How to Make Your Blog DoFollow
filed in Internet Business on Aug.15, 2008
New bloggers are frequently complaining that nobody would comment on their blogs. In fact, you see that some blogs attract loads of comments and become a fun place to be while others seem so empty like an old bucket. So what is the difference? DoFollow!
Actually there is no such thing like DoFollow yet there is a URL attribute “nofollow”. For example, <a href=”http://example.com” rel=”nofollow”> will tell Google bot that the link shouldn’t be followed and counted as a “vote”. In other words it doesn’t count as a backlink 
If you want other people to comment on your blog, you have to give them something in return. A link with no nofollow is a good way of saying thank you for a comment.
Besides, once you go DoFollow, your blog will soon be included in different dofollow blog directories and lists. So it is a good way to get extra traffic and popularity.
So, how would one remove that attribute and turn that swampy webspace into a busy DoFollow blog?
If you are using WordPress script on your own domain name, you may need to download this Dofollow Comments plugin (the download takes place straight through WordPress website, beware of plugins that are not included in WordPress plugin directory), activate it and voila! you are ready. However, I personally didn’t need to do anything. My blog has been dofollow since the very install - it depends on the WordPress version you use. Please be advised that you don’t need to use any comment management plugins - they are useless, cram your site with unnecessary JavaScript, make it harder for visitors to use, increase your blog’s load time and make NO sense!
Turn your Blogger Blog into a DoFollow blog
Log on into your Google account, click on Blogger, go to your Blog’s settings, click Layout > Edit HTML. And now pay attention, this is very important and other advisers don’t tell you this. Either they do not know this or they like to annoy you. Check the box near “Expand Widget Templates”. Otherwise you will not do it properly. Search for this line of code:
<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel="nofollow">
delete the attribute rel=”nofollow” now the code is something like that:
<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl'>
This will make all the comment links in your Blogger’s Blog into DoFollow links.
How To Check Other Blogs?
Your link building strategy would work much better if you’d known which blog is a DoFollow and which one is not. In fact, if it is not, you’re just wasting your time. The easiest way now that we have SeoQuake plugin, is to use it properly and enable nofollow strikethrough via SeoQuake settings. This will work in a way that it strikes each link that is nofollow. If you browse a blog and see that the comment authors’ names are all striked through, just run away, you don’t need to comment there. It is not a friendly place, go somewhere else to search for DoFollow blogs.
Once you have removed the NoFollow, make the world to know. Go to I DoFollow grab a badge (a small .gif file) and paste it where appropriate so that your visitors know that yours is a DoFollow blog.
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August 28th, 2008 on 4:07 am
Thanks for the nice post on DOFOLLOW but I’m not so sure that we can do comment DOFOLLOWs on Blogger blogs.
Take a look at Blogger’s robots.txt file down below:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /profile-find.g
Disallow: /comment.g
Disallow: /email-post.g
You have to remember that the file is the first thing that Robots see and it is telling them not to index comments.
I could be wrong but let’s hear your opinion about it.
August 28th, 2008 on 4:56 am
Thank you for your question. You don’t need to look at blogger.com robots.txt because your blog is a subdomain under blogspot.com. And even if it was under blogger.com, the comment.g file would possibly be something that manages the comments, not displays them.
For blogspot.com to disallow your DOFOLLOW comments, it should have added all your yearly/monthly folders like 2008/07/ 2008/08/ etc. to robots.txt
That would be a lot of fun because nothing would be picked up!!!
Comments are displayed on yournick.blogspot.com/2008/08/article-title and this and all other post addresses are followed by robots. So, once you have removed the NOFOLLOW attribute, you are giving your community a proper link.
So, don’t worry and just follow the steps as outlined in my post!
August 29th, 2008 on 9:45 pm
I am still abit unsure about the dofollow thing, i have instaled it onto my blog but don’t know what’s the purpose. Is it when someone comments and fills out the website box, their website will be index by google? Or do they ahve to manually add their in the actual comment
August 29th, 2008 on 10:02 pm
I followed these instructions for my blog - really easy once you find the code. Now is there any way to check that it works? That comments really are do follow?
August 31st, 2008 on 6:15 am
Flash, you are right, when someone comments and leaves his link, his name will be clickable and will be indexed by Google. This is the way to attract more comments, because people love dofollow. If you have downloaded this plugin, activate it and then do what I will suggest to Anna - presumably “nofollow” will be gone and you won’t need to do anything manually.
Anna, well done! Now, if you go, for example, to your post about piggies and click View -> Page Source from the main menu, search for “bobbie” in your page source and you will see that his address doesn’t have this attribute rel=”nofollow”, which tells that your comments are now dofollow! Great blog, by the way!
September 3rd, 2008 on 11:44 pm
Help, I’m an idiot.. I changed my code, I posted the ucomment/ifollow. Does this mean when someone comments that I follow them back and read their blog or is this a code/computer thing.. ?
September 4th, 2008 on 5:27 am
I tried it, but I don’t think it worked. I installed the plugin to check and it has the names crossed out. I checked some other blogs and they have the names crossed out too, but I thought they were dofollow ones. Any idea what I did wrong?
September 4th, 2008 on 6:04 am
Cathy, no, you’re not!
It takes time to capture all the geeky stuff. Unfortunately your comments are still nofollow. Are you sure you deleted this rel=”nofollow” part as it says in the article? It is a code thing and dofollow means that the search engines would follow the links and read their blog.
Tammy, it worked, congratulations! If I go to “My Day” post and choose View -> Page Source and scroll to your comments I see Flea, Angeline and all your other pals with a simple link, without “nofollow”. You have done everything correctly!
What is this you use that shows the crossed names? I’m using SeoQuake plugin for FFox and nothing on your blog appears to be crossed.
September 4th, 2008 on 7:57 am
I used the SEOQuake plugin for firefox as well. I have no idea why it shows crossed out. I’m going to uninstall it then reinstall it to see if that helps. Thank you so much!!! You ROCK!!!
September 5th, 2008 on 1:30 am
Okay, once again I took that code out. I thought I did that before but whatever. Now is there anything I have to do?
September 5th, 2008 on 12:46 pm
So I did everything I was supposed to (I think) … but I’m not sure whether it’s working or not.
September 8th, 2008 on 2:22 am
Tammy, thanks
Cathy, this time you’ve done everything properly. You are dofollow.
Teena, it is working. I just checked your blog!
September 8th, 2008 on 6:09 am
Hello there! Could you check if my blof now is already dofollow? I did erased all rel-no follow tags that I saw.
But, all the comments are still underlined.
Thanks!
September 8th, 2008 on 8:31 am
Pauline, yes it is dofollow. Good job. Majority of web-links are underlined. That’s the tradition, and it is convenient because it lets them stand out from the body text. To see if your blog comments are not nofollow just view Page Source or download SeoQuake plugin that strikes throught (not underlines) the nofollow links.
September 17th, 2008 on 7:52 am
Thanks for an interesting blog entry. I have removed the nofollow as you described. But the SeoQuake I don’t get. What ever I do it sooner or later makes my explorer crash and I don’t get how to see the strikes throughs.
September 22nd, 2008 on 5:32 am
Désirée, SeoQuake for Explorer is a pain. If you don’t want to use FireFox (and I do understand why) you cannot possibly use SeoQuake.
Anyway, I took a peek into your blog and it now follows the comments, which is a good sign.
Thank you for the screenplay blog. I know what I’ll be doing this evening (reading your blog)