Traffic Method #251 | DoFollow (The Smart Way)

Do Follow or No No Follow is the short hand for a movement that seeks to reward commenters who participate in a blogger’s community with a link back to their site that actually carries some weight.

In 2005 as blogging for business continued to rise in popularity, and comment spam became much more of a problem, major search engines as well as blog software developers followed Google’s lead and introduced an attribute called “no follow” to reduce the significance of spomment, or spam comments.

In the end though, because it is often implemented sitewide, instead of being for offending or gratuitous links, it did little to stop the flow of comment spam.

When this became the default setting for most blog software, many bloggers who felt this unfair to those valuable community members, who, for the most part, were making meaningful, repeat submissions, began to find ways to remove the nofollow attribute from comments.

Other blogosphere leaders protested that the point of no follow was supposed to stem the tide of commenters who were automating the process or manually making comments for the sole purpose of linking rather than as a side benefit to meaningful discourse. I believe they have a point – why shouldn’t I be able to wield the linking power of my site for good?

Of course, it’s not the act of DoFollow alone that makes it also a traffic draw for you. You will want to publicize the fact that you don’t “no follow” comment links. As people seek out DoFollow blogs, they will come and comment on your site.

Yes, sometimes your kindness can be abused. And that’s why you must do this the smart way- pick a DoFollow technique that allows you to control who you give love to the most.

And what if you’re not a blogger? Can you leverage DoFollow to help you get more traffic and links without pissing off blog owners who will delete your comment if it violates their comment policy?

You can learn the strategy to Be Followed. But that’s another tip for later…

Do Follow These Resources

Link to my old DoFollow plugin that gives you a time-out period
Lucia Linky Love, the plugin I use now | Andy Beard’s Review.
Why I Do Follow
Join the No No Follow BUMPzee Community, run by Andy Beard
Andy’s List of No Follow and Do Follow plugins
A DoFollow Search tool.