Do Follow - No No Follow - I Follow

All of these are terms for getting rid of the rel=”nofollow” attribute added to your external links…WAIT! Slow down… what’s this mean?

A “nofollow” tag is an attribute used by most popular blogging software (blogger, wordpress, etc.). It is the default tag and it remains that way unless you change it. What it does is blocks the search engine spiders from following external links.

An external link is simply any link leaving your page and going to another. The comment field is the most popular example of this.  If I’m a Do Follow blog, then the comments (those that leave a link anyway) that show up under this, or any other post - are followed by Google.

If I hadn’t changed the “No Follow” tag, Google would simply skip over these links and it wouldn’t pass any juice.  With a “Do Follow” blog, Googles spiders are forced to see this as a link.

Why Does This Matter To Me?

Simply put, part of your Google Pagerank (PR) is how many incoming links to your blog exist on the web. It’s only one part of how they determine PR, but it is a significant one. I’ll describe PR in more detail in a later post. Just know this for now… It’s IMPORTANT! Every time another site enjoys your article, there is a chance they will copy and paste it to their own blog, leaving a linkback (or trackback) URL to your page so that the readers know where it came from. Google catalogs all of these links. Every time another site links to your site or blog, it helps your PR. It also brings in more visitors, and more visitors brink you more sweet moolah.

Alright, so we know that incoming links are important. Well what if I told you that there was a way to get incoming links without other sites actually linking to you?

There is! If you visit a “Do Follow” blog or website, and leave a comment… you can leave your link in the form that asks for your website. This link will usually appear within your name that you gave when filling out the comment form. Guess what, you now have an incoming link from another site, and they didn’t even link to you!

Ok, so why does my blog have to be Do Follow? Shouldn’t I just look for blogs that are “Do Follow” and comment there?

Well yeah… that’s the idea of a Do Follow blog. However, if you expect them to return the comment love, you need to make your blog do follow as well. This not only encourages comments, but it helps build and strengthen the blog community.

So How Do I Make My Blog “Do Follow”?

Well if you have a Wordpress blog, it couldn’t be easier. Just download (by right clicking and selecting save as) the plugin file found HERE. After downloading, move the file into your Wordpress Plugins file. It can be found by using your FTP software and clicking Wordpress - Content - Plugins. After this, just move the plugin over to the plugins file already on your site. If you don’t remember how to use FTP software, or you missed the article… CLICK HERE

If you use Blogger, it’s still pretty simple, however it requires you to copy and paste some code. Don’t be scared, I’m here to walk you through it. To do this login to dashboard and click on “Layout”. Then click on the “Edit Html” subtab of the “Template” tab. I recommend backing up your template at this point. Put a check in the “Expand Widgets” checkbox at the top of the Edit Template text box. This expands the Blog Posts Widget Code within which is the comments code. Then scroll down (or use ctrl + f to find) till you come to :

<dl id=’comments-block’>
<b:loop values=’data:post.comments’var=’comment’>
<dt class=’comment-author’expr:id=’”comment-” + data:comment.id’>
<a expr:name=’”comment-” +data:comment.id’/>
<b:if cond=’data:comment.authorUrl’>
<a expr:href=’data:comment.authorUrl’ rel=’nofollow’><data:comment.author/></a>
<b:else/>
<data:comment.author/>
</b:if>
<data:commentPostedByMsg/>
</dt>

Simply delete the words in red that you see in the above code: rel=”nofollow” and save the template.

That’s it… You are now a Do Follow blog! Congrats to you for helping out the blog community by hooking people up with links.

I would strongly recommend checking out this site, and downloading a Do Follow button to paste to your site. This way other bloggers know you support the Do Follow movement against evil Google. It also encourages people to comment on your blog, as they get a free link out of it. I’ve heard that this increases spam so you may want to look into a spam filter like Akismet.

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