A Quick Way to Check on Whether Blog Comments are ‘DoFollow’ or ‘NoFollow’

Commenting in blogs is the latest rage in getting back links to websites and blogs, and it works when intelligent comments are posted to blogs that ‘dofollow’ the URLs.

What Do The Terms ‘DoFollow’ and ‘NoFollow’ Mean?

DoFollow is basically the absence of the ‘NoFollow’ tag.  What this means is that if a search engine is spidering a blog or website, it will see a link such as <a href=”http://www.mywonderfulwebsite”>My Wonderful Website</a> and crawl that site.  “Page rank” or more affectionately, “link juice” will pass to the link.  The goal of webmasters is to get as many diverse links pointing to their sites as possible.  The only way to get credit for links from third party sites is to post to sites that have not installed the ‘nofollow’ tag.

NoFollow is a tag within a website or blog in which search engines that are spidering a site are instructed NOT to crawl a link cited within a website.  The code would look like this:

<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.mywonderfulsite.com”>My Wonderful Site</a>

While visitors to a page having the NoFollow tag can click your link, the page has not passed any “link juice” to you.  In other words, the link will not show as a back link.  Because of spam comments, massive links (such as in a social networking service) or the desire to retain page rank and not pass it on, many webmasters and bloggers prefer “NoFollow” tags.

Blogs With ‘NoFollow’ in the Comments – A Common Mistake.

The problem is, many new bloggers or site owners do not know how to tell whether or not a blog’s comments include the ‘dofollow’ or ‘nofollow’ tag.  Thinking that posting comments to blogs will result in a lot of backlinks, they mistakenly comment away … and receive little for their efforts.

Just because a blog accepts comments does not mean that the ‘NoFollow’ tag has been disabled on a blog.  The most common blog platform is Wordpress.  By default, Wordpress installs the ‘NoFollow’ tag within comments so that blog owners are not inundated with spam comments.  Some new blog owners might represent that they will give you inbound links because they accept comments.  What they don’t know is that the ‘NoFollow’ tag is automatically installed into their blog comment sections.

A Quick Way to Find Out Whether a Blog’s Comment Section Has the ‘NoFollow’ Attribute Disabled.

Firefox is an excellent web browser because of its security features, speed and a wealth of add-ons that you can easily install.  One of those add-ons is something called SEO Quake, which I use frequently.

This blog — NotGuru.com — has the ‘NoFollow’ attribute disabled in the comments, so it does pass link juice.  Here’s how to find out.

First, let’s go to a page that has quite a few comments, Get Noticed In the Blogosphere.    Here’s the first comment that appeared, and I think that Jens did a great job writing it:

You can see that the author’s name is linked.  If you hover your cursor over it, look down in the status bar of your browser and you will see the URL that the link points to.

The status bar reveals that Jen’s name is linked to http://www.slymarketing.com.

Next, toggle your SEO Quake button on so that it shows as a toolbar at the top of your browser.  You will want to click on the “external links” function.

A report will load and you will see all of the links on the page.  If the NoFollow column reads “NO,” that means that the ‘NoFollow’ attribute has been turned off.  In this case, we see that Jen’s link to slymarketing.com is being followed.

Conclusion – Always Check For Yourself.

If you are relying on someone’s representation that their blog comments will pass link value to you, always check for yourself.  Using the toolbar as shown above is a fast and reliable way to verify whether or not your link  is getting value.

An Exciting New Development.

Yesterday, PLR Pro re-opened its doors to the public after five months worth or site and software enhancements.  An awesome software application called “Project Green Button” is now available through PLR Pro.  Project Green Button (orPGB, for short) automatically builds sites for you, and includes some excellent marketing features such as RSS feed submissions and social bookmarking.  Either later this month or the first part of January, PGB will also feature a blog commenting service, which will allow you to quickly post to blogs that have ‘nofollow’ disabled and will give one-way links to your sites.

PLR Pro and its Project Green Button is an incredible new tool for newbies and seasoned web authors alike.  Check it out here.

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