I Guess We Are A Dofollow Blog Again (Sort Of…)
Free Search Engine Optimisation Tips By Hobo.
I Guess We Are A Dofollow Blog Again (Sort Of…)
With the release of our new FREE wordpress plugin for comments yesterday, it appears we’re a dofollow blog again! Remember that?
Our new free plugin for WP comments released yesterday allows you to moderate exactly the comments you want to reward with link juice. That means every comment link in the comments in the Hobo site is ‘dofollow’ – no more ugly Nofollow links, as commenters below a certain number of links simply don’t get credited with a link. Of course, you can set the limit to whatever you want… my number is secret though I told Dave Naylor once 
As a result of this, I’m going to police the comments even more. So, if you’re commenting, use at least half a brain cell because I will out stupid dofollow comment spammers with no panache. 
I’m fortunate I do have intelligent folk commenting on this blog – it took a while!
Another bonus is that regular contributers to the blog should now have BETTER links from Hobo – for free.
Why We Released Hobo Link Love Plugin
Google’s Matt Cutts says:
Once a user has done a certain number of posts/edits, or has been around for long enough to build up trust, then those nofollows could be removed and the links could be trusted. Anytime you have a user that you’d trust, there’s no need to use nofollow links.
I love SEO and I love blogging. I think if blog comments are moderated and you’re watching who you link to, there’s no problem. You shouldn’t be upsetting Google, and you won’t risk linking to a bad neighbourhood.
With the recent changes regarding Google Pagerank and nofollow, this plugin goes a long way in addressing nofollow worries as complained loudly about in the following posts:
- http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ – Matt Cutts Of Google caused all this
- http://www.luxuryinvietnam.com/seo-blog/index.php/matt-cutts-kills-internal -pagerank-sculpting-with-nofollow/ I chipped in
- http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090616-130132 – Kevin Newcomb of Search Engine Watch
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algor ithm-handles-nofollow Rand Fishkin of Seomoz chips in….
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-says-yes-you-can-still-sculpt-pagera nk-no-you-cant-do-it-with-nofollow … a couple of times
- http://searchengineland.com/google-loses-backwards-compatibility-on-pa id-link-blocking-pagerank-sculpting-20408 – Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land makes his views heard
- http://www.dailyseoblog.com/2009/06/page-rank-sculpting-using-nofollow -clarifications-from-google/ Mani Karthik has a nice round up
- http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-06-08-n72.html Philipp Lenssen chips in
- http://sphinn.com/story/117949 Plenty of folk talking about it at sphinn
- http://www.seofaststart.com/blog/googles-operation-bendover-exposed-no follow-pagerank-sculpting Dan Thies with a funny video on the whole issue
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3925952.htm Webmasterworld folk discuss
- http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/google-deprecates-pagerank-scu lpting-paid-javascript-links.html Jordan McCollum with a good simple roundup
- http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020141.html SERoundtable with another roundup
Most of these posts are commenting on the way Google handles nofollow internally, but they include how it handles PR on your site if you run a blog with comments. The thinking is, if you have a lot of comments on a post, nofollow links to external commenter’s sites in your blog might actually be a drain on Google PR.
Andy Beard comments too here – Pageranks Sculpting & Blog Comments and another of my favourite bloggers, Sebastian, pipes in with this gem – http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/rip-rel-nofollow-funeral-party/
This plugin is one way to stop that PR drain happening – because you kiss nofollow links goodbye
Download the plugin here – It works on Wordpress 2.8, and should be backward compatible (though clearly no warranties – it’s free – use at your own risk)
Read the installation instructions on my last post
If you use the plugin, let me know how it works out for you.
The Hobo SEO PDF Guide will be available Wednesday 1st July 2009 
