Simple SEO

Nofollow and Dofollow Tags

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about link building through comments and in this post I referred to “nofollow” tags. “Nofollow” tags are used by many blogs in an attempt to prevent spammers. Comment spammers randomly go around and place comments on blogs in attempts to receive “link juice” (link juice is a term used to identify the quality of a site’s link power in terms of pagerank). In order to prevent this, the “nofollow” tag was developed which tells search engines not to grant any “link juice” to that link.

Think about this: You have an extremely popular blog with a PageRank of 7 or 8 and a new blogger with no PageRank keeps peppering your site with comments and you know they are only commenting for links. Would you be upset?….probably. In this case the “nofollow” tag might be beneficial because many people are afraid that as lower ranked pages link to them, their PageRank maybe dragged down. I am not sure if this is true as I read blogs that say it does and blogs that say it doesn’t but either way some people get nervous.

The other side of the argument: In the beginning bloggers represented a very small online community and they often

DoFollow or NoFollow?

helped each other out. They would comment on each others blogs to help drive traffic and build popularity through the links created when commenting. Now the argument is posed with this question: How are new bloggers to develop those creditable links? The answer is not simple but social bookmarking, social media and article publication are a few options and so is removing or limiting the “nofollow” tag.

I use the Wordpress platform and there are many plugins that either remove the “nofollow” tag and/or allow you to pick and choose which links are “follow and/or dofollow” and “nofollow”. I use the plugin “Nofollow Case by Case“, and I love it. It allows me to choose the links I want to give “link juice” to and the links I don’t. Hey my blog is not a high pagerank blog but it is ranked somewhat so why not give my fellow Daddy Bloggers and Mommy Bloggers some LINK LOVE?!

If you use Firefox, as I do, you can install the plugin called “NoDoFollow”. This plugin allows you to easily see which links on a site are “Follow” and/or  “NoFollow” by shading them blue or red.It is a great tool to evaluate sites.

I hope you find this information useful. If you do, please use the “Retweet” button in then upper right or the “ShareThis” button below..THANKS!

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