We can safely say that my strength as a blogger doesn’t lie with my knowledge of the technology. Hell, I’m still trying to get the damned MyBlogLog pictures to appear in the sidebar.

That’s why posts like: How to Get More Comments, Less Spam from Michel Fortin’s blog are candy to me; they help me build a more successful blog without toiling any harder at the keyboard (the toiling part’s been happening a lot lately).

(Knowledge like this also plays nicely into my vision of the copywriter as marketer; the more you know about marketing technology, the more value you bring to the table.)

Nofollow Settings

Mike’s current post covers “nofollow” settings – a topic that resurfaces frequently. From Fortin:

With the WordPress default package, links within comments apply a “no-follow” attribution, which was initially meant to curb spam. (Many spammers have exploited this in the past, for the sole purpose of gaining linkback popularity and pagerank when search engines index blogs.)

As we now know, this is not true. At least, not any longer.

Spam is almost always automated (spammers use software that “blasts” blog comments all over the ‘Net). And they don’t care. If spammers can get blog viewers and authors to visit their sites, gaining extra backlinks is but a mere bonus for their despicable efforts.

The problem is, just like email anti-spam filtering can kill innocent bystanders (such as legitimate, double opt-in marketers), no-follow penalizes my blog’s commentators in the process.

Essentially, “nofollow” means those who post comments on a blog don’t receive “credit” for a link back to their own blog from the search engines.

Turning off “nofollow” provides an incentive for commentary, though it might also provide an incentive for a lot of meaningless, one-line commentary.

Still, I’ve turned off “nofollow” using this neat plugin:

But rather than being forced to tweak the code, my friend Denis de Bernardy, author of the Semiologic Package of plugins, which I highly recommend, offers a Do Follow plugin that reverses the default no-follow attribution.

This morning I noticed a similar WordPress plug-in which turns off “nofollow” for anyone posting ten comments. Amusingly called Link Love, you can download it at the AllPassionMarketing site.

Philosophically speaking, I want to reward those who take the time to comment, yet I’d love to do so without rewarding spammers and those who add nothing to the conversation.

Posted in Blogging and tagged .