Ever seen those little doodads in people’s sidebars and wondered what the heck they were about? I used to think they were something to do with entrecard or something similar.
Turns out, it’s a new~ish blogging movement to make comment links count towards your search engine rankings.
Okay, it’s like this. A few years ago, Google got fed up with giving out GoogleLove to every Tom Dick & Harry with a comment~spamming~robot and came up with a new html attribute (read: tricky code), “no-follow”.
The search engines and blogging platforms clambered onboard in hopes that this would spell the end of comment spam forevermore.
As we all know, it didn’t work. And it also adversely affected those commenters who were genuinely taking part in the blogging community.
So bloggers taking part in the “You Comment ~ I Follow” movement remove the “no-follow” from their comments on their blogs and put up this cute little doohicky device to let others know about it.
There’s a number of ways to rid your blog of “no-comment” blues:
- Wordpress bloggers can use the Semiologic No_Follow plugin,
- Blogger users can alter their template code,
- Moveable Typers can disable No-Follow, too.
I’ve joined up because I think that one of the main points of comments is to build community and by spreading the linklove, we’re doing exactly that. If you need help making the changes, just give me a holler.
You can get a No-Follow badge and become a follower here.
Great post, Jane! Doesn’t Randa just completely rock!
Willows last blog post..Super Summer Giveaway at Mommy Confessions
Welcome aboard! And be prepared to fight some spam. That is about the only problem with going dofollow. And that’s spam. I have seen bloggers go back to nofollow after dealing with it. Two plugins you might look into are Akismet and Lucia’s Link Love. The first is awesome, saved me from reading over 140,000 spam comments and the second makes your visitors comment three or more times before they get a link.
Stephan Millers last blog post..Ajax Landing Pages
I have one of those things on my blog…and I think I did it right in my template…but seriously still don’t really get it…and I know this might seem a surprise but usually I get things! Anyhow…
Shelles last blog post..Where drop kicking and being content come together
Oh thank God. I don’t get it either.
Hey - wanted to thank you for coming by and commenting! I have been very out of the blog-reading loop and also keeping up on comments! But wanted to be sure to let you know I appreciate you taking the time to say something!
Also - cute site - fun too! I especially love the ric-rac. I love ric-rac!
jennyonthespots last blog post..I still got it!
oh, dear, I’m confused as usual. but I haven’t told you I really like your new design! it rocks!!!
Another good thing about turning off the nofollow is you’ll get more comments also from readers, which, if you’re in short supply of, can be quite nice.
I had never heard of this, so thank you, I’ve added it to my blog so we’ll see how it goes!
Kathryns last blog post..Seeking Children’s Homewares