Stop Penalizing Your Blogging Peers
UPDATE: I have done a complete 180 about this. I could just delete this post, I suppose, but I’ve left it up as a transparent representation of my thought process over time… Read it if you wish, but know that I no longer advise what I recommended in this original post. Here’s my more recent position — Do Not Follow
If you’ve only been blogging for a few years, you may not be aware of — you may not even know about — the rel=”nofollow” policy.
This strategy does NOT work — if you don’t correct this blanket policy you are contributing to the continued “punishing” of all the Good Guys in the blogosphere. You are a victim of this also, every time you leave a comment on the vast majority of blogs that automatically include the rel=”nofollow” on links in comments.
What is nofollow?
Has it been four years now since the major blogging platforms adopted nofollow?
When spammers first started to target blog comments, there was nothing in place to combat comment spam. I was working exclusively in MovableType back then, and spam comments were so bad that many bloggers simply turned off comments completely.
So, most of the content management developers got together with Google and agreed to automatically add a “nofollow” command to all out-bound links in comments. (View the source code of one of your blog pages to see what I’m talking about… If you use a php based blogging tool like WordPress, you may never run across this little bit of code otherwise.)
The strategy of nofollow was to take away the “link love” from spam comments — to give no credit in terms of search engine rankings to outbound links from comments. But like a kind of chemotherapy, it killed all the benefits of outbound links to legitimate, relative, meaningful comments, as well as the bad.
Nofollow doesn’t work — and it’s actually worse than broken. You already effectively zap spam comments:
- Comment spam plugins such as Akismet
- Captcha tools
- Editor moderation
Today, these strategies and others help to catch and ditch spam comments, so the only links truly adversely affected by rel=”nofollow” are those attached to the Good Guys — the real bloggers, thoughtfully participating in the conversation, put under the knife each and every time they create an outbound link to their sites.
The comments you approve are the ones deserving of the link love — and these are the only ones ultimately disabled! This is totally screwed up.
Do Follow — Better than a Blogroll
I don’t like blogrolls.
- Looking at my site analytics, I see that the first blog listed receives all the attention, simply by virtue of alphabetization
- I can’t guarantee that a blogger I liked a few months ago will continue to produce relevant content
- I’ve struggled with and given up on adopting a fair, balanced, rich, and relevant “blogroll inclusion policy”
Adam Kayce manually includes links in his posts to those who commented on the previous post. I think this is an incredibly admirable policy and a way to “pay forward” or reward those who take the time to participate in the conversation on his blog. It’s also, he admitted to me in an email, a little extra work. A great example of an author over-delivering, balancing, working around the bad apples…
Your thoughtful comments are my blogroll
I want something organic, relevant to each post or comment, that rewards the comments I approve — essentially, the “blogroll” I truly desire already exists — it’s spread across the blog in the comments.
By reversing the “nofollow” with a simple WordPress plugin, all the comments I approve on my blogs are now followed by the search engine robots, and that linkage is awarded as it should be.
I whole-heartedly encourage you to do the same. Put the credit back where the credit is due. Help distribute credit in this economy of attention dynamically, organically, cumulatively, synergistically, and automatically by disabling or reversing the “nofollow.”
The Do Follow Movement
For more information, badges, and links to plugins for your blog:
http://randaclay.com/blog/i-follow/
The Semiologic WordPress plugin
How Blogger users can remove no-follow
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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10 Responses to “Stop Penalizing Your Blogging Peers”
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at last, someone out there making a lot of sense out of all this noise. i think one day, should my blog die, i’d like to inscribe ‘Your thoughtful comments was my blogroll’ on the headstone.
Alan,
Ha! Brilliant!
Takes me back to Stars of the Apocalypse
Hi Slade,
I had no idea that this was out there. Thanks for pointing it out to us ‘newbies’. I don’t like the blogroll either and plan to switch that to a page as I update my site but do as you mention in this post want people to benefit from their discussions on my site.
Good news, Paula!
I’m encouraged to keep sharing this kind of “behind the screens” techy stuff.
If you check out MonkatWork.com, Adam had a recent post about some of the technical tricks and changes he’s implemented on his site — there are links to many other “no follow” plug-in options.
(I’ll come back and stick a direct link in when I have a moment to track down the post I’m referring to…)
Hey Slade,
Thanks for this article. I did not know, until I read this one, that nofollow has been lurking around in my pages (I just checked and they do). I am going to install the plugin to zap the nofollows.
Thanks,
Desika
Desika,
Great news!
Glad I did a little something to help spread the word about the “nofollow” — it truly affects all of us.
Slade,
Yes, it does. My blog is now free of “nofollows.”
Desika
Thanks for your insight and perspective on this — and for the plug-ins… This is something I have only briefly thought about until now. It really is about community and communication. Thanks again!
Pete,
Following external links benefits everyone — I’m happy to help spread the word.
[...] year and a half ago I entreated everyone to jump on a Pollyanna Blogosphere movement to install plugins that reverse the out-of-the-box rel=no follow function in your external comment [...]