Blog Commenting To Get Backlinks – The Dofollow Link
July 12th, 2009
Since I was blogging about how to get backlinks yesterday I was giving some thought last night to the many ways available to us to build up more links to our sites in an easy manner. That got me thinking about blog commenting which is popular amongst a lot of Internet Marketers in places like the Warrior Forum.
Why Use Blog Commenting?
If you visit any blog on the Internet you will see that there is a comment section below the posts where you cam leave your 2 cents. Most bloggers are really trying to build up a community of people who read their blogs and return time and again to read their content. Having a large number of comments after every post is a great way to build this feeling of community but encouraging readers to contribute can be difficult.
To entice visitors to leave comments bloggers use the carrot and stick approach, ie. you make a comment about my post which makes my blog look popular and I’ll give you a link to your website. So when you fill in the comment section there is a place for you to enter your chosen URL which links your name back to your site when its published.
The problem is that the vast majority of blogging platforms now implement a nofollow link on their comments section which means that Google will ignore these links and make your efforts pretty much worthless in terms of increased search engine ranking benefit. Of course, you might get a few visitors who read your comment and click on your name but that is not why bloggers leave a comment. We want to get more quality backlinks that Google takes into consideration to push us further up the search engine rankings.
To get around this many bloggers install wordpress plugins to enable visitors to get the benefits of a dofollow link in exchange for taking part in the community. This can lead to the obvious problem that these blogs become targeted by spammers who are uninterested in the content of the posts but will hunt down “dofollow” blogs just to leave irrelevant comments in the hope of getting a free backlink. This unfortunate side effect can lead many to abandon the “Dofollow” plugins due to the effort it takes to sort the spam from the genuine comments but some feel that the increase in traffic makes it worthwhile.
Is Searching For Dofollow Blogs Worth The Effort?
There’s a little controversy as to whether a comment in a “dofollow” blog is worth the same as a link from a post but my gut feeling is that Google is going to differentiate from real “in content” links and those from commenter’s. Even if it doesn’t or can’t do it at the moment, I feel that its something it will do in the future. Having said that a “dofollow” blog link is still going to be worth infinitely more than a “nofollow” so if you happen to find yourself on a blog that has implemented the plugin then it is worth your time commenting. Just keep in mind that someone at the other end has to moderate your comment so make sure you’re adding value to the discussion in return for your link. Also, it will be a huge help if the site your commenting on is related to yours. Google values links that are in context much more highly than those form sites which are totally unrelated to your.
Adsense: Make Money Online Adds “dofollow” Links
Which brings me nicely to the point of this post, which is the fact that I have decided to stick “dofollow” links in my comments section for this Make money with Adsense. The mind boggles as to why I would actually want to take such a insane measure considering all the spam comments I am about to be bombarded with but I think I might also make a positive impact on the site. If I can get more readers and build a better community then I’m willing to put in more work to the site. With my hopefully herculean results with the 100 posts in 30 days challenge I’m doing this month it would be nice if there were more people around to read all the original content I’m going to be putting up.
In addition I should now be able to get this site listed on a dofollow blog list or two which will give me some extra backlinks to help push me up the rankings.
The Rules For Commenting On This Dofollow Blog
To make things a bit easier on myself I’m going to make up a few rules that have to be followed by people who want to get their free backlinks:
1. All comments have to add something to the content of the post; “nice post”comments are not going to cut it.
2. Comments will have to be at least 35 words long – This might be a bit harsh and I might ignore it once this start going but to begin with it’ll make my job a bit easier. And its shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve if you are actually adding to the discussion.
3. I’ve installed the KeywordLuv plugin as well which allows you to use your keywords as anchor text to your site. The format for putting in your name when making a comment is yourname@yourkeyword. KeywordLuv will do the work and only make your keyword clickable but I want people to leave their name rather than just the keywords.
There you go, easy to follow rules for a free dofollow link, get commenting!
The Do Follow plugin for WordPress really works well (it’s super simple) – it bugs me that blog owners don’t install it. It also peeves me that comments come as “do not follow” by default…
I use Akismet to reduce comment spam. It works very well – all my blogs have the “do follow” plugin installed and I get very little comment spam.
Thanks for the great post. I hope it opens up people’s eyes.
Comment by Bill from Internet Marketing Muscle — July 12, 2009 @ 6:17 am
I found your post about “dofollow” links on twitter. I did a search on dofollow and your tweet was there. I have converted by blog to a dofollow but have not had much success. It may be because I use blogspot and I have only been able to make the name field dofollow(keywordluv plug in not available). I hope you continue with your keywordluv and let us know how it works out. I would like to add you to my Hoss’s best bets (my blog roll)so if you let me know what wording you prefer and I will add you.
Comment by The Hoss from Money Magazine — July 12, 2009 @ 7:25 am
I have do follow attribute on comments on some of my blogs but as you said, the amount of spam comments this generates is ginormous
So i do comment moderation. Can take up a huge chunk of time but helps me decide which comments are relevant and weed out the ‘great post’ comments
And you are right, it has got to be a quid pro quo thing. You give me great content and I give you a backlink
Why don’t I use do follow attribute on all my blogs? Simply because there are some niches that just attract more spammers than useful commenters
Oh, by the way. great post
Comment by Niche Marketing Guide — July 12, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
I actually found your blog from a google alert I set up
I’m really happy I did because I found your post about “dofollow” links very easy to understand. I myself am so new to this whole SEO thing and I’m really just trying to get a hang of it. Sometimes readings posts from gurus tend to be so confusing because they talk in what seems to be a whole other language. It was nice to come across something I could actually understand. Great explanation for newbies like myself! 
TriNi
Comment by TriNi from Make Money Online Free — July 12, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
Well done, and I hope it works out for you. I made one of my main blogs dofollow quite a while ago, for much the same reasons as you’ve outlined. It certainly had the desired effect of increasing traffic; the jury’s still out about the quality of that traffic though.
I’d advise staying away from getting listed in the dofollow directories – those pages that I have linked get by far the most spam. Just my 2c worth…
Comment by Rod from Tennis Ball Machines — July 17, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
I think it’s a brilliant idea to monetize your blog with adsense by using dofollow commenting approach. By allowing dofollow comments, you will attract a lot more visitors and comment contributors. The additional comments will then in turn increase chances of your post being searched on google. Too bad I have an ecommerce website, otherwise I would deploy the same tactic.
Comment by ryan from jewelry link exchange — July 19, 2009 @ 8:27 am
Unique, original and quality posts and articles on your blog can easily get you some very quality backlinks from other sites. Webmasters and Bloggers likes to search the internet too and point on other sites from their own posts.
Think about that. Do you want to point to an article that you can’t understand or it’s not useful for you? Of course not. Unique and useful quality articles have priority always!
Comment by seopositive — July 19, 2009 @ 11:25 pm
I put a dofollow attribute on all of my blogs but as you said, the amount of spam comments this generates is huge. I don’t mind moderating them though, cause I’m not lazy…
And you are right, it has got to be a quid pro quo thing. You give me great content and I give you a backlink
Why don’t I use do follow attribute on all my blogs? Simply because there are some niches that just attract more spammers than useful commenters
Comment by card counting — July 21, 2009 @ 8:18 am
As Google continues to refine their algorithm to discount spammy links and moves toward semantic search, and considering that most blogs have a low pagerank, I don’t foresee the benefit of do follow links continuing much longer. I also think this will contribute to Google losing relevance as eventually the only search results you will get are for mega conglomerate organizations that have been around forever.
Comment by Emily — July 21, 2009 @ 12:45 pm
It’s really nice to see someone who actually believes in rewarding people who leave comments with an actual link rather than the typical no follow designation. I have recently started a new website relating to a passion of mine, World of Warcraft and am struggling to get quality links.
Not sure if you will grant mea precious backlink but I live in anticipation … good luck anyway!
SeanRoocroft@WoW Strategy Guideyourkeyword
Comment by SeanRoocroft from WoW Strategy Guide — July 21, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
I have been searching for do follow blogs for weeks. I did not know these things, but how do you find do follow blogs? It is very time consuming. I have found success with directory listings, but more importantly, hunting down links with other businesses.
Comment by Compel — July 22, 2009 @ 8:16 pm
Compel,
Don’t worry too much about finding dofollow blogs to build backlinks. There are ways to build one way links that are a better use of your time.
Submit articles to article directories. Build blogger blogs, hubs etc with relevant content and use them to link to your site.
Find webmasters in your niche and organise a link exchange with them.
There are other ways that I’ll talk about in a future post.
By the way, wordpress swallowed the URL from your comment so if you leave another comment with your site i’ll stick it back on there.
Comment by admin — July 22, 2009 @ 11:31 pm
Its very hard to get backlinks now a days. One should concentrate on naturally generated backlinks or links to your website. Just concentrete on the quality of the content posted on your website.
Comment by Classic cars — July 28, 2009 @ 2:47 am
I honestly wish Google had never developed the nofollow. I hate you have to jump through hoops to make Google happy. Personally I think nofollow destroys the concept of links and the internet. But since Google is so big, we have to bend over backward =(
Comment by Jessica — July 28, 2009 @ 6:01 am
I really did appreciate your post. I have been researching the importance of blog commenting. In fact, one of the forums I am with gave us some training on ways to advertise our website, and blog commenting was included in the training. I agree that it is important to add a comment that will add to the post.
Comment by Angelina from freebie trading — July 28, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
I was in the middle of doing some bookmarking for one of my new sites and I thought to myself, “I wonder if commenting on a blog would help with getting some back links to my site…so I Googled it. Your blog was number one. Not only that, it gave me the information I needed. I need to search out more “DoFollow” blogs and get typing. Many might think that this is a waist of time, but I assure you, in the long run, you won’t ever be sorry for leaving good relative comment on a “DoFollow” blog. They stay forever giving you that link juice that Google ask so much of now days.
Thanks for the post! I really appreciate it!
Comment by Mike — July 29, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
I have only been able to make the name field dofollow(keywordluv plug in not available). I hope you continue with your keywordluv and let us know how it works out.
Comment by Hospedagem — July 31, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
Getting backlinks to your site isn’t too hard…its getting QUALITY backlinks. Finding forums or blogs with any kind of significant page ranking on the section where you can post can be sometimes an impossible battle. I rather enjoy blogs like this one, up to date relevant information and actual rules for postng your backlinks…it truly does add to the community of the site even though we are all doing it for our own gain =p. Great blog, keep em coming, cheers!
Comment by Nick from Goal Setting Worksheet — August 2, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
I offer dofollow links on my blog. However, I do manually select which comments are worth allowing the follow. When I first elected to do this though, I noticed an increase in spam. But after I started selecting which comments to “dofollow” and which not to, the spam it decreased. Let’s keep in mind that my blog doesn’t get that many comments just yet. So if the amount of comments increases, I might take it the plugin down. I sometimes comment on blogs but I don’t check if the blog is dofollow or not. I think people that appreciate what you have to say will comment if the find a post helpful regardless.
Comment by Thermostat — August 4, 2009 @ 7:21 am
Believe it or not, I find this blog from search engine with keywords ‘keywordluv affiliate’. For me keywordluv and DoFollow is perfect match. I use keywords affiliate because this is my expertise. I will not spam any blog therefore I need to find blog under my expertise so I can understand what the blog is talking about and post relevance comment.
Comment by Ruri from Free article submission — August 6, 2009 @ 5:43 am
I’ve recently learned about KeywordLuv and we’re considering changing our site to a blog site so we can gain more quality comments. I know there are a lot of spammers out there that will take advantage, but there’s also a spam addon for wordpress to help weed out the spam comments. We’ll be making the switch soon. Maybe someone else knows the name of that spam addon for WordPress? Anyways… I think it’s about time peeps got some luv from sharing their thoughts with others.
Comment by Daniel from Best WoW Guides — August 8, 2009 @ 7:43 am
dofollow blog commenting is very important in increasing traffics to the sites and also i can say that increasing your earnings in adsense also through your blogs or articles.. yes all of the blogs has the comments link. and you can noticed that the commenter puts a link on theie username used..
Comment by isabel at online poker — August 22, 2009 @ 5:26 am
Nice tips! Actually those who’ve got their blogs to nofollow is because they’ve got tired of spam. Being a dofollow blog moderator, it requires you to be always on the check. You’ve to differentiate legitimate comments out of spam ones. It takes time so thats why people opt for nofollow. But dofollow has a lot of features and it helps everyone if one doesn’t abuse the feature. It takes 3-4 minutes to think and write a constructive comment on the article.
Comment by Audrey from miami homes — August 30, 2009 @ 2:26 am
Some great tips here and ones which I have been following through on with my own websites for a while now. I personally have the keywordluv, commentluv and top commentator plugins installed on all my sites for ranking and content reasons and find they make a difference. With regards to the spamming element I tend to include a post which points out to people that the only comments that get published are ones of relevance to the site and that tends to work. Keep up the good work with the site.
Comment by chris from wowstrategy — September 15, 2009 @ 8:29 am
It’s good to see that some blogs use dofollow. However I don’t believe that a link from a blog with more than 100 outbound links has much value. It must be quite obvious to Google that this has very little value.
Comment by arcus from Mclassic cars — October 24, 2009 @ 7:09 am
I thought about using KeywordLuv for my blog. But I’m not sure if this is going to give me more relevant content. Maybe it’s necessary to put in a list of rules like “more than 50 words” + “only comment if you actually read my post” etc. Let’s hear some more thoughts:-)
Comment by Marcus from classic cars — October 31, 2009 @ 8:51 am
Searching for dofollow tags can be a trial, but in some of my “experiments” (translation: it’s just a guess… for now) I’m noticing that blog comments are helping my site’s SEO much better than articles on ezinearticles or goarticles. And that’s from PR 0 sites that aren’t even relevant to the topic of my sites.
Okay… you guys can start calling me crazy now
Comment by Van — January 25, 2010 @ 1:32 am
I actually googled how to get back links from commenting on blogs and yours came up! It actually was a double-good find because not only did I get my question answered, but I found a backlink – finally!
I am actually going to read more of your info – not for backlinks, just for education.
Thanks
Comment by Mia — March 17, 2010 @ 1:43 pm
Nice keywordluv site. I seriously would not leave a comment if it was not for the keyword luv ya know? I want to get something out of leaving a comment. Also Great to see someone using these plugins correctly as Ive found a lot of websites claiming to be a dofolow site but are not. Thank you
Comment by laser toner — March 18, 2010 @ 7:32 am
I want to be a succesful online Marketier someday,thats why i really do my best visiting some site that truly can help to build more idea on how to make money on blogging.Ofcourse,i would be a patient on doing step by step process so that i can win what i want in online business..tnx for this blog!gl
Comment by Jackie from Money Blogging — April 6, 2010 @ 1:27 pm
My thinking is that Google will always keep some value for blog comments. During the last five years we have read that article marketing was dead, that link exchange is useless, that including the site in the directories was a wast of time, etc. However, all these methods still have some importance.
Comment by Daniel from spanish translations — April 14, 2010 @ 3:56 am
Thanks for this great information,very essential from SEO point of view.No Follow is just waste of time.Commenting on DoFolloe blogs is the best way to promote your site and get more backlinks as well as well more traffic.Hope to see such a informative stuff in future!!
Comment by from onlinetruckshop.com' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Andrew — April 16, 2010 @ 3:26 am
I have 9 websites and while all only a few months old they are ranked 1, which I know is low, but I thought that was fairly quick, and using SEO methods that I was taught, 3 are also on page 1 of google. I can’t imagine those people who have 100+ sites doing keywordluv and dofollow. How do they find the time? Secondly, I have adsense on my sites and affiliate links and my adsense is only like $20 in 4 months. Is that good, I don’t want my sites to look full of google ads, I want to blend it in, and maybe that is a problem, not sure.
Comment by Lisa from affiliate — April 22, 2010 @ 8:49 am
I have only been thinking that blog posting is a method which can get you a back link. Later after reading your post, i have come to know whats exactly a Do follow and No Follow blog all about.
Well Thanks for your informative post !!!
I think now i can do some good Do follow postings!!!
Comment by Texas Defensive Driving — May 7, 2010 @ 1:22 pm
Very interesting post on blog commenting. Based on my personal experience with my blogs I can say that blog commenting is a very simple yet effective way of pulling traffic. All you need to do is to read and comment on other blogs. But remember to put useful comments with a link to your blog.
Comment by Alex from the autoresponder code bonus — May 12, 2010 @ 2:25 am
Your post sounds really interesting. I think using affliliate program is the easiest way to make money & the best thing is that it does not require any kind of initial invest. I am surely going to give it a try.Thanks for great tips!
Comment by Alex from outsource force bonus — May 13, 2010 @ 2:58 am
Your post on “dofollow” links is very well explained and easy to understand especially for newbie like me. I am new to this internet marketing field and was searching for information which can give me a better understanding. Thanks a lot.
Comment by Alex Liu from traffic omega bonus — May 13, 2010 @ 3:07 am
“do follow” is a new concept for me. It has taken almost 2 years for me to find out that normal blog comments do not pass on link juice. 2 months ago I finally installed the do follow plugin on all my blogs to reward my viewers for writing good comments.
Comment by aBlogger from Social Media Blogging — June 8, 2010 @ 3:51 pm