Is a no follow comment section good or bad?
-
I have a photography blog that I'm really trying to promote solid commenting. What is everyone's opinion on nofollow vs do follow comments?
-
Correct. I double check all comments and follow them back to the owners site. If the owners site is spam I typically report it. So I think what you're saying is there isn't a downside providing your super diligent on monitoring the site...is that correct?
-
If you are going to make the comment links follow rather than no follow then there is a good chance that you will get heavily spammed. You mention you plan to delete spam but you may have to be very viligant and check often as I have seen blogs in the past that get tons of it per day and in the end it becomes a pain in the backside for the moderator and looks bad for genuine users of the site.
It may be worth trialling it rather than committing to it if that is possible with the set up of your site so if things do get too spammy you can quickly move to a nofollow approach.
-
Thanks for this feedback. I like to think the content is solid and getting good participation is key. I'm just trying to understand the SEO downside to allowing people to post comments with links to their sites or blogs. Keeping in mind my blog is a photography blog so people that comment typically have photography blogs or portfolios. I delete any and all spam. I guess my question is does this hurt your search ranking with Google?
-
I'm not sure if anyone has any solid data on this, and even if they did I think it would be so conditioned on many other factors that it wouldn't be much help.
The pro's of allowing dofollow links from commenters on your blog is obviously that it encourages people to get involved, and maybe they stick around and become part of the community. The downside is the spammers who will invade!
You can argue both sides...
If people are going to bother to comment with good quality comments which are useful to building a community, and for they themselves to be persuaded to stick around is going to require that you are creating great content. If the content is crappy then people won't bother crafting great replies. So if the quality is crappy and you allow dofollow then you'll get (other than the spammers...) people who are maybe nice but aren't really interested in your community, they just want a link.
if the content is great then do you need the dofollow to persuade people to comment?
On the flipside, if the content is pretty good maybe a dofollow link helps to push people over the edge and make them bother to write the comment... If the community is small you should be able to manage the spam.
At the end of the day - I think you need to test in your niche and see what happens... Good luck!
-
I would only make the comments dofollow if you are going to police them carefully and delete links to any poor quality or shady websites.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Good idea? bad idea?
Hi guys there's a campaign (which I am very passionate about) to save our village pub from being developed. Now I have bought a domain name www dot SaveTheRoyalOak dot com I've forwarded this domain to sussexchef.com/save-the-royal-oak I'm using forward masking so the url remains save the royal oak, I will contain the few pages to do with the pub so that the navigation bars are hidden so the site will pretty much look be it's own entity to the user. this micro site will get hundreds of users and people linking to it, My question is will this hurt my site at all? I'm guessing that when I ask people to link to it I should get them to "no follow" it to be on the safe side? Thanks for your help All the best Ben
Link Building | | SussexChef830 -
Are links from every page of a partners website to my website bad for seo?
I have asked a partner website to link to my website in the Menu Bar. Which has resulted in a link to my website from every page of the partners website (Over 1000 Pages). The link is not a "nofollow" link, it is a regular link. Can this have any negative effects in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | raghavkapur0 -
How do I remove bad web directory listings?
I am starting SEO for an E commerce website. I guess like 1 year or two ago they had another SEO company working for them. After looking in Site explorer I realized that they have like 2000 links (almost all from website directories) that have the correct anchor text but are all in the wrong categories, and most from countries like china and india. Many of the Titles are even in Chinese. This company sells packaging supplies and they are in categories like real estate, animals, and so on. I am changing the domain name, so I guess any links to internal pages will be lost, however I have to forward the main domain to my new domain, so any links to the home page will still be there. Does anyone know how I can remove these links??
Link Building | | DTOSI0 -
Do Follow- Social Media sites
Does anyone have a list of do follow social media network sites. I am looking to list some of my customers on social media network sites, but having the bonus of do follow to pass link Juice is an extra bonus. Most of my customers have Twitter and Facebook profiles- but these happen to be no follows. I am looking for more social media sites that are do follow. I did see an article on this- on SEM MOz I believe but I cant find it. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | WMA0 -
Value no follow links from Google Content Network
Is there a value of using Google Content Network to add no follow links to the general linkscape of a website? I notice a lot of competion higher than me on SERPs for specific keywords have these links from website with high DA. We have tested the value of having Adsense adds, but they do not convert the traffic. We might consider using them for the purposes of ranking higher on SERPs though, and would appreciate any experinces with this.
Link Building | | inet-design0 -
What to do with some good links I have?
I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?
Link Building | | Svetoslav0 -
How to improve (ASAP) the linking root domain, the followed linking root domains and the linking C-Blocks? Linkbuilding (or whatever) techniques.
I have a small site (.com) like any website in my sector. 30-90 pages. I have no crawls errors. Everythings is fine, just I need to improve my linking root domain, the followed linking root domain and the linking C-Blocks. Example: my competitors have 300 (one of them have 1300) of total links. I have 30. Anyone know some good strategies? techniques? tips? I just dont want to be in a farm directory, I want free links. I'm already running two strategies but it works so slowly. I want something faster at this moment. Also, any recommendation will be thankful.
Link Building | | NicoDavila0 -
Are "Content Farms" still good for backlinking in articles?
Out of morbid curiosity, are "Content Farms" still a good source to use for backlinking within articles that you share? I have yet to see some results to base an answer off of for myself. Some co-workers are wanting to utilize sites like Suite101, ArticlesBase, etc for sharing articles and gaining the benefit of getting some backlinks from these sites. Is this still a good tactic to utilize? My research is telling me no since the Panda Update... Anyone have any insight on this? Thanks!
Link Building | | TKIGWebTeam0