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Easy Way To Build Links To Your Blog

December 22, 2008 on 12:14 pm | In Internet Marketing |

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One of the critical elements of search engine optimisation is creating a network of links to your website or blog. Sounds simple in theory, but it is not as easy as it seems to generate high-quality links on a scale large enough to have a positive effect on your search engine rankings.

One of the easiest ways to build links back to your blog is via commenting on “dofollow” blogs. It’s simple to do, but it’s surprising how many people $*&# it up.

What is “dofollow”, you ask?

To answer that question, you first have to know about “nofollow”. “Nofollow” an attribute of the <a> tag used to specify links in HTML. By placing the “nofollow” attribute on a link, a webmaster can BLOCK any “link juice” passing from their website to your website. In other words, the “nofollow” attribute makes a link useless from an SEO point of view.

When blogs started to become popular, spammers quickly came up with programs to post auto-generated comments containing spammy links (mostly for porn, pharma and gambling sites).

That’s when major blogging platforms such as WordPress instituted the “nofollow” attribute as the default setting for blog comments. The idea was to eliminate the incentive to post comment spam.

Didn’t quite work out that way though… spam comments are still rife. It’s necessary to fit out every blog with a prophylactic anti-comment-spam plugin such as Akismet (my instance has nuked around half a million spam comments already).

Enter “DoFollow”

So, instituting the “nofollow” plugin on WordPress has been a total failure. So much so that a plugin has been created called DoFollow that is designed to disable the NoFollow attribute on external links and make comment links “count” for search engine optimisation purposes.

Seeing as it’s pretty much mandatory to moderate blog comments, my view is that it’s OK for comment links to pass some SEO value.

The Marketing Results Blog Has The DoFollow Plugin Installed

This blog has the DoFollow plugin installed. In other words, if you leave a comment on this blog, you will gain a search engine benefit.

But that’s by the by — the important thing to note is that there are plenty of other blogs out there which use the DoFollow plugin as well. All you need to do is.

Locate DoFollow blogs (one resource for doing this is the website DoFollowBlogs.com)
Add to the discussion by posting regular comments on DoFollow blogs
Watch your search engine rankings increase

One strategy of many

Posting comments on DoFollow blogs is just one link-building strategy out of many. If you’re operating in a competitive niche, it won’t work in isolation. However, for most product and service websites, DoFollow comments are a valuable strategy that can produce tangible results.

The key to this strategy is consistent application. Don’t post one comment and forget about it. Post regularly to key blogs over a period of weeks and months and you’ll start to see the benefits.

Another vital strategy to keep in mind is that comments that offer value are likely to get approved by blogmasters. Many practitioners of the DoFollow strategy shoot themselves in the foot by posting self-promotional drivel that is simply deleted.

High-quality comments that contribute to the discussion will tend to garner more clickthroughs, in addition to potential search engine benefits.

One final point: you can outsource blog commenting to others, providing that the quality of posts is sufficient to ensure that comments get posted.

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Really cool Info about link building, Sure I learnt a lot.. Thnx for sharing the Info

Comment by Nicholas Francis — December 22, 2008 #
Hi Will,

Whenever I comment on dofollow blogs, I first make sure they are actually dofollow blogs, because many times they are not.

Your blog is a great example. Your blog comments are actually nofollow, even though you claim you are dofollow

Comment by Mike of Dofollow Blog List — December 23, 2008 #
Does it matter if all your websites on the same IP address?

Comment by David Hsieh Jacksonville FL — December 23, 2008 #
@Mike — my blog is dofollow, but there is a 4-day time period before each comment link becomes dofollow. This is in case any links slip through my (rather fallible) Akismet blog comment filter.

@David — you seem to be asking if cross-linking websites on the same IP-address will have equal search engine weighting than if they were on separate IP-addresses. The answer to this is “no”. Separate IP-addresses are better, all things being equal.

Comment by Will — December 23, 2008 #
Oh, this is funny after reading your article I find out that your blog is also “no follow.” very nice!

Comment by David Hsieh Jacksonville FL — December 23, 2008 #
Ok, that makes sense will. sorry about that. Thank you for answering my question. The whole IP thing is very confusing especially this whole c class thing as well.

thank you

Comment by David Hsieh Jacksonville FL — December 23, 2008 #
Nice post ! thanks for the more information

Comment by Process Automation — December 24, 2008 #
That is exactly what I had done to find your blog

Comment by Tim - Fear Of Long Words — December 25, 2008 #
Merry Christmas!

Comment by Trent — December 26, 2008 #
thanks for usefull info..

Comment by abidin — December 27, 2008 #
Me too found your blog at do follow blogs site . Will give it a try there !!

Comment by techrar.com — December 27, 2008 #
We have just started exploring the benefits of following and commenting on “Do Follow” blogs. It’s very exciting to ponder the possibilities of increasing website traffic and ranking with this strategy. After getting ranked higher with this very cost effective (albeit time consuming!) method of SEO… there are other ways to use your higher ranking to, not only get business, but to also make money with your blog or website!! Very
intriguing!

Comment by Wendy Herndon ~ The Serena Group — December 28, 2008 #
my link building strategy have always been do-follow comments, i am just too lazy to get any links from anything else… it has always worked ,like what i am doing write now

Comment by bsnl broadband cheats — December 28, 2008 #
Thanks for the tip on dofollowblogs.com, it seems to be a great resource!

Comment by bjuliette — December 29, 2008 #
Backlinks are very important for increasing your PageRank and link popularity. However, please be considerate and don’t spam other people’s comment box just for the sake of backlinks. Thank you, AJ.

Comment by AJ @ Web Hosting, UK — December 30, 2008 #
Nice information, thanks for sharing.

Comment by Nakodari — January 3, 2009 #
Thank you for this information. I am just a regular joe, but am thinking I need to do some research on blogging and linking. Very cool. Thanks for the resources.

Comment by David — January 7, 2009 #
Hi there

I tend to do a lot of blog commenting, and look for do-follow blogs a lot - thanks a lot for your links

I have also recently opened my own blog, and I know how annoying it is taking time to comment a blog, and your link comes up as nofollow - so I removed it from my blog, so feel free to comment!

Cheers.

Comment by Oliver — January 8, 2009 #
This is an awesome seo article! Many people either don’t use it or don’t know about it. One of the many ways to increase rankings and search terms. Nice blog too, we’ll definitely be reading up on your articles.

Thanks!

Comment by Insane Limos — January 13, 2009 #
so when you do comment on dofollow blogs do you need to use appropriate anchor text for your ‘name’ (i just used my name.. hahah instead of the “anchor text- simply becuase it looks weird to comment with your website name? or does it?) also, how do you tell if a blog is no follow or do follow? still new at this!

Comment by lindsay — January 13, 2009 #
Hey lindsay, thanks for stopping by.

Yes, it’s probably most effective to leave appropriate anchor text for your name. In my case, I moderate a bit “harder” when posters comment with “keyword rich” anchor text. The comment has to add value to the discussion. If it is drivel, I delete it. However, everyone’s moderation policies will be different.

In terms of how to find out what is nofollow / dofollow, I use a FireFox plugin called “Search Status” which has an option to highlight all nofollow links on a page. There are no doubt many other plugins and tools available that do much the same thing.

Comment by Will — January 13, 2009 #
I have been doing this for around 2 months now and it has got me up to 3rd in the results for many of my target keywords. I seem to have reached a plateau though now where the big boys have got those elusive 1st and 2nd places. My site is mainly a revision resource containing questions for medical students. Any advice on pushing my site further to get to these spots? Almost like an ‘advanced advice’ blog post?

Comment by Ben — January 13, 2009 #
Thanks for the tips and for the dofollow blog resource.

Comment by DSL Ratgeber — January 13, 2009 #
I find this blog also from do follow blog.There is a downside. Seem like the admin do not check all the link. The blog I find sometimes “nofollow”, sometimes blog owner do not update their blog. Worse sometimes, The blog listed there is error.

Comment by Ruri — January 14, 2009 #
Thanks for the tips. I now understand what dofollow means..lol

Comment by Denise — January 19, 2009 #
Im installing the plugin now, thanks.

Comment by Alfred — January 21, 2009 #
hi thanks for sharing…im still new in blogging and i have a lot of things to learn…thanks for sharing

Comment by Lilian — January 21, 2009 #
my strategy w/ the spam comments was to simply remove the website field and moderate as well, because there’s still a ton of spam that akismet doesn’t catch and the automated commenters don’t recognize there’s no website field in my forms.

Comment by JC — January 22, 2009 #
@JC — that’s an interesting approach and it appears to work. The downside might be that it deters legitimate commenters from commenting.

Then there’s people such as Steve Pavlina, who just switched blog comments off altogether.

Personally, I’d like to keep the conversation going, while not leaving it open to abuse by spammers and idiots.

Comment by Will — January 22, 2009 #
Will, thanks for your explanation!

One question (sorry for my bad English :))

I read many articles about do-follow, but I still could not understand - what benefits receives do-follow-blogger? Traffic? Comments as unique content?…

Comment by Roman — January 23, 2009 #
Great article and very well put. But other than just harvesting links to one’s site, great content plays a major part too.

Comment by Womy — January 26, 2009 #
Does your blog get any kind of boost from the search engines by allowing dofollow comments? Is there a traffic increase? Or do you just like the conversation.

Comment by Dave — February 4, 2009 #
@Dave — I don’t think there is a boost from search engine as such, but there is an increase in conversation and a small “reward” in terms of link juice to contributors.

Comment by Will — February 5, 2009 #
Great artical, it pretty much sums it all up.
I am new to all of this and a few weeks ago I had gone mad posting comments at any blog I could find and then I heard that it was all useless when I learnt about the Nofollow and Dofollow.

Comment by Michael — February 5, 2009 #
Coming to think of it, the fact that they have a complex website designed for them means that their website is possibly going to be the lifeline of their sales numbers. With this fact being given, you will find such webmasters going for bandwidth as an important consideration…

Comment by Web Host — February 7, 2009 #
These are the methods I use:
Blog Directories
RSS Directories
General directories
Blog commenting
Forum signatures
Social bookmarking
articles
press releases
squidoo

The best method to rise your pagerank is blog commenting.
Be Well!

Comment by Jimmy — February 9, 2009 #
A useful post that I will refer some of our clients to when they look for help with boosting their website rankings. It’s actually how I found this blog, but now I’m here I can see there’s some really interesting content, so I hope to stick around for a bit and enjoy the debate.

Comment by Sandy — February 16, 2009 #
hmmmmm….I can see this is a good way of sharing links, but if we re all doing it, will it really work? I get so confused with link building. and can someone please tell me…what is a forum signiture?

Comment by Deborah Luckham — February 25, 2009 #
Like we are doing here leaving these comments … bookmerkeddd muhaha love this blog keep up the good work.

Comment by freemarketing — April 1, 2009 #