reflections

Let’s be honest here - we all love getting some link love, especially if it’s in return for something we’ve done personally, like commenting on other blogs. And am I the only one who logs into their WordPress dashboard just to see what new back-links pop up? Didn’t think so! So what if all your hard work was for nothing?

Background

NoFollow is an HTML attribute that can be attached to a hyperlink. When present this tag effectively tells search engines not to allow the link to effect the link target’s ranking in their index. It typically looks like this in use:

< a rel = “nofollow” href=”http://www.w3.org“>

Google announced in 2005 that links using this tag would also not have an influence on the link target’s PageRank - and MSN and Yahoo (as is typical) followed Google’s lead. Their intention was to reduce the appeal of comment spamming, but it doesn’t work. Spammers don’t check for the tag because they don’t care about their ranking in a search index - and generally leave the job of spamming to automated robots or real people who get paid a pittance for doing it, and neither cares about back-links.

The engine’s arguments no longer hold weight though. Since Google adopted it’s stance on NoFollow, plugins like Askimet have been enhanced to such a level that comment spam can be controlled. These days all the NoFollow tag really does is prevent link love (the life-blood of the blogging community) from being given back to your readers and commentators.

How Does This Affect Me?

By default, WordPress (and almost every other blogging platform) automatically adds the tag to all links from user-generated content - such as comments and trackbacks. But support for disabling the NoFollow tag is growing - with many highly-regarded blogs promoting the movement or implementing the change. Andy Beard has even set up a Bumpzee community for DoFollowers!

It’s worth noting that Dougal Campbell (one of the WordPress core development team) has also recently installed a DoFollow plugin on his blog, so perhaps we’ll see WP options that allow it to be done without a plugin!

What Do I Need To Do?

Wordpress. Install and activate one of these plugins: DoFollow, Dofollow (WP Plugin), or Link Love (my personal choice). That’s it - simple!

Blogger/Blogspot. Follow this guide.

Typepad. Follow this guide.

Moveable Type. Follow this guide.

If you want to put a graphic onto your blog, to show that you’re a DoFollower, then Randa Clay (one of the most significant promoters of the movement) has created a logo, and made it available in a choice of colours! Chances are that you’ve already seen her graphics popping up on blogs you read daily - and I strongly suspect that they may end up as a non-official standard!

If Randa’s buttons aren’t to your liking, then Charity at Design Adaptations has also produced some full-size buttons, and Asgeir has made some smaller ones!

Conclusion

This is something that all bloggers should seriously consider implementing! It’s not hard to do, and it means you’re doing something nice for your readers in return for their comments - which will probably end up encouraging loyalty to your blog, and give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside!

Have you already made the change, and did you notice any increase in spam (or real) comments as a result? If not, do you plan to make the change - and what else do you feel could be done to improve the situation?

[Thanks to Zep and J David for commenting on my previous post]

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