An important part of selling information products on the Internet is getting traffic to your site to view — and hopefully purchase — your products, or to sign up for your mailing list, or to subscribe to your blog.
I’ll have loads more to say about the whole topic of getting traffic, and the best ways to do it. Suffice to say, search engine optimization – SEO — is the art and science of having your site show up as high as possible in searches people conduct in Google, Yahoo, Bing, or another search engine.
High-Quality Inbound Links Boost Your Search Engine Optimization
One of the key ways to increase your standing with search engines is to have a high number of high-quality websites linking to yours. Google and the others see this as a vote of confidence in the quality and relevance of your content.
NoFollow Tags in Blogs Means No Search Engine Optimization for Your Comments
Many sellers of information products leave comments on blogs, especially popular ones with high Google PageRank, thinking that they are getting those good inbound links to their sites.
But there’s a problem. Most blogs put a “No Follow” tag in the link to your website. Sure, readers can click on it and check you out, and that’s a good thing. But you get no SEO benefit.
WordPress, for example, has the “NoFollow” tag as a default, and so do most other blogs.
Use the Quirk Search Status Firefox Plugin to Determine if a Blog is NoFollow
Firefox is my favorite browser. (I no longer use Internet Explorer.) Get Firefox, if you don’t have it.
Once you have it, go to Tools -> Add-ons, and then select Plugins. Search for and then follow the instructions to install Quirk SearchStatus. Once Quirk SearchStatus is installed, right-click on its icon and select “Highlight Nofollow Links.” It will then color in pink all links on every site you visit that are NoFollow. (It also allows you to determine any site’s Google PageRank, Alexa ranking, Compete ranking, and mozRank.)
If you are commenting on blogs solely to boost your search traffic, you’ll know when you’re wasting your time. (If you do this, always leave a quality comment.)
SellingInformationProducts.net is a DoFollow Blog
Read about my decision and how and why I became a WordPress DoFollow blog here.
When I initially wrote this post I was not DoFollow, and this is what I had to say:
Here’s why [I initially decided to stay with NoFollow]:
- It’s a WordPress blog, so that’s the default setting.
- I haven’t yet decided if I want to be “Follow” blog. A key concern is spam comments, and comments from people who don’t really care about what I’m saying.
What’s your opinion on the NoFollow tag? Like it? Hate it? Any other Firefox plugins that also show the “NoFollow” links?
I’m leaning toward it. I have “investigate WordPress plugins that remove NoFollow” on my to-do list, but it’s a very long list!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi John,
Thanks for bringing this matter to everyone’s attention. I wasn’t aware of this and was surprised myself when I saw my blogs were all no follow without my meaning for them to be. Since you opened my eyes to this, I have contacted my blog host to find out what to do.
I do want to be a do follow blog and podcast, and I’m not worried about spam because I figure having my moderated comments in place like I do now will take care of it.
Keep up the great work!
Melanie Jordan
Author of “What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know!(TM)”
Thanks for writing Melanie. Many people, including a lot of savvy folks selling products on the Internet, are not aware of NoFollow on blogs.
I’m glad you are checking into what you need to do to make your excellent blogs have the “Follow” tags.
I don’t moderate the comments on my blogs. The Wordpress plugin Akismet catches 99.9% of all spam comments. If I go “Follow,” I might then want to moderate the comments, which would take extra time for me and also make the people who comment wait to see their reply appear.
Hi John
Thanks for the mention. Much appreciated.
Regarding dofollow blogs, I had set my blog up with commentLuv, but for some strange reason I found it was still nofollow – hence why I changed my comments back to Disqus. I might try keywordLuv and see if it makes any difference. There must be something in my blog setup that is locking it down (frustrating).
Wynne´s last blog ..Matt Cutts Talks Details About NoFollow and DoFollow Links
Wynne, you’re welcome for the mention.
Assuming you use Wordpress, get the DoFollow plugin. It’s easy, and it works. Just type “DoFollow” into the plugin search feature, and it’s the first one, with the five-star ranking.
I think that the highest quality inbound links that we could create are contextual links, and its the reason why I always reach out to my fellow bloggers and ask if I could write a guest blog post for them. It wouldn’t hurt to try right?
diocelin@website design münchen´s last blog ..XT Commerce Abonnement Modul
Nice post. What Wordpress plugin are you currently using to make this a “Dofollow” blog?
Hello Ken. I’m glad you’re interested in DoFollow.
I use the “Do Follow” plugin created by Denis de Bernardy.
Hi John,
I always use the “Do Follow” plugin on my blogs. I think a lot of people simply don’t realize that Wordpress defaults to “No Follow” links unless you tell it otherwise. I think if you’re someone that consciously approves each comment that’s made then there’s no real downside to making the link on your blog “Do Follow”…
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