WordPress Nofollow SEO Plugin

Posted by Dave on 11 May 2007.

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This is a quick update to share my decision to add a Wordpress plugin to remove the Nofollow tag for links left via Comments on this site. As a result of the installation, everyone who adds meaningful, related commentary will benefit from my Page Rank 4 status. In turn, I hope to encourage others in the travelsphere to adopt this approach so we can all benefit from one and other with regard to this metric. It is also a great way to attract new readers, as they will want to leave comments on your cool “nofollow” site!

To find out more about why this update is beneficial for web site owners who comment here, check out CourtneyTuttle.com which has a great post on the topic.

He links to one plugin that does the trick, while I decided to go with a different one called Nofollow Case by Case.

Cheers!

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This post was written by:

Dave - who has written 993 posts on Go Backpacking.

Dave Lee (Editor-in-Chief) blogged his way around the world from 2007-2009, and then started Travel Blog Success to teach others how to do the same. When not writing, he can be found salsa dancing, and lamenting his untimely departure from Medellin. Follow him on Twitter @rtwdave

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John

A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually.

jameswillisisthebest

This is my first post
just saying HI

Paul Vallejo

Dave you're very brave. From an SEO point of view aren't you concerned with "Bad neighbours" etc? I was thinking about turning off the nofollow on comments on my personal blog, but until someone writes a plugin that automatically checks links, then adds nofollow to the ones that dont meet a certain criteria (ie. Page rank less than 5, page has no relevant words in it, etc) I won't be doing it. The nofollow case by case plugin is a great find, and when friends and relatives ask for help with their wordpress installs I'd happily sneak it in there as an extra for everyone else on the web willing to abuse the good nature of persons such as yourself. Either way, you get some more unique content on your page, I get a link. Everyones happy :)

Dave

Hi Paul -

I have to admit I'm curious to see what effect this nofollow experiment will have on my second Page Ranking. I have not advertised the nofollow aspect of my site outside of this one post, and an inclusion on Courtney Tuttle's dofollow list. As a result, I've encountered very few spammy comments.

I'm already happy with the amount of comments I receive, so I see it as more of a behind the scenes reward.

Of course if my Page Rank goes down, I'll probably disable the plugin for lack of a better explanation.

Mike

Dave, this is pretty cool of you. I'm really torn about Google's push for the nofollow tag. It seems well-intentioned but ... I don't know. The wholesale implementation of it in Wikipedia and by default in almost every Wordpress installation seems a bit lazy and ineffective to me.

Have you seen this yet? It's a pretty interesting read on how Google, Yahoo, and About handle it.

Dan

It's definately something worthwhile I think, I'm adding it right now. I don't think the spam thing will be a big deal askimet seems to get pretty much everything and I don't mind having to delete a few manually every now and then.

Good find and thanks for sharing.

Timen

It definitely has its pros and cons. On the one hand you're encouraging more people to comment, though not everyone will know you have the plugin installed. The other hand has spammy comments in it. Let us know what your experiences are after a few weeks. I'd like to hear if you see an increase in comments / spam.

Dave

Good points. I've already deleted one comment which I thought was someone simply trying to get the linkback as it was so ambiguous it made no sense.

Actually, I really didn't make the change to get more comments, as I think I'm lucky enough to have some great readers so far. I did it more out of a desire to increase my traffic and/or page rank, though I guess I didn't need to make the change myself to benefit from other sites that use the Do Follow approach.

I'll keep you posted!