I Serve NuffNang Ads

No I don’t. At least not yet. But I really, really wanted to. For a Sony Vaio, that is.  Turns out that I can’t.  Join the contest I mean.

Ok, enough with the cryptic talk.  Nuffnang recently had this joint event with Sony which they called Sony Expo, pretty clever huh?  The expo showcased the latest Sony products, gadgets, and ladies holding those gadgets.  Prior to that, they sponsored a blogging contest of some sort with the most creative blogger winning a Sony digital camera.  I already have a Sony semi-pro camera unit so the contest wasn’t really that appetizing to me.

This afternoon however, I got one of those emails from Nuffnang saying that the Sony competition has been extended.  I thought that the contest was already over but after continued reading I realized that they were talking of an altogether different contest and this one featuring a Sony Vaio as a reward.  Now this is what I’m talking about.  Some models wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10k, me, I wouldn’t boot my computer for anything less than 1Gb.  Of RAM that is.  And the latest version of Vaio?  Well, it surely will cower in shame beside my MacBook but hey, a laptop is a laptop.

So when before I wasn’t really that enthusiastic about putting up Nuffnang ads, I had to revisit my profile in their website, get an ad code and paste it right there in the middle where you can see it.  Matches the upholstery doesn’t it?  lol.

But holy mother of moses, I was too dazzled by the Vaio’s resolution that I failed to read the contest mechanics in its entirety.  It was only for those who actually went to the expo!  And of course I didn’t! I was in the other side of the Republic!

Shame, shame!  And after putting up that ad. Argh.  Nuff(nang) said.

NoFollow, DoFollow, MarshMallow

Here’s me trying my hand at explaining the ramifications of these terms. First two words have something to do with comment links (you can argue that these two words may pertain to any link and you will be right, but in this case I am limiting my explanation to the links found in the comments area) while the last one goes well with hotdogs and bonfires and is generally considered delicious.

Ok, here we go.

Most blogging platforms are inherently NoFollow, which means that any link (usually author’s URL) included in a comment will not pass PageRank. I say most because I haven’t tried out all the blogging platforms out there. And even if I say “All” I could still be wrong. Either way I’m screwed. The relevance of not passing PageRank is that the link that you included in a comment that you made will not have any value as far as your PageRank is concerned.

We all know that backlinks are supposed to count as a vote of approval for your blog, however if that backlink is NoFollow, it’s like shooting blanks. Alright control your overactive imagination. Now what it doesn’t mean however is that search engines will not crawl these nofollow links, they will, and they’ll come a-knockin’ on your door, but that’s just it. Although these links are still counted as one of your backlinks, they’re just not that valuable.

DoFollow links on the other hand are the kind of links you want. Spiders crawl them and they’re considered an affirmative vote in your favor. So if you’re on a link building mission with the intent of skyrocketing your PageRank via a commenting strategy, you would be much better off seeking out those DoFollow blogs. Here’s a DoFollow community that you could join to get you started.

So You Want Your Blog To Be DoFollow Eh?

A bit of caution on this one. DoFollow blogs are easy target for spammers so I recommend that you enable comment moderation for you to sort out which ones to grant your precious Dofollow link. If you don’t have the stomach for this, better stick to nofollow. Still there’s a valid argument to be made for making your blog DoFollow. For one, it motivates your regular readers to comment which could result to a lovely discussion on your posts. Fair enough?

Now, if you use WordPress, you’re in luck. There are a lot of DoFollow plugins out there starting with this one. Or if you want to make things a bit more manageable(remember my note on spamming? this is a good tool to mitigate that), you can use this one– this is an interesting plugin that only activates DoFollow for commenters after they’ve posted a number of comments. Very nice huh?

Now if you’re on blogspot, go switch to Wordpress!

Kidding. Actually here’s this tutorial for blogger’s beta template that you can use. It’s actually very easy to follow. Again, better turn on that comment moderation thing before you do this.

But What About CommentLuv?

What about it? It parses the visitors last blog post and that’s it. Unless the DoFollow plugin is installed, it’s still NoFollow.

Importance of Tagging Your Blog Posts

One of the oft overlooked promotional tools in blogging is tagging. Tags are words or phrases that you use to associate to your blog post. An article on the Kizuna Satellite for example could be tagged with Kizuna Satellite, satellite internet, or plain Kizuna. Sometimes folks can be quite lazy in tagging their posts so some very smart guys came up with ways to make tagging blog posts easier.

If you’re a wordpress user, you’re in luck, there’s a wonderful plugin called Simple tags. This is a really cool plug-in that will automatically suggest tags for your the blog post you just created.

If you’re with blogger, then it’s just too bad. Well, not really. Zemanta is your solution for those tag suggestions. I have been using Zemanta for a while now and has been satisfied with what it does.

One important tag that a blogger should always associate with their posts are Technorati Tags. This allows your post to be categorized under Technorati. You benefit from having Technorati tags in your posts via tag searches made in Technorati. Here’s a very good discussion on Technorati Tags that I’ve read.

Again, if you’re a wordpress user, here’s a Technorati Tag plugin that makes life very easy.

For Blogger users, you may have to follow the instruction in the above linked discussion or, you could use this nifty service where you just type in the tags you want, click on the make code button, and then copy-and-paste the resulting code in you blog post.

The thing to remember really is to ensure that you don’t get crazy lazy and not put in any tag in your posts. By so doing you miss out on one of the simple promotional tools out there.