AFrogtokiss.net IS Do-Follow: But You Have To Earn It.
The New Face of Bloggers
I have never claimed to be an expert in anything. I started this blog 5 years ago out of boredom-it soon progressed into connecting with others around the world and allowed me to hone writing skills I thought I had lost. Blogging was fun-simple. I shared stories from my life-not telling people how to blog, or what to write, just for the sake of gaining back-links, or popularity in social networking and search engines. I’m lucky-although my blog is small compared to most, and even with a PR0, I received 14,246 page views last month. 13,118 of which were unique. Not bad for a blog about nothing.
I am changing how I do-follow. I’ve received grief from several so-called do-follow experts for using the Lucia’s Linky Love plugin, one blogger saying, “I don’t consider a blog using this plugin as “do-follow.” I beg to differ. While new bloggers are allowing spam sites and “marketers” to fill the comment fields with irrelevant content, hence, in my opinion, ruining the entire concept of blogging, including, active, intelligent participation-on topic, those who comment on my blog will now have to earn the right by commenting 3 times, before your author link becomes do-follow. No more free advertising for your dental practice, flower shop, or link to a favorite post. Interaction is the key. If you want visitors, participate. Engage with blogs and bloggers. Stop over saturating the blogosphere with marketing and “pay me $29.95 and I’ll show you how to…whatever.” Blog because you have something to give, not because you want to take.
Beth,
Excellent post. Is there a way to make it so that you can set users to do follow after a number of comments. I had do follow on my blogs and then tossed it because of all of the spam. I don’t really care about making money on my blog and it has always been about my life and my photos. I do some sponsored posts here and there for a couple of bucks to keep my hand in that field but I am so sick of all the spam that tries to mask itself as real content. This was a fantastic blog post that gets to the root of the issue and I commend you for writing it.
BenSpark�s last blog post..What will be your legacy?
I highly recommend Lucia’s Linky Love plugin for WordPress. You can set the number of comments necessary before the author’s link (backlink to blog or site), the default is 3 comments, which I stayed with, AND you can set the number of times a person has to comment before they are allowed to post a link within the comment itself. Easy to use and set up-you can even disallow your own name in comments if you reply often, so you don’t spam your own blog on search engines.
Wait, by replying to comments you actually are spamming the search engines? I reply to every single comment on my blog. I don’t think it captures a link though. I will have to check.
The thing I didn’t like about the Lucia’s Linky Love plug in is that when I clicked on the link below to find out more about it, the blog I went to was filled with Konterra links and I couldn’t find the actual plug in but ended up in some money making site. I will certainly take a look at using it but I don’t think I’d keep their link on my blog. Is that something you have to do?
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Yeah-if you link to your own blog in your responses, it does spam the search engines, especially Google. I never add my URL, but I’ve seen a lot of new bloggers who do. In fact, I may write a post on how not to spam your own blog.
As for the link-no, you don’t have to use the “Protected by…” which is an option in the plugin itself. I did it to make a point to a few who stopped following me on Twitter because I wasn’t a “dofollow” blog, in their opinion, because of the plugin. They said it was hard to “verify.” Yes, the link back is going and the link in the post should go to no-follow if I set another plugin up right.
Beth, I don’t blame you one little bit about making people work for the privilege of getting a do-follow link. My blog has been a do-follow blog from the day it started, but I also took the liberty of implementing a Comment Policy that stipulates the types of comments that I require if people want their comment to remain on my blog. Overall it’s worked pretty well and most of my comments are of pretty good content.
One of the things that I insist is that people do not use keywords as their name, mainly because it is so hard to reply to a keyword. I even installed the keywordluv plugin so that they can leave a name and a keyword but some don’t seem to be able to grasp it. Oh well, I do get a sense of joy out of editing their ‘keyword’ names. I enjoyed your post, and before I go I would like to say that it’s my ‘expert’ opinion that it was the paid posts that cost your PR and not the do-follow.
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I agree with you on the keyword names. This was my biggest problem. For a while, I edited the names-then it became too difficult to maintain and I started spamming the comments.
My PR loss as well as other bloggers’ losses were due to both paid posts and do-follow. No one realized Google’s TOS required “no follow” if you were getting paid to link to another site. At the time, unless someone had a high-profile blog, no one knew, because let’s face it, who read Google’s TOS?
Saw where Drew tweeted this article and you’ve hit a winner here, Beth.
I guess I am lucky as I don’t get many spam comments and mine is a do-follow blog. However, I also review all comments and have no compunction whatsoever about consigning someone to spam if they don’t leave relevant comments.
Thanks for the insight on this plugin- I will have to check it out. I’m using no-follow free, but I don’t believe it has any settings on it.
I’ll be looking forward to reading your promised post about how to not spam your own blog. I don’t think I spam my own as I don’t comment unless I’m logged in and it doesn’t seem to hold urls for my comments, whereas it does for all others who are given the option of leaving such. I’m also using the comment luv plug in which encourages commenters to leave valid urls.
As for Googles’ requirement to no follow paid posts, well, you and I both know that the people who PAID for those posts do not want their links no-follow, so if you want to get paid for your posts, you had best leave them do-follow or you don’t get paid for them. Then they want sites with PR — catch 22 for those doing paid posting.
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Margaret�s last blog post..Twitter Twitter Tweet
I thank Drew so much for RTing the post. Had he not been logged in to see it when I sent it to Twitter, no one would have taken notice, because most of those on Twitter at the moment are the “experts.”
Even though I use Akismet to catch a majority of the spam, a lot of comments were making it through. It became tiresome having to determine, do I keep the comment, or spam it. I checked the sites, kept those which were interesting, or useful and spammed the rest. But after a 3-day period of receiving 100+ comments on various posts, I said that’s it, I’m finding an alternative. I think I’ll also include valuable info, (in the how to not spam your own blog post), about the reasons to do-follow-and how it actually works. This is one point many are missing. I like CommentLuv-and, in all honesty, if I didn’t believe in giving back, (or, once giving back-I have no PR to give-that will be in the post), I would only use this plugin/service. For me, exposure is more important and CommentLuv does just that- exposes one post that will hopefully bring in new readers.
I deleted almost all paid posts, the posts I wrote in the beginning. The rest- are no-follow. The advertisers have received more in link love than I did in compensation, not to mention, while my PR sank, theirs went up. If someone wants a review, or a product/service linked to from this blog, yes, I’ll do it, but under my terms. No more 3rd parties-advertisers need to research on their own and come to the conclusion, sure, no PR, but this blog is highly indexed by Google and other search engines.
I don’t know that Google will forgive you even though you have deleted all your paid posts. Google is a very unforgiving Mistress. Not only did she Take away all the PR from my blogs but all the sub domains linked to it, some which had obtained a PR4
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You can request reconsideration. I have read over the last year of numerous bloggers receiving some PR back-not what it once was, after Google confirmed their blogs did not contain paid, do-follow posts/links. It’s always worth a shot.
In reply to my own response: I have seen quite a few blogs, who still have PR and are heavily into paid posting. Do you think I would send the URLs to Google? You bet your sweet ass I would. I never saturated my blog with these posts-but the blogs I know of-full of paid posts. And I’m not the least bit afraid of outing them-even on this blog. I didn’t work to make this blog, in the beginning, a successful blog, only to have people spam and lose very little.
While I have been blogging for many years, I am admittedly new to SEO and dofollow. I wasn’t initially willing to consider LLL as “dofollow” because I thought Akismet would catch all the spam, and it would be easy to moderate the rest (and make them automatically dofollow). As you’ve explained here, that just isn’t practical for established blogs (the kind I want to discover and comment on)! So… thanks!
Adam�s last blog post..The Dofollow Manifesto
I want to reiterate something that you have said: “my once PR5 blog, dropped to a PR0″
Is this true? I didn’t think google would slam your site this hard, or if your page rank would fall at all!
This is something new to be, and if proove to be true, then you have inspire me to get “some link love”.
You just proved my point. The site you entered can’t be found. And yes, it is true- I went from a PR5-PR3-PR0. “Getting you some link love,” is why blogging has turned into a spammer and marketer’s paradise. You won’t be getting anything from me, since commenters now have to have 3 approved comments to receive a do-follow link-and this is up to my discretion. Obviously you’re either an idiot, or new to blogging. I’m guessing both.
Quite arrogant. My site is having it downtime moment, can’t really do much as I am trying to access it myself.
I am not new to blogging, and I am not an idiot. However, I will admit my “search engine” facts are not all there.
I apologize if you are having site issues, however, I still stand by what I said. Getting “link love” was the point of my post. Instead of truly wanting to interact with other bloggers, a huge majority are looking for back-links and you admitted it.
“This is something new to be, and if proove to be true, then you have inspire me to get “some link love”.”
I wrote this without proofreading it correctly. I was really sarcastic about it. I was really referring to the plug in. Cause the plugin is call “link love” (lucias). In meaning I meant, “This is something new to “me”, if it is true then you inspired me to get the plugin called lucia link love”.
I am sorry. I guess I am really an idiot
Oh I also wanted to add to the PR5 to PR0. I was doing small research with the SEO Plugin for Firefox, and took a small look at the website: “A list a part”
A List a Part has a page rank of 8 and it is dofollowing all the comments or discussions, why isn’t their page rank falling?
To be someone who claims to not know much, you knew enough to install the plugin for Firefox. The combination of do-following links and paid posts caused my PR to drop. Plus, A List Apart is one of the biggest resources for WordPress and web design, therefore they had back links before back links were even necessary. Look at John Chow- probably one of the most well known bloggers, aside from Problogger- he rarely do-follows, or, when I read his blog he didn’t and his PR dropped too. And, if you think that by asking stupid questions is going to get you link juice from me? You’re wrong.
I am not interested in being dofollow by your blog, but you were close to persuading me to using the link-love plugin by Lucia. However, I am going to assume that your page rank fell because of something else not because you dofollow and everyone took a piece of your rank.
Good day.
Your responses become even more ignorant each time. Ask any person who wrote sponsored posts and had do-follow blogs. Hell, GOOGLE IT- I’m sure you’re smart enough to do that. Read Google’s TOS. I haven’t a clue as to why you’re so concerned over why my PR dropped. I gave you the answer-everyone else knows why, because it’s happened to them as well. Get over it and move on.
Hello, Beth, I stopped worrying about Google after the second PR slap hit me. In fact, I find the whole concept quite ridiculous. I recently started a blogspot-blog in Norwegian (quite a small language-niche, I can tell you…), and it got a PR2 after 2 months. Do I have visitors? Not many. Links? hardly. Have I bothered to make it do-follow? no. But PR it does have. Ridiculous.
Anyway – will check out that plug-in. Even with Akismet on the prowl, the commercial spammers get in there all too often.
Stine�s last blog post..Hello, Everyone!
Stine- it most likely gained PR due to it being a blogspot blog, which is Google. Do I worry about PR? No. Am I pissed? Yes-because when I did write sponsored posts, I chose topics relevant to my readers and not the so-called “link farms” Google was/is against. I lost something I worked hard to get, yet there are bloggers, still writing paid posts, and I’ll say it-basically spamming the blogosphere with PayPerPost, who still have some page rank. Not to mention the fact, most were PPP top earners at one point. I have since removed all code associated with the service. I view these blogs and think-the main goal is quality, and Google isn’t penalizing these blogs as hard as others? Since when is one post about credit cards, followed by a short post on what so and so bought at the grocery store, quality?
I hear ya on this one, I have about 4 different blogs and they are all do follow blogs but I get more spam that anything. I am being very picky now about which ones I allow to stay, when it is an obvious marketer or someone linking to a site that is there only to have adsense on, then it gets deleted. If it is a legitimate site or blog I always let it stay.
Great post!
I’ve been in the same situation and I’m pretty pissed that Google took away my PR.
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I have a question.. Sometimes my blog PR is shown as 1 and sometimes its shown as N/A.. Can u pls tell me why its happpening?I have all genuine material in my blog..
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Jackie: Your blog seems to be new, so PR will be inaccurate, especially if you check it via one of the many online “PR checkers.” If you’re using an add-on for your web browser, like the one I use for Firefox, I do know the “communication” between the software and Google goes down from time to time.
I think that’s a great idea to control do-follow. I’ll have to look into that plugin as well, even though I’m not suffering from spam comments that much… Akismet has been quite good at taking them down before I even see them.
And as for blogperts, it is SO HARD to find a blog these days that wasn’t about blogging. I mean what is the point of everyone writing about blogging without actually writing something original for a change?!
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While my blog is still young and I haven’t had this issue with do-follow yet, the Linky Love plugin sounds like a good balance to reward people who visit/comment often. I’ll keep it in mind.
This has been spotlighted at my blog! Thanks for a great post!
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It always seems attractive to post comments on do follow blogs but I feel it should be relevant enough..I have a question.. How to find whether my blog is a follow or do follow blog?
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