Blog commenting

[Norras]

I found this useful for finding relevant blogs which allow back links:

Real Link Finder - Free Link Building Software by Neil Shearing

Cheers

Nick

[DioBach]

Originally Posted by Geoffuk How can you tell if a blog has 'no follow' tags on it?

If you use Firefox, the quickest way is to use the Search Status plugin, and select Highlight No Follow links. Then you get a lovely pink 'link condom' around all the links with condoms on them...

You'd be amazed at some sites' use of nofollow, I've moaned in the past about the BBC making it's entire message board system invisible to the world through incorrect use of nofollow else where so won't go into it here. If you've not been using it, you'll go back and groan at all the hours you spent building up links at other sites only to see they were nofollowed all along.

[kcheung]

I don't think no follow links are aways bad news, I've got a couple of links on no follow site to my DJ site, and surprisingly i do get some reasonable traffic from those links, nothing spectacular thats going to help me retire, but 'every little helps', so whilst I may not benefit from search rankings, a well placed one way link on a totally relevant site with no follow, could, at least in theory, offer you some alternate traffic source.

[Stellar]

There is also the fact that Google claim to not follow nofollow links, or at least not to pass on any link love. But is this proven? I suspect that what Google say and what Google do are two entirely different things. I have a site that is a page rank 4 and most of the back links have nofollow

[Geoffuk]

Just installed Firefox and the SearchStatus plugin. Why didn't I get this ages ago?!?

[SpongeBob]

Originally Posted by DioBach If you use Firefox, the quickest way is to use the Search Status plugin

That's a good plugin - thanks! I already had one that showed which links were NoFollow (SEO for Firefox) but the plugin you mentioned got some other useful things too!

[jezaff]

Some people get all overworked about the follow link thing. Google works off the idea that people will naturally link to things so its kinda important that people do do this. With WP and other CMSs defaulting to no follow thats an awful lot of valuable link posting info that is being lost imo.

I remember getting banned from a forum for spamming when I posted a link to a site that had nothing to do with me because I genuinly thought it was useful. Sad really that some webmasters just dont get it.

By all means have moderation, but the no follow thing is a waste of time. If its a spammy link - remove it. If its helpful, leave it and let Google weigh it up as they do. Spam bots dont check to see if a blog is follow or no follow! They just spam anyway and why wouldnt they. I even get spam on my site for broken up URLs. I guess that means the spammer is thinking users are so interested in their wares that they are actually going to reconstruct it! Surely not? But why do they care when they can carpet bomb a million sites at the press of a button.

[Geoffuk]

Since installing the SearchStatus plug-in I havn't managed to find a single blog in the area I need without no-follow tags! I've been trawling food/cooking blogs for days now and just can't find any!

[kcheung]

Geoff, try do a Google search for 'do follow tags', there is an entire movement for do follow tags and so long as you write a decent enough reply they'll approve your comment.

[Geoffuk]

Ah ok, I'll give that a try thanks kcheung. I never bothered actually searching for 'do-follow' blogs as I didn't think that its something anyone would actually promote.

As for the actual comments, I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to approve them if they weren't relivent or were spammy in any way. I always look at it as a 2 way thing; you provide decent content in the form of a comment, you get a link back, everyone wins!

[csn]

I've got a comment policy on my site. So long as the comment is relevant and has no body links that are clearly unrelated, then it gets published.

Links are removed if I'm suspicious as to the author's intent and comments are deleted if it is clearly spam.

If a spammer comes on and takes the time to write something that is relevant and progresses the conversation, I'm all for posting that. If they come on just looking for an easy back link, I'll show them the road.

PS) My blog is a do-follow blog.