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
-
Does Dofollow links from forumn profiles, blog comments, business directories or article directories etc have any impact?
Hi guys, So looking at my competitors in my city a lot of the people ranking on 2nd, 3rd pages and so forth have little or no quality backlinks, instead, their links are all from business directories, forum profiles and blog comments. I saw google employees saying easy to create links hold very little value and it's easy for the algorithm to distinguish been easy to obtain backlinks and difficult ones. From what I see on my competition backlink profiles, they may not get them to the front page but they do get them to pages, two three and four. I was wondering if creating say 20-30 easy links per week and also focus on obtaining high-quality backlinks. Would they be any penalties for 20-30 easy to make links a week from Google? Cheers
Link Building | | sydneygardening0 -
Need clarification on Linking strategy and whether I am doing more harm than good?
I wanted to get an opinion of whether a new strategy is wise or profoundly idiotic. Here is the scenario. We have a branded site that offers villa rentals around the world but we also have separately branded geo specific websites that focus on villas rentals at a specific destination meaning the villas are mutually inclusive on the sites but we try to differentiate them with different descriptions and markups. This is what we did. We have a magazine associated with the global company that posts articles 1 to 2 times a day and it is set up as a subfolder on the global website. The articles have revelant links to the global company landing pages as well as relevant villa pages. Additionally, we embed links to the geospecific websites as well if an article features a destination, topic or villa that is relevant to both the geospecific and global website. Moreover, In we have aggressively cross linked relevant keywords from specific villa pages (ie villa xyz on Barbados) to the magazine as well as to the root domain of the global website and other relevant pages. But we do not link the geospecific site back to the magazine or global site. Since we implemented this strategy, the rankings on our global site have dropped and the specific villa page on the global site (villa xyz on Barbados) has dropped precipitously for that villa xyz keyword. The complicating feature in all of this is that we have been launching new sites and fixes in the past month so I am not exactly sure what is the cause of the drop but I have a suspicion that the aformentioned issue may be a contributing factor. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Link Building | | Isle_Blue1 -
Linking out: Follow vs. Nofollow
When linking out to other sites, such as resources on .gov pages, should I use follow or nofollow links?
Link Building | | AHC_SEO0 -
Does anyone have a list of bad site's. I should not be on or submit to?
My Gatlinburg Cabin Rental site is losing ranking on the keyword "gatlinburg cabins" I was wondering if anyone had a list of site's it should not be linked on so I can demote them.
Link Building | | GatlinburgMan0 -
Are Blog Comments now useless?
Hello I see there is much debate on this issue of Blog Commenting. Is it still a useful way to get a backlink? Would you suggest only using 'No follow' blogs to leave comments? Many thanks
Link Building | | missy290 -
Blog commenting
Is this still a good way of getting backlinks? I do not plan on making it my only method. Most of my backlinking is done through content creation, press releases, and guest blogging. But looking for some variety in there that can be done quicker. Is it even worth the time or are the links too spammy now? If I did I would actually hand build the links and comment to the article.
Link Building | | webfeatseo1 -
How to detect which is a bad link ?
Hi.. Our Link Builders at office collects the lists for directories, social bookmarking websites and press releases, article directories. But Im not sure, which all are good links, etc, since I dont get time to check. Is there a way, I can train them to know, which is a bad link, so they can just ignore that link ?
Link Building | | qubesys0 -
Is this directory good or spamy?
I was using open site explorer and one of our local competitors and in the top 5 of the SERP has a link in http://directory.askbee.net/submit-site-to-directory.html They want either a $1, $5 or a 3 way link to get your link in the directory. Do any of these help or would this directory be a waste of time. Thanks
Link Building | | mmaes0