There seems to be a new trend with internet marketers running some kind of mentorship or bonus program.
It runs something like this (though I haven't signed up to one to get exact details)
The backlinks are sometimes the link reserved for the comment author, or sometimes product mentions
The quality of comments on a blog totally depend on the blog itself, the type of content you write, and the tools and method you decide to moderate content.
On Shoemoney, Pam takes a pop at the Ifollow Movement, the lists of links to dofollow blogs that traversed the Blogosphere 6 months ago. Whilst I was included on some of those lists, I didn't take an active roll, as the lists really didn't present any value to me.
I suppose Akismet is great if you don't care about the comments on your blog, or whether the good ones appear.
Not all blogs that write a post about dofollow, link through to plugins, and stick up a Dofollow logo have actually removed nofollow from their comments.
Over the last few months I have rejected over 100 blogs to the No Nofollow / Dofollow community on Bumpzee, and all but about 20 were because they didn't have nofollow removed correctly from their comments.
Fortunately about 30 of those subsequently either contacted me to have this explained to them, or fixed the problem and then notified me that things were resolved.
Lots of people for some reason don't get back in touch with
Whilst travelling I missed a blogstorm – “Buy Blog Comments” a controversial service that allows you to pay a fee to have someone promote your website writing comments.
This is probably going to be my most controversial post ever, and lots of people are going to think it is just linkbait, but I sincerely believe that paid comments can be ethical.
Chuck is a notable web designer and song-writer and one of many supporters of the removal of nofollow from approved comments.
There are all kinds of blogs in the blogosphere, and some of the logos created and used by supporters of the “cause” are a little on the tame side.
Having spent so much time over the last 6 months evangelising the adoption of dofollow plugins and solutions to remove nofollow from comments, the last week has been filled with highs and lows.
It is hard work giving money away, and it seems it is hard work voting for which Wordpress plugin author should receive $100.
Whilst it might appear that there was an increase of votes this time around, with 29 votes instead of 24, that doesn’t allow for the fact that 8 votes were added as a bonus. Thus there were only 21 fresh votes.
So now people have calmed down a little from their running around like headless chickens leaving comments on every blog they could find that used Dofollow, and then linking through to unrelated content, lets start looking at how to link a little more strategically.
Ben instigated a community writing project on productivity, and Dawud thoughtfully decided to encourage me to get involved, after also giving some great tips on how to be productive and stay focused.
For quite some time, Technorati has allowed you to find out how many other blogs have linked through to a particular post, they even provide live widgets.
Technorati will also allow you to search a particular blog regarding a keyword and pull up related content.
There are 2 extremely useful features that Technorati has missing, that are vital for quality search results.
I am going to cover this first, because this is a brand new feature introduced sometime yesterday, and I am probably one of the first to notice it, and happen to have convenient screenshots taken just 23 hours apart.
In my last post on Google Blog Search, I used the following screenshot, grabbed just before I published my post.
Now if you look at the result at the bottom of the screenshot, you will see my own listing, which had a fair amount of longevity.
Publishing the post displaced my old blogsearch content from the listings, maybe permanently if Google decides that that listing is more relevant, or maybe until it is no longer given an extra benefit due to freshness.
I only have one listing, and it is my most current or the one with most authority – the balance seems to normally tip around the 4 or 5 day mark.
Here is a new listing for the same search taken 14 hours ago, just 23 hours after my followup post on Google Blogsearch was made.
You will notice there is now an extended results link. That signifies that my site has additional information about this topic.
For a casual searcher things like that are not significant, but for someone like myself who uses Blogsearch as a serious tool to find relevant content, it is extremely useful.
The fact that Google also knows about that additional content on my site, just hours after publishing is also extremely significant, because that can also have a significant blogsearch weighting factor. If someone has mentioned Blogsearch multiple times, they might have more authority on the subject
That additional authority on a particular subject doesn’t seem to have any weighting on Technorati… at all. Technorati authority seems to mainly based on total number of links, and not based on authority of a particular subject.
As an example, Technorati doesn’t think I am much of an authority on [tag]dofollow[/tag] or [tag]tagging[/tag] – it is only recently I have moved up from having “a little authority” to having “some authority”, no matter what the subject.
Also of note is that Dougal Campbell isn’t looked on as an authority on plugins for Wordpress, and his recent post that I linked through to from my Ultimate Guide to DoFollow Plugins isn’t listed in a search for Dofollow as an authority.
Yes I know that Wordpress developers were removed from the Top100 because they dominated the Top10, but that shouldn’t mean they have no authority.
If you want Wordpress news “straight from the horses mouth”, don’t use Technorati, as an example a search for Wordpress 2.2 news with a lot of authority will not bring up recent developments, which I know Dougal has posted about, and so has Matt.
Back to Google Blog Search…
All things being equal (which they never seem to be), I should always outrank Techcrunch or Problogger when discussing something like Blogsearch, but there are other factors, as you can see by the fact that Alister’s blogsearch post on Problogger.net is still outranking my post with an almost identical title (though it does have more words in it)
Did you notice I am outranking the Bruce Clay blog? – The Lisa posted linking through to Alister on Problogger within a few minutes of my post – I am not sure who was actually first to post.
Alister’s article on Darren’s site so far has had 64 references, compared to the 2 references I had from Matt at Globally Local and Dan at The Wrong Advices.
Another thing I noticed for the first time is that Google also have introduced supplemental results for the references. The Lisa was linked by Danny Sullivan in his roundup. If you look at the references you can see one listing, plus supplemental results.
Now for anything to do with RSS, I don’t want to read supplemental results. The feed I am using at the bottom of this page would be useless if it contained supplemental results.
The number of items found on Google are not affected by duplicates, so it is a real number. Technorati’s numbers tend to be inflated by the duplicates.
I would like a listing that includes the additional references that were part of the extended results, so if a site has 10 documents that are looked on as being or suitable authority, all of them will be shown.
If I am trying to mix RSS content, I want the “real deal” and not just the most recent item.
It is a shame so many of the people linking through to Alister’s guest post are attributing it to Darren.
Now the even more worrying thing I have seen from all the people linking through to Alister’s post is that many want to increase the size of their blogroll, and I am sure 95% of them have no clue about linking structures or the fact that blogroll links also appear on all their duplicate content pages.
That is why I originally took the time to write a post in response to Alisters, because in all things there has to be a balance.
The majority of bloggers don’t research what they write, or don’t research using a blog search engine that brings up results based on the authority of the content, and not the historical authority of the blogger.
Read more on Exclusive: Google Blog Search Extended Results | Supplemental Results…
This is actually something quite remarkable, because as far as I know, I haven’t seen anyone else, ever, get to offer their readers a free, premium press release through PRWeb, and it is not like they have an affiliate program (at least that I have heard about), or easy to find promotion codes.
Read more on Do You Want a $200 Press Release Submission With PRWeb? For Free?…
Well more to the point, he asked me some damn tough questions that made me think for more than 5 minutes before answering them. Actually I spent quite some time on the reply, and it wasn’t as straight forward as I was expecting.
Gothwalk just pinged me to say that he has now written a guide on how to remove Nofollow on Moveable Type.
Gothwalk had been scratching his head all weekend, because he wanted his blogs to be included in the new DoFollow community on Bumpzee, but everytime he thought he had it cracked, I would spot that something wasn’t quite right.
For two years people have been struggling to remove Nofollow from Typepad so they can share the link love with their regular visitors who add great value to the conversation on the host blog.
Many blog owners are unaware that the links people leave on their blogs are shrouded with a “link condom” which tells the major search engines to ignore any links left that provide a benefit to the blog community.
Read more on Mike Sansone Cracks The Secret Code to Removing Nofollow From Typepad…
For a long time I have been promising myself to build a community site for the Dofollow movement I strongly support, but it just wasn’t happening fast enough to support the growing community.
Read more on Exclusive: No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Bumpzee Community…
If you weren’t already aware, this week is reader appreciation week. Now the idea of reader appreciation is fairly good, give out some prizes, give a reader a link, etc etc.
I missed this a few days ago
At the request of WhiteHat SEO community on April the 1st this year all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN Live declared their joint support for a newly developed XFN standard.
The new attribute rel=follow is designed to complement the notorious rel=nofollow. However unlike nofollow attribute rel=follow is designed to express not negative but positive relationship between a linking website and a website rel=follow link points to.
I’ll try to explain it in layman’s terms…
Read more on Google | Yahoo | MSN | Cooperatively Introduce rel=”follow” tag…
Competition was fierce but with only 24 votes, the winner could easily have been decided in the last few hours.
I have checked the ballots and there doesn’t seem to be any scandals – rigged voting would have been news worthy and actually profitable, it just goes to show how honest people in the Wordpress community are.
I have opened up the voting for the first round of my cash giveaway for Wordpress plugin authors.
Nominations for the Best Wordpress Plugin each month are made by my readers, and half my income from paid reviews is given away as donations to help support development costs of the best Wordpress plugins.
Whilst the traditional saying is “Pretty in Pink” that saying is not universally true. Vlad clearly demonstrates how ugly a website can be when dressed in pink.
How many blogs link to Technorati on every post they publish? Many blogs also use followable links to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, and social news sites such as Digg on every single page of their site? Google in their recently disclosed patent are saying that it could be a negative indication of quality.
Read more on Destroy Your Blog Rankings Linking To Digg or Technorati?…
When I wrote my Ultimate Guide to DoFollow plugins, I hadn’t read a solution to removing Nofollow from comments for Blogger that actually passed the link credit from your own domain.
Read more on How To Remove Nofollow On New Blogger – Dofollow on Blogspot…
I benefit from being a top commenter on a number of blogs simply because I am consistently active on those sites, and I have gained the benefit without changing my commenting habits.
Some of my blogging friends are aware of the problems, but have opted to use such a plugin anyway – I fully respect that decision, but many make that decision “blindly” without being aware of the possible consequences.
Read more on Multiple Reasons Why I Loathe Top Commenters Plugins…
Wordpress by default, just like other blogging platforms, has automatically been adding the "nofollow" microformat extension to all links from user generated content such as comments and trackbacks. To support the growing rejection of NoFollow for blog comments, I have compiled this list of plugins that help you remove nofollow from your blog forever.
Friday 13th – A Very Bad Day for Comment Spammers