Rewarding Readers with the WordPress DoFollow Plugin
Last night I came across a great article on the SmartWealthyRich blog highlighting the benefits of the WordPress DoFollow Plugin. I had no idea, but apparently the WordPress default for links added to a post comment is to add “rel=nofollow” to the link tag. This great plugin disables the automatic rel=”nofollow” attributes added to external links.
“So what?” you may think. Well now, every time you reply to a post or participate in a comment discussion, you’ll get a link back! Just enter your name, your email address and the URL of your site and you’ll get a link back to your site!
Full installation instructions can be found here. There’s no point in me detailing the steps to take, when Jonathan has already done a great job explaining everything!
Hopefully this will encourage people to leave more comments on my site and will reward regular commenter’s with a link back!
Note: Please make sure your blog has a good spam filter (I use Akismet) and that “moderation mode” is enabled.
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May 29th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Hey Steve, thanx a bunch for the mentions, happy you’re joining the dofollow movement! it’s really a nice way to reward people that take the time to leave a comment. It helped me a lot in increasing the numbers of comments on my blog, not only that it feels great to actually “give something back”. Just gotta watch the “nice post” comments where everyone seems to write useless replies just to get the link back, i like comments when it adds value to the post or if it engages in the discussion and adds to the conversations (my 2 cents)
May 29th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Hi Steve, cool you’ve got the do-follow plugin installed. It’s a nice reward for your visitors and hopefully an incentive to comment more often.
I’ve got the plugin as well so you already have a bunch of back links pointing to your blog
May 29th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Hi Sandra,
Yes, I’ve noticed the links back. Now I understand how and why!
Hopefully I’ll see an increase in visitor’s comments…
–Steve
May 31st, 2007 at 7:03 am
Welcome to the “do follow” movement. You’ll notice an increase in traffic to your blog, especially in the form of comments.
I can’t tell you how many times I avoided blogs because they wanted me to sign up before posting. I used to have that same requirement and wondered why hardly anyone ever took the time to leave a comment.
Now I know why!
May 31st, 2007 at 7:23 am
Thanks for the comment Matt! Fingers crossed for the extra traffic…still waiting
June 12th, 2007 at 8:43 am
I couldn’t agree more with Matt, I used to ask for logins and I get a big fat 0 comments total for the whole month. After I remove it, the comments came in but so did spam. Now that I read about what Do Follow is all about, I have joined the “Dark Side” :P.
Cheers
Karen
June 12th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Welcome to the “Dark Side” and enjoy the link back
June 12th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Great post Steve - the only word of caution I might have is to watch your ratio of inbound vs. outbound links. Only valid if google is a major source of referrals for you. Other than that, I think you should enjoy a surge in traffic as a result, and I think it is a great initiative. It would be great if you could post readership stats - before and after.
All the best!
June 13th, 2007 at 1:04 am
I’ve joined the do follow movement Steve! Thanks for the informative article. I don’t use WordPress so I had to wade around in the backoffice of my b2evo setup, but i found it and changed the setting so now I follow
June 13th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Excellent! Seems like the dofollow movement is really taking off…
June 13th, 2007 at 7:25 am
It seems that the D-list pops up every so often. Probably after a few people have settled into the blogging rhythm.
I setup mine after a months of steady blogging.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:59 am
Hi Steve,
My Bright Beginning! blog are also on D-list too!
Btw, show of your “U Comment I Follow” badge
July 22nd, 2007 at 1:12 am
Hi!
I have also DoFollow installed.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:41 pm
So in your case, has dofollow paid for itself with increased traffic and comments, or is it more of a nuisance?
September 21st, 2007 at 3:45 pm
My traffic has definitely increased since I wrote this post, but I wouldn’t like to say it’s all down to the dofollow movement. Spam has stayed the same and isn’t a nuisance at all (I use the askimet plugin).
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Installed and trying out the plugin now on my blog!
Thanks!
September 27th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
When I was with Blogger, I made my comment DoFollow. I’m still deciding to join the D list now that I’m with Wordpress. Anyway, just dropping by. Got your link from BC. Cheers!
January 20th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I now refuse to write posts on pages that use nofollow. Most of the time I take the time to write an informative and usefull, on topic, reply. In return I would like a link to my site.
I consider this fair and just. If I was to write an article to be published on another site I would include at least one link to my site. This is much the same principle.
February 17th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Don’t forget that the Spam Karma 2 plugin is also pretty good. I only have to clean out one or two comments daily whihch is a nice change from the 200 or 300 that we used to get.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Seems a good idea - hopefully the spam filters can cope!
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
this is a really good reward for people who own a site, or want to promote one, because it encourages them to read and comment on blogs, which brings more traffic and more repeat visitors.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Excellent post and I have opened the page in a new window to go get the plugin for my new blog. Without this post I would not have thought that a plugin was reequired - thanks
March 9th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Many thanks, the plugin was just so easy to install and the options were clear and easy to understand - even to me on my first ever blog - thanks
March 14th, 2008 at 12:35 am
I use wordpress and have the dofollow installed. It has increased my comments a great deal, but I do have to weed out lots of obvious spam. Is there any way to get around that?
March 14th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Not really. Just make sure you use a good spam filter. Akismet works well for me…
March 25th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Fantastic thanks for that, I defiantly support the do follow movement. Besides it does not really prevent spam as many of the spammers only want to make a few cents from adsense advertising and are happy to have maybe 1 visitor per blog and are not interested in the page rank that it pass’s on as they have robots spamming the forums