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
-
Is are Scoopon type sites a good place to get a link?
We have noticed that our competitors have links with equality from sites like this: http://www.groupon.com.au/ Scoopon type sites like this can be an effective way to generate sales for a business, I'm just wondering if these types of sites also have added value for SEO as sites like these do have a strong Domain Authority? Any thoughts on this subject would be most appreciated. Thanks!
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
How do i replace bad hits on Google?
When people search for our brand name on Google, the 4th and 5th hits are threads from open forum. The discussions can hurt our image very much and we have to do something to replace it. I need some tips for how i can replace the community and push it down the list.
Link Building | | DialectAB0 -
Link Requests in Order Confirmation Emails- Still a good idea?
I found this post from Rand from 2008 http://moz.com/blog/headsmacking-tip-1-link-requests-in-order-confirmation-emails 5 years later I'm wondering in a "no-follow" for all unnatural links in the google world we currently live in, is it still a good idea? Also does is really work? or does it annoy the customer? would it be better to use that space to up sell to your customer?
Link Building | | PaddyDisplays0 -
Is building a Link Network from scratch a good idea?
My SEO agency are suggesting that they will build a Link network from scratch by buying domains and building blog sites on them. All sites that link to my site would in theory be 'clean' and as we build up their authority we increase the value of the links to my site. One of the upsides is taht we would have complete control of all the links. This does sound a bit spammy but in theory could it work?
Link Building | | Johnnyh
Any input is much appreciated. Regards John0 -
Is anybody else noticing a dramatic change to their 'links to your site' section in Google Webmaster Tools?
Hey,
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate
Over the last six months or so we've been going through our backlink profile and cleaning up links from poor quality sources. Week by week there have been small changes in our Google Webmaster Tools 'links to your site' section to reflect this. I logged on this morning however and there has been a dramatic shift in the information displayed. Pretty much every bad link has been removed from the list including sites I know for a fact are still linking to us as they didn't communicate at all to our removal requests. Additionally, rather than showing the top 1000 links to our site as it used to, WMT is only showing 73 linking domains. The remaining 73 domains are good natural links from high quality sources. I'm guessing Google are just in the middle of an update and that the remaining linking domains (including the bad ones) will reappear shortly. This isn’t a request for advice or help but I’m just curious as to whether anybody else is seeing anything similar?0 -
Are paid links on your brand name considered bad by Google?
I've been intrigued recently by the penalty applied to a site we have just started working with. They were penalised back in summer last year as their previous link builder had built 60,000 links all with the same hard to get keyword anchor text....we're still sorting it out. My question now is that if the client pays for inclusion on some relevant sites, such as niche directories and those sites automatically produce 'follow' links, would the client be penalised if they link on their own company name? For example if they manufacture blue widgets and the anchor text on the link is 'ABC Manufacturing' rather than 'Blue Widgets' would Google see that as a reasonable link? I appreciate that if they linked back on the keyword anchor text 'Blue Widgets' it would be wrong but I'm seeking clarification on using the company name. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | aqueous0 -
Why Post Useless Blog Comments
I notice that I'm getting a lot of spammy blog comments on a personal interest site. Why would someone go to all that trouble to get a nofollow link that will most likely not be approved?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0 -
No Follow Blogs. Do they help with keyword density?
I know no follow blogs don't pass page rank or link juice, but do they aid in help with making your site know for a specific keyword when you use anchor text?
Link Building | | photoseo10