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There is a story told of heaven and hell being exactly alike.
There are large banquet tables set with every kind of food and desert imaginable. Everyone has a fork in their hand that can’t be removed or repositioned. The Fork is so long you can’t put it in your mouth.
The scene in hell; everyone is stabbing food and trying to somehow feed themselves with this great food stuck on the end of a very long fork.
The scene in heaven; everyone is using their fork to get food for the person across the table from them. They can use their fork to feed others but not themselves.
In heaven everyone gets fed. In hell no matter how hard they try no one gets fed.
I wrote earlier this week about the new blog experiment I was doing in our market. To make it worth while reading I threw in some things that I thought would interest other bloggers.
I also realize that some just won’t take the time to find the nugget of gold in the middle of the post. Here it is dusted off and shining bright. I didn’t want this to get lost.
Posts with Comments
I’ve noticed on the blogs I author and track that post without comments can move quickly to supplemental results and right out of the Google index. However, posts with comments tend to stay in the active index much longer and some almost indefinitely.
If you find a post you really like or just one you would like to see others read leave a comment. And I’m not talking about “Great Post” or “I love your blog”. Providing a good comment just might help a fellow blogger keep their post on the web. We all know we should write for our readers and not the search engines. The reality is if we aren’t indexed by the search engines our readers can’t find our posts.
Post with Contextual Links
The second thing I’ve noticed that helps keep post in the Google index are those containing links that are contextual to the post. It means you are giving away a link to another blog. It is often called link love because these contextual links are the best kind of back-link to get from another blog or website.
Share the link love and keep your posts in the index.
Do-Follow Plug-in
This plug-in It will disable the automatic rel="nofollow"attributes added to external links. Meaning when someone leaves a comment on your blog and they fill in their URL they will get a back-link from your blog post.
Of course we should all have control over the spam comments that come to our site. I still moderate all comments before they go live. Even with Askiment and a spam filter activated. I also have the do-follow plugin on all my blogs. I’ve not told anyone this until now but I think I’m going to start, Oh, I guess I just did.
Here is the link to find the do-follow plugin.
In the options panel of the plugin you can set the number of days for the comment before the no follow is removed. I personally like it set to zero, if someone takes the time to comment on the blog and provide their valid URL, I’m glad to provide them a link back to their site.
We can all help each other out.
- Leave comments on others blogs
- Put quality contextual links in your posts
- Activate the Do-Follow plugin on your blog
Before you know it instead of all of us going hungry, we all get fed.
In case you didn’t know it. Back-links are a major part of Google PageRank. Share the Link Love, improve your PageRank, which improves your position in the organics. To borrow a phrase from Athol Kay “You’ve Been Fed”.
I’d rather be in blogger heaven than blogger hell, how about you?
TinyURL For This Post: http://tinyurl.com/a8dfk6
@Athol-
Spot on.
Methinks Monica may be a spammer, my friend. (not accusation–just observation)
Eric
Athol,
Eric,
Geez, and on a day when I was feeling generous. It does have that look, now I suppose I need to go take down the comment, or maybe leave it and kill the link.
You guys are too much, I mean that in a good way : )
My blog is not fake. It is my college work. My brother set it up for me in a free host that fulled it with ads. And I don’t have money to waste with a college work!
Monica,
You blog isn’t fake. It is real. But here are the questions.
Where does the content for your posts come from? Do you write those posts or copy and past the information from some place else?
The images in your post, where to they come from? Did you take the photos? Were they in the public domain if not?
If you didn’t write the content and you didn’t take the images then it is what is called a “Spam Site” meaning content/images stolen from others and put on a blog with ads.
This is what Eric and Athol are referring to in their comments. Since the ads are obvious and the content does not appear to be original it falls in the “Spammer” site description which is not what you want.
This isn’t free hosting, this is a killer to your reputation and integrity. If you want a blog that is straightforward and you write the content and take the pictures let me know. It can be arranged at no expense to a college budgeted student.
Well if this is college work you’re gonna get expelled for plagiarism from Wikipedia. Most colleges take this sort of thing pretty seriously.
I just deleted Monicas comments “it’s my college work yada yada yada” on my own blog. Her IP address flagged her as living in Montevideo, Uruguay. It’s seriously hard to hide online.
If indeed this is a “college work”, Blogger.com offers free blog hosting without ads.
This post is a good example of one that has remained on google. I was doing research on no follow etc and it was right up there. Thanks for the info. This is a learning experience.
Dave, your findings are interesting. If you take the time to write a good post, then you definitely want it to stick around in Google’s index. And by activating dofollow you are sure to increase the amount of comments on your blog.
Hmmm…now the question is, should I allow dofollow on my blog?
@Justin in Oahu – If you have moderation in place I would activate it. You can use Lucia’s link love to help set parameters to be met for the do follow to be activated.
It is a personal choice. I made it as I said as a way to give back to those contributing to the content of the blog.
I have been noting that blogs with do-follow comments also have higher page rank.
That implies that at the very least… Google loves them
I am thinking about moving over to the Do-Follow side myself. Is it true that Google likes blogs with the Do-Follow enabled?
I have been Googling all morning seeing what people have to say, which is how I found this great site.
Justin,
I’m not sure if google cares one way or another. I do know that is seems to assign a pagerank to pages with comments higher than those without.
I put the do follow into place to reward those that contribute to the conversation and content of the post. If there is Juice assigned to the post by Google in the future then I want to share it with them.
This post is currently PR3 and everyone commenting within the comment policy is receiving some of the PR.
Dave – You bring up great points why to have a do-follow plugin. Especially the one about the more comments you have the more likely Google is going to keep your posts indexed and not go into supplemental hell! You have convinced me. What plugin are you using for your captcha? Anyone else have recommendations for do-follow plugins? Does anybody else have a list of great plugins someone should use on their blog to make it great?
Jeff,
I’m using Peter’s Custom Anti Spam. I’ve also switched to Lucia’s Link Love for Do Follow.
As to plugins, there are several post here at the lab with lists of suggestions. Eric Blackwell has a great post here and I’ve written a couple over the years.
You will find a wealth of information here at the Lab and more being added all the time.
Dave – Thanks for getting back to me so quickly! It does look like you have a lot of great information here. I will have to spend some time looking through it.
Aloha
Jeff
I have a question for anyone who is listening (reading) – is all this link building really worth it? Won’t Google eventually start cracking down on this and we’ll have to come up with some other way to get on the coveted FIRST PAGE OF RESULTS? Sometimes I feel like we’re chasing that carrot and someone keeps yanking it away…
Heidi,
Take off your “Link Building” glasses and put on your “Contributing to the discussion” glasses.
The point of this post is not about link building, which unfortunately is what “do-follow” has become associated with by the “SEO GURUs” which I consider for the most part to be “SEO JERKS”.
To answer your question. It is not worth leaving a comment for the purpose “link building” Most who try it here and on my other do-follow blogs end up either deleted or sent to Askimet as “spam”.
You just contributed to this discussion and post by asking your question. For that you will get a very small bit of Google juice which I share with you for your contribution.
It isn’t about link building or link baiting, it is about contributing to a discussion and getting a thank you in return.
BTW, I’m seeing this post because of it’s age ad number of comment currently with a PR4. PR4 for a post? are you kidding me! And part of that is yours.
Heidi-
If I could, I’d like to add a personal note or about “link building”. When I first met Dave Smith, it was on a blog…and he posted about a Hamburger joint. I commented on his post and we have been friends since then.
We have communicated via email, and via phone since that time. If I was just “link building”, that never would have happened. Yes I do SEO work. And everytime I hear someone counsel someone else to just go comment on blogs for links, it makes me cringe.
The true idea behind do follow blogging was to encourage conversations and to develop blogs as the places where ideas were exchanged rather than just posted. Yes,if you are commenting on this post, it is currently a PR4.
But honestly, where people miss the REAL value is the relationships that can be built. I blogrolled this blog on my blog the first day I found it. And I would not trade the friendships that I have built with fellow travelers like Dave for any amount of links.
Good to meet you and I hope that helps clarify things…
Well this post certainly has some legs. There aren’t many posts out there that get pertinent comments after being up almost a year.
In the blogging seminars and discussions I have, I often encourage people to comment on posts. Not for the link they may get for that one comment. It’s for (as Eric mentions) the “relationship building” primarily, and the simple fact that with every new comment you leave you probably pick up a new reader.
Build relationships, and people are quite likely at some point to link to a post you write — THAT is a real link.
Bloggers also tend to visit the blogs of people that leave comments. If you have interesting stuff, it’s quite likely that blogger who you left a comment for will become a reader, and at some point link to you.
I’ve made literally hundreds of “friends” online through building social media relationships. People I’ve talked to in “real life”, people I’ve laughed with, and people I’ve cried with.
That is worth WAY more than the link love derived from leaving a comment.
Heidi,
I hope you are still following this thread. Jay was one of the first people I had contact with when I first started blogging. I didn’t even know what a back link was then.
But I quickly found out what it was like to find friends from RE Blogging.
Jay and Eric are two guys I’d give the shirt off my back for. Jay might need it too, he has some pretty tacky shirts : ) Just kidding!
This little parable does seem to have some real legs doesn’t it.
[...] I suspect most people are not aware that links in blog comments are initially set up as “nofollow” links. This means the search engines basically ignore the links. I’ve been a “Do Follow” adopter from the beginning of the ‘do follow movement’. Comment links here ARE followed by Google and other search engines. For more info, Dave Smith has a great article on Do Follow. [...]
So, What you mentioned was very interesting. I certainly knew that getting links back to your site was beneficial for your page rank, but I had no clue that Google ranked the relevance of your page by the number of comments you have. That would also, then, lead me to believe that they would also somehow know (as in this case) that a link back to your site is coming from a comment, and then discount it. It’s certainly possible.
I had my site originally set up to only remove the no-follow comments after a certain number of posts. My hope was to only get posts from potentially repeat readers. Maybe that’s not a good idea, though, because it’s possible to get a good comment from someone who only visits the site once, and you wouldn’t want to discourage that.
Thoughts?
My first thought is that it’s awesome that this post is still getting comments after 1.5 years.
I don’t see any problem using LLL, or other plugins like it that require a specific # of comments in order to get love. I think it actually allows the webmaster a little more leeway in letting borderline comments through.
Thoughts?
“So, What you mentioned was very interesting. I certainly knew that getting links back to your site was beneficial for your page rank, but I had no clue that Google ranked the relevance of your page by the number of comments you have. That would also, then, lead me to believe that they would also somehow know (as in this case) that a link back to your site is coming from a comment, and then discount it. It’s certainly possible.”
It is possible to discount them but I don’t think there is any reason to do so. Most individual posts have no PR a small amount of nothing is still nothing.
In this case this post as Eric mentioned has a life of it’s own. And a PR of 3 (it used to be 4). It continues to be indexed by Google, as do all my posts with a high number of comments. There are any number of reasons for this.
One possibility, every time it is spidered there is new content (more comments) which keeps it in the index.
For me, it isn’t about SEO, I like sharing the links traffic with those commenting and contributing. But having my content continue to be indexed and therefore, read, is a real plus.
There are as many comments left here which never make it out of moderation as those that do. Why? Because of they are not contributing to the discussion there isn’t any reason for them.
Even if comments might keep the post indexed, it diminishes the experience for the reader to have a bunch of self serving comments on a post.
Personally, when I find a post like that I almost never leave a comment. And here I am leaving the 74th comment on this post. Go Figure.
I agree with Eric – It is amazing that this post lives on
Hey Eric – Great finally meeting you in Vegas!! Too bad you had to dig out early.
@Jeff – Great meeting you, too! It sounds like I missed out on a fun time the last few nights. If you make it the Austin Pubcon, I’ll show you around!
You make a good point. I may as well allow comments to get the juice immediately because I have the site set to moderate every comment anyway. No reason to force a regular reader to post 5, 10 or however many times it’s set for.
I’m changing it now.
Dave I am pretty impressed with the number of comments your blog attracts no doubt the follow helps but you do right quality content which is the best success for your blog!
Dan,
I think the quality of the content is a big factor that keeps readers coming back. Longevity is also a factor, being around for a while and providing quality content is also key. But you just sparked a thought which will be another post somewhere soon. Having guest authors who have friends that read their content is a HUGE factor in increasing comments and readers.
I love this post very much. I believe the post is commented not only because it gives back link but it’s really a highly valuable experience write down. Thank you again for the knowledge you share.
I really liked the metaphor that you used about the forks. It sounds really familiar though. Is it yours, or were you inspired from another source?
Anyhow it applied perfectly. I am thinking about starting a blog (I am realising that I may have approached site development wrong). Wordpress looks like a great API, and I would gladly share the link love.
@Max @ Free Houston Lawyers – Max,
Wordpress is a fantastic API. You will love it, and the Lab is full of tips.
I am a firm believer in the fact that if you comment on someone’s blog, read the article and comment with a unique thought out response. The only thing I didn’t know was that it helps if I add the DO FOLLOW plug in to my site. I don’t think I have it yet, but I will…Thanks for the information. I really like your blog!
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I am learning a lot about how to get a blog started. My first attempt only yielded me thousands of spam comments and no honest visitors. I have since added a spam filter that has been working well and have been debating turning my blog into a “do follow” blog as I feel t hat would only be fair to the quality visitors that do visit the site and leave comments. I was curious if anyone who has made that change has seen a difference in their visitors and comments.
Excellent post Dave! I’m sitting here in Eric Blackwell’s SEO class at the Phoenix Unchained event. He mentioned you and your blog and it occurred to me I haven’t visited in a while. I did a search for ‘real estate blog lab’ and this article is one of your site links. Nice! I wonder if this information is still relevant two years later.
I did not realize until reading your blog that a post with comments got more favorable treatment from Google and other search engines than a post without. I guess it does go some way towards proving “revelancy” and a “vote” for that url or pots, so it makes sense.
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