What is a DoFollow?

To better understand the difference between NoFollow and DoFollow, you may also want to read the following posts –

What is NoFollow

I’m Joining the DoFollow Movement

First of all, DoFollow is not a tag.  DoFollow simply means that when you take out the rel=”nofollow” tag in your links or in your comments, search engines will crawl the links thus giving them some of your link juice. The NoFollow tag is a code that tells search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing to not follow, disregard or totally ignore links found on your site.

A lot of sites I know have set their blogs to DoFollow. This blog’s comment  has been a DoFollow for a month now. So far so good.

To set your Blogger blog to DoFollow:

  1. Go to Layout and click EDIT HTML then you must DOWNLOAD a copy of your FULL TEMPLATE first before editing anything on your html. In case something went wrong, you can easily upload it again.
  2. Tick the checkbox for EXPAND WIDGET TEMPLATE and find the rel=’nofollow’ code by pressing ctrl+F.
  3. Type it in the box and enter. To delete rel=’nofollow’ for backlinks, make sure you see this on your screen:

    4. Photobucket

  4. Delete the highlighted
  5. For comments, delete rel=’nofollow’ in this code : <a expr:href=’data:comment.authorUrl’ rel=’nofollow’>
  6. Save template

For WordPress hosted blogs, there are plugins available to make it to DoFollow. Here are some examples:

DoFollow

NoFollow Case by Case

You can also use these to reward your commentators :

Comment Luv

KeywordLuv

Top Commentators Widget

Setting your site to a DoFollow has it’s advantages and disadvantages.   If you are familiar with link building, you have to know these things if you want to follow the movement.

Advantages :

  • Bloggers who are aware of the DoFollow Movement usually loves to comment on DoFollow blogs. So, be ready in case you get too many comments to moderate.
  • When you set your comments to a DoFollow, your commentators will get free backlinks to their sites.
  • This is one way of thanking those who commented because they will also benefit from you.
  • Great way to interact and exchange point of views from both sides
  • You can search DoFollow blogs and ask the owners to include you site to their list of DoFollow blogs. This gives you also free backlinks to your site.
  • There are DoFollow directories, Forums, Social Bookmarking Networks, Article Directories and Social Networks which you can add or submit your site for free.
  • Creates free traffic for your site which can help your site to get rankings

Disadvantages :

  • Getting lots of comments comes with an increase in spam. You will get a lot of these especially if you don’t moderate your comments. If  you’re blogging on Blogger, your blog is set to a NoFollow by default. If you set it to a DoFollow, you need to activate moderation and not set it to automatic. If you’re on WordPress, you can also moderate the comments and use the Akismet plugin to help you combat spammers.
  • If in case the spam gets through, you are giving the spammer link juice. Google doesn’t like that.  So be careful of what you are allowing to be posted on your site.
  • Apart from that, it doesn’t look good visiting a site full of spams with no relevance to the topic. Your site’s authority and integrity is compromised. You might want to put a warning on your would be commentators that you do not allow spamming and that their posts will be deleted.
  • Linking your sites to spammers will greatly affect your site’s ranking

Weigh it and think of the pros and cons if after reading this post should you decide to be a DoFollow or remain a NoFollow. With these in mind, I’m sure you only want the best for your site.

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