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.

Migration From Beta Blogger To Wordpress

Man this is some work. I have read almost all the how to’s on painless beta blogger migrations to wordpress and I have to say this is excruciating work! Still after having finally done it, everything seems worth the hours spent in front of my computer. A lot of the experts agree on two things to do the migration but with usually the same goal/s in mind– ensuring that the previous links don’t get broken and all that google juice and pagerank will not go to waste.

In my previous free blog I have already cranked up the PR meter to PR4 and have managed to land in the first page of some very competitive keywords. The problem was I was using a free account. I really should have started with a dotcom from the very start. Had I done that, I wouldn’t have to go through all the research I did in order to migrate successfully.

But still, there is a silver lining in all of these. Had I started with a dotcom from the get go, I wouldn’t have learned about 301/302 redirects, .htaccess, and all those meta tags redirect methods that a lot of experts were betting their nuts on as surefire remedies to the pain of migration.

The first instructions I did consider was Techcounter’s instructions, but the loooongg queu of questions scared the heck out of me. Then there were a lot of others in between before I arrived at bloggerbloke’s site. At first I had it made with his very nifty .htaccess system. It really worked for him and I think for others too. Even I was convinced I had it down pat. I typed my redirected blog address and voila, I was taken to blogger’s redirect page and then eventually to this site. It’s all good, except that in bloggerbloke’s case, there’s none of that temporary blogger stop.

I was prepared to live with it until I clicked on some of the permalinks pointing to my own blog. It did the usual redirect and ended up with a 404 error. I kinda slipped back down to earth after that. I had to play my final ace. I tapped on the great Wordpress reserve for help. And there it was, the plug-in created by Sam Wong — the Blogger Redirector. I installed the template and removed the .htaccess code I pasted earlier. Everything worked real well after that. Including the permalinks.

I have already placed the noindex,nofollow meta in my old blog hoping that I won’t be penalized for duplicate content. I’ll also try to do a little 302 redirect so the search engines would know that I have moved to a new location and then later on will do the permanent 301 redirect.

Right now, my concern is how to get out of that blogger temporary stop when any of my link or my url is typed. I also have to work a little bit harder promoting this site. Also some of my internal links (of course they came with the migration) are still pointing to the old blog! I still have to see if there’s a quicker way of changing these internal links behaviour so they will recognize their new location. However I only have very few internal links to modify in case I decide to do everything manually.

It may take me a couple of weeks more to finally say that I have moved successfully and comfortably here in my self-hosted Wordpress. But I’m not really that worried. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

If you happen to be here and you have some questions about migration, shoot me a note, I may not be an expert yet but with all the internet literature I’ve read and the kinks I’ve encountered, I may just be able to offer a few insights.

Cheers!

Link Exchange, Anyone?

This is a tired subject for anyone who has been in the blogging business for a long time. This has been discussed at least a hundred times in webmaster forums and in blogs all over the internet. But to those new in the game, especially those who have aggressively sought link exchanges, here is a Google policy to ponder on;

Link Schemes

Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

–source: Google Webmaster Help Center

If you remember your blog history, the last bullet point was what precipitated the first of many Google PR purges. But this is not the point of this article, the third bullet point is.

In the earlier days, the word ‘excessive’ was not included in the policy. Perhaps thinking that a puritanical view towards unnatural link development may be a bit unreasonable, Google added this term later on. Even then, the guideline is not that specific. There were no clear examples as to the application of this policy. A few quarters, for example, would have liked to peg a number to the term ‘excessive’.

Today, I see a lot of bloggers who would bloghop like crazy all over the internet in search for ex-links. Some can be quiet smooth about it while some can be really brazen. I am not privy to their motivations but some of these folks are only out there to increase their PR; link relevance be damned.

I have to a certain extent linked to other blogs that are not exactly related to the things that I write. Most of the time these are links to sites that I really like and/or whose owners are familiar to me. Still, I try to limit these instances to as few as possible.
Nevertheless, reciprocal linking is a tricky thing. On the one hand you have a surefire inbound link, something that every blogger desires, and on the other there’s the thought of violating Google’s webmaster guidelines on excessive link exchanges.

My opinion is that one has to exercise judgment when it comes to responding to those who would request for reciprocal link exchanges. The question that should come to everyone’s mind when deciding is – is this site relevant to yours, and would the site actually add value to what you offer your readers. If not (or even if it is, depending on your mood), then you can just flat out refuse.

Keep in mind that the best kind of links run on a one-way street, preferably those where the arrow point directly at you. Having good, quality content in your blog almost always ensures that you get a lot of these kind of link.