Should You Do-Follow Your Blog Comments?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 6 of March , 2008 at 1:33 pm

One of the biggest controversies in blog Search Engine Optimization is whether or not comments on blogs should be no-followed or do-followed. Currently, Blogger.com has strict comment policies and WordPress software comes with all comment links no-followed. If the blog owner wants to take the no-follow tag out and allow commentators to get some link juice from their comments then he will have to install a do-follow plugin. Some bloggers do that. Other bloggers don’t. But should you?

That’s a question every blog owner will have to answer for him or herself. You will likely get more comments if you install the do-follow plugin. But you’ll also likely get more spam. Then you’ll find yourself instituting strict comment policies like Michael Martine. But for every policy that you implement you’ll also have to spend time adminstrating. You’ll need to decide if you have the time to do that or how worth it is to you to pass on Search Engine Optimization benefits to your readers. There are pros and cons either way.

Pros of installing do-follow:

• More comments from readers
• More readers
• More content on your blog
• More trackbacks and possibly more traffic as a result

Now, the cons:

• More spam
• You’ll spend more time approving comments and filtering through spam
• Complaint handling from your readers
• Fewer readers and fewer visitors to your blog

When it comes to deciding whether or not you want to use do-follow links in your blog comments, you’ll have to figure out what Search Engine Optimization values are most important to you. When you do that then you’ll know whether you should install the plugin or not.

Category: Blogging

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg