Just read a great post by Andy Beard, my e-Crush.
Andy comments about a recent post by Dave Naylor in Why You Should Nofollow Your Blog Comments? post about why blog should allow comment links. In ballsy move Andy ( a dofollow proponent) uses same post title as Dave’s nofollow blog and shows that his post ranks higher in engines than Dave’s. Ha! Touche.
Poor Dave!To be fair to Dave, Andy’s post probably ranks higher for other reasons than the fact that his blog is dofollow-both on page and off site factors. But it does underscore a point.
Blogs are about engaging in “conversation” . Dofollow blogs encourage community and relationships. Would I still read Andy’s blog if he didn’t follow links on his comments? Yes.
Would I comment as much. Nope. I would comment but not as much. When I comment on a blog I am mindful that that comment may be a portal to a new site visitor. This is a good enough reason to comment on another blog. Knowing a blog follows is an incentive sometimes. All things being equal – blog readership, page rank, relevance, I would rather take 10 minutes and comment on a blog that follows than one that doesn’t.
I appreciate comments on my blogs. It is content I don’t have to create. On one of more popular ( read profitable) blogs I rely heavily on reviews- reviews from readers. Visitors are much more likely to review a product when they get a link back and the reviews are invaluable to the integrity of my site.
I am so tired of the dumb “too much spam argument”. It doesn’t take that much time to delete spam. Certainly not as much time as it would take for me to write content that readers leave for me.
Engaging with readers and other bloggers is the whole reason a blog exists. Anything that encourages that relationship is to be applauded not stomped out because it is inconvenient.
In many ways Dave should outrank me.
He has a huge amount of trusted links from almost every significant SEO in the industry.
The domain is significantly older than mine (2004 vs 2006), though Dave might not have been quite as prolific as me, though he has employees add content once in a while now as well.
It was an interesting test, I honestly didn’t know the outcome before I tried it, and who knows what the outcome will be longer term.
Andy Beard’s last blog post..Why You Should Nofollow Your Blog Comments?