It has been said often times that the most effective way to direct traffic to your site is through commenting. It is only by way of commenting, you are able to express your opinions and thoughts on the issues being discussed. As such, it provides a medium to engage in a two-way conversation.
Naturally when you post a comment, you will include your site URL and as a result people will arrive at your site following your link. Isn’t this one of the most effective method of referral marketing? You kill two birds with one stone. One you could participate in a healthy conversation and two, you will get noticed and thereby direct traffic to your site.
Now apart from that, there is an added incentive when you make comments on blogs that support DoFollow. Recently I wrote a post on DoFollow – What They Teach You In Kindergarden that clearly explains the mechanism of DoFollow and how, in theory, commenting could be the most effective and cheapest form of backlink-building for freshly-made blogs to increase traffic referral and gain extra incentives of backlinks from DoFollow blogs. Thus, improving Google Page Rank.
How to tell DoFollow from NoFollow easily?
As you know it by now WordPress by default, as in other blogging platforms, automatically enable NoFollow for all user-generated links such as comments and trackbacks. As such your link will not counted as a valid link pointing back to your site. So how do you know if the link is DoFollow or NoFollow? This has always been the question, hasn’t it?
If you are using Firefox
Download and install Zachary Fox’s NoDoFollow, a useful Firefox extension that highlights the links on any side and color code them according to DoFollow or NoFollow status with either pink for NoFollow or light blue for DoFollow. With this simple plugin, you could easily differentiate which links are DoFollow and which are not. All with just a right click.
What if I use Safari?
If you are using Safari, Joost de Valk from SEO Blog has a simple solution that add User Stylesheet to show NoFollow. Once you add the additional stylesheet in Safari preference (follow the instruction on SEO Blog), all the links as well as image links with NoFollow attribute will be highlighted automatically in pink.
I am sure that there are many available plugins or ways to tell one from the other, the above are the ones I am using personally. If you would like to suggest another, please do so in the comment section.
My final thought
As much as I support link-building by means of commenting on DoFollow sites, I’d like to stress a point that link-building through commenting on DoFollow sites should not be the primary motivation in the first place. Engaging in the conversation by offering your honest opinions and thoughts whilst making new friends with fellow bloggers should always be. So you should get it right from the start.
In fact I am in the opinion that links on the comment section are of little weight as far as search engine is concerned by way of noticing that those links rarely appear on them. What do you think?
PS: Since I am in the Mac environment without a chance to lay my hand on IE, I’m quiet keen to know if there is anyway I could tell DoFollow links from NoFollow with IE? Anyone?
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I have downloaded the plugin and it happens to be very useful!Thanks a ton for sharing the info!
Hi, I’m glad you did it. Now finding those dofollow outbound links is much simpler, isn’t it?
BTW, are you using Firefox?
Yes, i do!I *heart* firefox!
Well, i have a question..I had been using Intense Debate on my blog and yesterday, when i logged into Google webmasters, i was shocked to see that my pages were not indexed after i started using the service. Why is it so and what do the commenting services use?Follow tag or no-follow tag?
To be honest, I have no experience at all with intense debate. If it is not from you, I wouldn’t have heard it in the first place. So I couldn’t comment much on this.
Are you referring those pages that have been indexed by Google and now suddenly disappear from Google radar? Well, the fact is if your blog is new, your pages may sometimes disappear from the search results and reappear a couple days later.
thank you,we can get the more backlinks by the dofollow link！
but I find more and more blogs are nofollowing.
@David
Yeah, many blogs are nofollowing nowadays, but not the popular ones, if you notice..
No idea how to see nofollows in IE. I run Mac (bootcamp into Windows), but avoid IE unless I have to check a design.
A good source of dofollow blogs is to buy software that hunts them down. There are a couple your can get for $50. Worth the money imo.
I’m still debating the whole nofollow thing. As an SEO, I love them, but as a blogger… I haven’t made the leap to turn them off.
@Justin
IMO each blog will experience different results when it comes to adopting dofollow. Some will invite more comments while others attract more spams. Hence, it’s always been debated. I shall say, To each its own.
Thanks for dropping by..
Thank you for the Firefox extension. This way I won’t have to manually pick up my DoFollow blogs and visit each of them.
I will just browse the web and save some precious time.
This extension slow down my firefox, infact i have stopped using firefox for now, presently using IE, however Yan, how do i check if a link is nofollow on IE.
I was searching for that when i came about this article. Thanks for the useful post.
Well, that’s what extension is for. It just helps to automate and simplify everything. With the NoDoFollow Firefox extension, I could right away differentiate dofollow sites from nofollow at the click of the mouse.
Its so right to make sure you comment because you really want to say something. I hate the “good post” comments as much which are clearly aimed at generating links. I for one only comment and say a thank you when it really has been helpful. Also, Googling DoFollow blogs helps in throwing up lots of blogs which have DoFollow, CommentLuv enabled.
@Rajiv: You are absolutely right about the one-liner comments and that’s the reality to blogging we couldn’t help much. It will always be there whatsoever.
Anyway, if you aren’t in the know, there is this Dofollow Diver where you could search for more than +600 dofollow blogs with comment love and still counting. Just google it.
Couples of concerns. Should I disable the No Follow (I assume so), and how do I on WP? I guess Askimet should take of the spam. And, should I still comment on the No Follow blogs or it is worth my time (seeing that there is so many)?
@Lee – Hey, if you have intended to remove nofollow from your comment section to reward your commenters for participating in the discussion, there is a plugin for you to disable it – Dofollow for WP. Hope it helps and do let me know if you need anything else.
Yan, as you say the popular blogs are using dofollow. It’s pretty clear that as more and more bloggers twig that their commenting energy is best spent at dofollow blogs, there will be more and more popular dofollow blogs and less comments and visitors to the nofollow ones.
My own policy is that as long as there is some meaningful comment that adds value to the post, then it’s great. I use the same principle when I’m reading and commenting on other people’s blogs. If it’s not something that interests me, or I have nothing to say, then I don’t bother to comment.
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@Dan O’Neil – Hey Dan, did I say that more popular blogs are dofollow? In fact, the opposite is true. The more popular the site is, the higher the odds of it being nofollow.
I agree with you as I am too in the belief that dofollow shouldn’t be the main factor for commenting. I comment because I want to participate in the discussion irregardless if it is dofollow or otherwise. Of course, dofollow is a bonus if it is in place.
Anyway, thanks for dropping in, Dan. Do join us here often and share your knowledge with the readers.
Thanks for letting me know this plugin. Using it i can find easily which blog is NoDoFollow
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@Nihar – I’m glad you find it useful. I wonder if you haven’t used any of the dofollow checker tool before. How did you check if the blog is dofollow or otherwise before this?
haha. i have downloaded that plug in but it seems nothing happens. Anyway, I asked you if you have a contact to google. Its because my blog has been stripped of PR due to payperpost. I would like to email them to get my PR back.. hmm… my blog is a do follow too…
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As long as the post is not solely intent on advertising back to their site, then I will ‘Follow’ as well. I don’t like it when posters approach a blog and spam it in order to advertise their site.
Also, thanks for the Firefox extension.
This is really a nice trick to Know about Do-follow blog and i really like it.
john’s last blog post..Do-Follow Resources: All you need to know about Do-Follow and No-Follow Blogs
Thanks for the pointer to the style sheet for safari, i dont use it much but ive got a new ipod touch. So now i should have a way to track down dofollow blogs whilsit sitting on the train using my ipod touch. Assuming i can get this to work :)
Thanks for the pointer to the safari stylesheet trick, im gonna use it to my advantage when commuting to work, if it works on my ipod touch!. Seek out those pesky dofollow blogs from the pack ;)
hi, thanks for this great plugin..
I see your links have blue color… that means dofollow right?
I use opera… how/.?
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Yes that is a really good trick.Thanks for sharing that with us.
thanks for sharing the info.
Too bad more and more webmasters are using nofollow these days.
I am curious what will be the next big thing when G nerfs blog links etc.
Thank u for the interesting read
this is really a life save. Thank you for this.
The only reason i’ve been using Firefox was because of PR checking and do follow checking.
I didn’t know about this. Now i can use safari again.
Thanks again!
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You made me curious whether there is a better way in Internet Explorer than looking at the source code, so I just thoroughly googled, but the only SEO related plug-in for IE is SEO Quake, which is also a great tool, but doesn’t help with nofollow/dofollow…
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Hope this plugin will be useful for me. let me try this out.
is the extension you’re suggesting the same as searchstatus?
i am using searchstatus since i learned about dofollow.
how come your comment section has a nofollow tag?
I’m new to this and have just started out with wordpress, so this is a useful article. Im still getting used to this trackback and pingback thing and am still not sure how it all works.
What I’m trying to do is see whether it is possible to generate a passive income from domain parking as all the hype suggests. As this is all very new I don’t really expect rersults for about 6 months. I’m using a slight variation of domain parking, and will update my progress on my blog site.
I’ve been searching for ways on how to build backlinks, this was so helpful I gained new knowledge here. thanks
Thank you so much. I love safari and had to sometimes switch to firefox just to see. I am so glad to have this little trick. I just installed it and it works great. Now can you give us something with a little more seo information on the bar like firefox has. I guess I should look around your site a little more first you might have done it already. At any rate thanks for the tip.
Thanks for the info, I was looking for a better way to find dofollow blogs. My old tool doesn’t check for nofollow tags, and the new tool I downloaded I can’t seem to get to do anything at all so this info is welcomed. I am going to start playing with the footprint/keyword searches and see what happens. Thanks again.
the plugin is very usefull for me.. now i can see more dofollow blog with fast result.. thanks..