I’ve now been a do-follow blog for quite some time now. From the outset I knew that spam would be an issue since the links from the comments on my blog would no longer have the nofollow tag. Why would I do such a thing? Well it’s a personal thing. The attribute itself brings about memories of the blink tag in my mind. Beyond that I feel it fair to share some link juice with people who contribute to my blog by commenting.
After spending a long time filtering comments I’ve become a little disappointed in the grey spam. That’s the non-automated spam. People go to do-follow lists and go to these blogs to generate backlinks. I’m a web entrepreneur and I respect the need to do that, but there’s a way to do it and a way not to.
- Do make your name something other than a product/service/company
- Do write more than one sentence
- Do write something intelligent
- Do spell reasonably well and use reasonable grammar
- Do use a link safe for those under 18
- Do make your link go somewhere with content and not just sales
Akismet is catching a whole pile of the problem comments, but I still have to do some manual spam filtering. It’s not to bad though, I catch about 4-5 comments per day that need to be flagged as spam. I’d much prefer to let everyone’s comments go through, but I don’t really want to encourage comment spam on this blog at this time. Call it greedy, but if for nothing else, it detracts from my sponsors.
spam, spam filter
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19 responses so far ↓
1 priyankarules // Feb 26, 2008 at 10:37 am
You did a great work by not allowing no-follow. I think others take your notice and make their blogs do-follow..
I hate it when the hard work we put in doesnt even get a good link back..
2 Karl Götseo // Feb 26, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I will follow your example and allow dofollow links, since i want to give someting back to my visitors.
3 Bobby // Feb 28, 2008 at 12:39 am
Hello,
Great site you have here. Nict post but this is about the forth or fifth post about the ‘do-follow’ page and spam iv read today. Being on D-lists will definitly get you alot of traffic. I mean ill be honest, thats how I found you and thats why im commenting on your blog at this very momment. Thanks for sharing the link juice though - Do Follow Represent! Haha.
4 Mexico Muser // Feb 28, 2008 at 7:23 pm
It seems as if the previous comment posters have abided by your six bullet point standard (more or less). While I’m a relative newbie to blogging I haven’t really had the nerve to post indiscriminately, spamming postings to get link juice – I do respect your DO FOLLOW adherence and think in the long run Google and other SEs recognize that value of outbound links, particularly when they are have topic relevancy.
I got to your blog via Pay for Post – I was curious to see if other bloggers were whoring themselves for pay or if it was a viable (and at least marginally profitable) endeavor. So I ask you if your experience shucking for Pay for Post is worthwhile. THX Chas
5 Marc // Feb 28, 2008 at 8:51 pm
The PPP adventure has had its ups and downs. 2007 was a pretty decent year for me. But I was penalized by Google in December. Since then my revenues have dropped significantly due to a toolbarPR penalty.
I’m still earning enough to more than cover any hosting expenses and still have some left over to toy around with. So if you need a bit of scratch to cover minor expenses then PPP is still very viable. If you’re looking to earn a heap of dough then it’s day has passed.
6 KCW // Mar 2, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I know what you mean. We use dofollow on lots of our sites but I don’t mind giving some link love if people say something worthwhile. Generally, I look at the site they’re linking to and if it is somewhat credible and their comment is coherent I let it slide because I appreciate comments.
7 Matthijs Hofstede // Mar 4, 2008 at 4:27 am
The rules you propose are the same rules i believe in. Thank you for posting.
I have to admit i also found your blog from a dofollow list. Then i saw this post about dofollow blogs. I was actually wondering: do you get a lot off extra traffic form these dofollow lists and search engines?
8 Marc // Mar 4, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I wouldn’t say I get a lot of traffic from either the do-follow list or the search engines. I get a lot more from search engines, but this is a pretty low traffic blog.
9 SD // Mar 4, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Marc, thank you for allowing dofollow on your blog, I think that online marketers should share the link juice. I know there’s quite a bit of SEO’s out there and webmasters spamming forums, blogs and directories but I think the good grey hat marketers are always going to be quick on their feet and will be able to contribute to the post
10 SWA // Mar 7, 2008 at 7:53 am
it makes sense to make your blogs “do follow” it really will up your traffic and in turn up your adsense or advertising revenue…(as I click around your site ; )
11 onlineearns // Mar 9, 2008 at 2:10 pm
This is awesome! After checking out some of these sites I see they are still getting quality comments!
May i will put this things in my blog too
BTW, will it increase technorati rank ??
12 Mitch Argon // Mar 10, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Really appreciate your approach. You have some great articles here on SEO and it is nice to be able to contribute to the community.
By the way. Your article on selecting blog post titles was closed for commenting. I have been told that if the title is written as a question, your blog or site will do much better with baby boomers as they are 50% more likely to type in questions v. keyword combinations.
Hope this helps!
13 ilo // Mar 11, 2008 at 1:09 am
Great post man. Really. Props
14 sn // Mar 11, 2008 at 7:33 am
I also do to my blog that I always put do follow attribute with all my comments. I am not sure but it is good. So keep it up.
15 Thai // Mar 14, 2008 at 12:17 am
Just stumbled on your site. A nice site you have here. I’ve already put my do follow plugin on my site so I’m also giving back and followign your example. Hopefully I receive less spam than you
16 tl // Apr 15, 2008 at 11:19 am
I think you did a good job by using dofollow. I don’t think use of nofollow has decreased comment spam. Whether you use nofollow or other comment spammers will continue to spam. Moreover nofollow tag is not universal. It doesn’t matter in Yahoo. SO, I will say you did a good job by sharing something with commenters which makes both party happy. Thanks.
17 J // Apr 16, 2008 at 5:47 am
Spam has been a problem for years and will be for more years. Not only dofollow blogs are targeted by spammers so using dofollow on your blog is a great way to increase comments and is not that difficult to keep your blog clean with Akismet or other similar plugins.
Cheers,
18 Craze // Apr 16, 2008 at 2:13 pm
No wonder your blog is doing so well. I think we should follow this as Convention, not to put no-follow. I know some day the top search engines will yeild to our resolve
19 Mark // Apr 17, 2008 at 5:27 am
Spam and spammers will exist no matter what. Also some search engines are using no-follow links in their ranking algorithms. That is why I use do-follow links and try to stop the spam by other means like anti-spam plugins.