Five Reasons Why You Should Run a "Do Follow" Blog

Why is the Raven blog a "Do Follow" blog? The short and simple answer has to do with rewarding our blog community. There's too many high quality comments that don't deserve to have their links "no followed" in the comments.

Running a "Do Follow" blog does take more effort. You have to be more vigilant about the quality of comments left on your blog and you have to give greater scrutiny to external links. However, there's excellent "Do Follow" and anti-spam tools that are available to bloggers. Andy Beard has a comprehensive list of "do follow" plugins. The list includes plugins and guides for WordPress, Blogger/Blogspot, Typepad and Moveable Type blogging platforms.

Five Reasons for Running a "Do Follow" Blog

Although I've already touched on some of the reasons why it's best to run a "Do Follow" blog, here's my full list (feel free to expand the list in the comments).

  1. It encourages quality people to leave quality comments
  2. It rewards quality commenters for their participation
  3. It improves search engine performance (if you follow the comment policy below)
  4. It helps you grow your RSS subscriptions and builds a better blog community
  5. It facilitates the purpose of linking, instead of crippling it with "No Follow"

"Do Follow" Comment Rules / Policies

Running a "Do Follow" blog does take extra effort, which is why you should have a few comment policies. These are the policies that we use on Raven.

  1. If your external link isn't related to the genre and focus of SEO, SEM, search marketing, etc..., we will remove your external link from your comment.
  2. If your external link goes to a website that is questionable in any way — no PageRank, spammy, etc... — we will remove your external link from your comment.
  3. If your comment is unrelated to the blog entry, abusive or outright spammy, we will remove your comment.

After you change your blog to a "Do Follow" blog, make sure you submit it to the "Do Follow" Blog Directory. That will make it easier for other "Do Follow" bloggers to find your website and is also an excellent resource for yourself. As long as you use spam blocking services, like Akismet, you should be able to effectively manage the amount of spam that will pass through your blog.

Thanks to Randa Clay for the "U Comment / I Follow" badge.

Posted By: Jon Henshaw Posted On: Jan 21, 06:00 AM

Comments

Author: John S. Rhodes
Posted: Jan 20, 06:38 PM
Comment: Permalink

The key is that you weed out the bad comments and keep the good ones. Specifically, if the comments aren’t related to IM, SEO, and the like, the comment really must get killed.

We’ve seen on several niche blogs (non-IM) that allowing the follow helps our SERPs a lot. It’s like Google knows that we’re allowing the flow in, and out. Make sense if you think about it.

Our main issue has been comment spam. It’s been such a bugger on some of the blogs we’d like to open up more. Argh!

~ John

Author: Jon Henshaw
Posted: Jan 20, 08:49 PM
Comment: Permalink

John, I’ve found great success with not running popular blog software like WordPress. This blog runs on Textpattern and has very few problems with spam. I liken it to Windows and Mac, in that most crackers target Windows, because more people use it and (in my opinion) it’s more vulnerable than Mac. Similarly, WordPress is the “Windows” of blog software. Whereas, Textpattern is the “Mac” of blogs.

Author: Josh Garner
Posted: Jan 21, 11:57 AM
Comment: Permalink

I currently use Drupal and being an SEO, I would love to let "do follow" links in. However, it seems my curiosity and knack for breaking code has broken all my comment links. I’ve been scrounging for a few weeks now looking for the fix to this.

Personally, I’m all for "do follow" links on my blog. It’s not even about the allure for commenters, it’s a great way to say thank you for contributing and taking part in my blog. That’s the most important thing.

Author: Nathan Ketsdever
Posted: Jan 21, 06:53 PM
Comment: Permalink

I agree. I don’t know how to fix my out-of-the-box WP to be “do-follow”

Bumpzee I believe has a do-follow community. I bet a list of the do-follow SEO & Marketing blogs would get a lot of social media love.

Author: Jon Henshaw
Posted: Jan 21, 07:15 PM
Comment: Permalink

Nathan, the resource you’re looking for is in the list of plugins I mentioned in the entry. The one you would be interested in is the DoFollow WordPress Plugin

Author: Ottila Jordan
Posted: Mar 1, 04:33 PM
Comment: Permalink

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I will follow your example and be a dofollow blogger, and also put a link to your site from one of my sites.

Author: Jon Henshaw
Posted: Mar 1, 09:03 PM
Comment: Permalink

@Ottila, I’m glad you found my thoughts helpful.

Commenting is closed for this article.

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