have spoken with someone who works as a consultant to Google and they said dofollow is SEO suicide.
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Hmm…what is google’s take on the comment luv? I’d be curious to know.
But thanks for clearing up what this all means!
Dofollow and Nofollow are two important factors among many SEO Ranking Factors that influence the ranking of a particular blog/site in search engines. Let’s see some areas where these dofollow and nofollow tags/links are highly applicable.
And google page rank is a great tool to.Thanks to this informative information.
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Okay, call me crazy, but I’m a photographer and DoF means something TOTALLY different!! I have been confused and wondering why DoF would matter to a blog? LOLOL Thank you Kim for explaining that. I’m checking and making changes to my blog now so I can be a DoF too!
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Okay Betty so now you got me curious! What in the world does DoFollow mean in the photography world?!?! I want a story! LOL
If you decide to enable DoFollow, Commentluv and Keywordluv be sure you check out my recent post on ‘Help Me Find The DoFollows” so I can list you in the directory I’m working on!
Kim
Hahaha! It means Depth Of Field in the photography world. You know, how blurry the background is in a photo & how crisp your subject is compared to the background. See why I was so confused! LOLOL!
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Ha! Ya know I was familiar with the term Depth of Field but I had not heard it in abbreviated form (and I tend to abbreviate DoFollow to DF, not DoF even though that would be valid for sure) that it never crossed my mind! Darn that limitation of 26 characters in our alphabet meaning TLA (two/three letter acronyms LOL) get reused to a confusing degree! Hmmm a blog with depth of field… huh? You know one of these days just as a giggle you should ask Matt Mullenweg, founder/creator of Wordpress about that, he’ll have a laugh as he uses @photomatt on twitter and is an avid photographer himself!
Kimberly
Hi Kim, basic question: how can you tell when visiting a blog if it’s DF or NF before posting a comment? Is there a way to tell by looking at it or mousing over existing comment links, etc?
I think this way (that you are doing in this blog) can help to reduce bounce rate and capture the commenters. It is because this way will add push to commenters to always comeback and comments so their link become dofollow.
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This is very informative. Really helped me understand how to build good backlinks. I was wrong about nofollow, thanks for clearing it up.
Hey Kimberly,
I just stopped by to leave a comment because I heard your site has one of the highest rankings in the social media arena. Just Joking! I know it’s one of the Best places to leave a good quality comment on the net and people would be stupid not to leave one PERIOD
Great post as always on the Do’s and Do Not’s. It’s always a pleasure when I stop by here. You offer your followers so much value that they should be very grateful that they are getting all this knowledge for absolutely nothing. What you offer on your site for free, I have paid lots to so called gurus that don’t offer as much value that you do.
Great stuff and as always, very much appreciated!
Dave and (Dawn)
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Thanks so much for this post -especially the bit about the DoFollow not actually being written anywhere as I never understood that!
very useful post and yes the firefox seobook plugin allows you to highlight a nofollow link as it turns it pink!
Hi Kim
For the longest time I always heard dofollow this and no follow that, and had no idea what they meant and what it was referring to. I finally understood what it meant. I just recently found out that you can also index and noindex links in wordpress but i don’t know of a plugin to do that as I read an article that mentioned a blog with any amount of out going affiliate links has some negative effect on the blog in regards to the spiders and some other things, whether that is true or not I have no idea. Have you ever heard of this? regarding outgoing affilte links with the spiders?
I always thought having a dofollow blog was bad well of course it is bad in the sense for spammers looking for backlinks without adding any sort of valuable comment and contribution to ones post. I know there are a handful of plugins that can virtually eliminate those spam comments.
Hello Kim:
Another 1st class Lesson,,,,I have had to read through 3x or so to begin to get my head around the info…..But I think it is starting to make sense…I printed this off & will ruminate on it again. At any rate this shows I have a ways to go yet in understanding the WP Blogosphere…LOL
Take Care
Matt
now a a days every Do blogs is being converted in to No follow……
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This is very informative post. Really helped me understand how to build good back links. Thanks a lot for sharing such a nice post. Keep it up!!!
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Hi Kim,
I searching information about DoFollow information through Google and I found your look.. I and my team just starting SEO for our company and your post really helped us a lot.
Thank you for the great post and i will be browsing more for every new update on your post.
I bookmark your site.. Thanks for the great info!
Kim,
I really enjoyed reading your post and yes I read the long version. I liked the way you explained the difference between nofollow and dofollow blogs. I understand that a dofollow blog is 10 times better than a nofollow blog but shouldn’t we also get backlinks from nofollow blogs so the linking looks natural?
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Charles for basic linkbuilding yes you would like some mix for natural appearance however you should be gaining some natural backlinks as well and most of the time those are nofollow. Also you have to watch for not building backlinks too fast, another thing that can get you in the penalty box with Google. This is why though I favor dofollow blogs that I still have some blogs I simply enjoy that I comment on regularly regardless of their NF/DF status.
Kim
This is great! Now I know what is “nofollow” and “dofollow”. Thanks for the info.
Hi,
You have mentioned here very great article for dofollow and nofollow links but still I am in confusion that, does nofollow links have some positive points in SEO except for the gaining traffic?
Best Regards!
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Looks like impressive SEO content provided huge insights about dofollow and nofollow blog. Excellent review and reflections. It sounds like this might be one of the chef memoirs well worth reading. I appreciate whatever you mentioned about these blog exactly what I wish for. I noticed the points Keywordsluv as much good as nofollow links. Hope these well idea much better to helps building perfect links. thanks for such review and reflections giveaway.
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about the technical aspects of “do-follow” blogs, head over to Kimberly’s post “What is DoFollow? What is NoFollow? What’s The Difference?” She fully explains the ins and outs of the subject, right down to the coding that google’s
I have been looking for information that breaks down the difference between nofollow and do follow links and more importantly how they effect your rankings. Thank you for your clear concise description of nofollow / dofollow links. I can now have a better idea how these links effect by site. I have a better idea about how to build my links and make better use of my time while doing so.
I think Google may start ignoring the no-follow attribute since it’s been used so much to try to artificially boost SEO. So some day it may not matter, but for now I’ve just converted my wordpress blog to a dofollow link and I’ve installed commentluv. I’m finding askimet to be a great solution to spam. If you don’t have an account, start a wordpress.com and they’ll give you the askimet service free. thanks for the tip about keywordluv… I might install that too.
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kim thanks for the information about dofollow and nofollow,
Thank you Kim for making a clear and concise explanation about dofollow and nofollow. I googled many other sites looking for a good explanation and yours was the best by far!!
Thanks Kathy, I really appreciate that. I know mine is more “wordy” than some but, like you, I was finding that many were not covering the full story. Thanks!
Kim
Hey Kim Castleberry,
You have hit the nail on the head, in my opinion do follow and no follow are just as valuable as one another. Kim you have made this information easy to absorb, great article. When I created a free information website to help other phlebotomist I just got spammed, now i see why.
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Hey Nydia, I’m glad I was able to help you made sense of it all. I know sometimes these technical things can be overwhelming but once you get your mind around it it’s sort of an “ah-hah” moment! I actually had a (human) phlebotomy training/cert while I was in college for pre-veterinary. I was working in the research labs and good stick skills just make for a happier patient!
Kim
There used to be a very manual way to install commentluv on blogger. However, I’m not certain that exists anymore as most of the development is aimed at the wordpress.org community. You might do some google searching to see if it’s still possible to run commentluv on blogger but I’m honestly not sure (though I know it was, though it was kinda techy).
Kim
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