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.

Free Beautiful Wordpress Templates

I wasn’t able to update this blog as much as I wanted to because of some whatever reason. But now that I’ve finally gotten around to doing what’s supposed to be done, I came face to face with a rather daunting task for a wordpress newbie– modifying my free wordpress template so it won’t look like one of those cookie-cutter themes.

Because I used to be a Blogger fan boy (I think I still am except that I’ve migrated my blogs to wordpress), I am somewhat perplexed as to what to do first. Since I have a self-hosted wordpress installation, I had to deal with changing permissions and making sense out of all the wordpress .php files. I guess all that practice in modifying blogger templates did pay-off. Still I managed to make a decent (still not perfect) job I guess. Although, man, Internet Explorer likes to make a mess of things.

How I Came Up With My Gorgeous Wordpress Template

Let’s see, I started with a whole lot of searching in the internet for the template that would suit my needs perfectly. I wasn’t really sure what I want exactly but I know I want a widget-ready wordpress template, and it has to have 3 columns. I also wanted a template that would allow me to display ads in the sidebar, and something that’s adsense ready as well.

The good thing and the bad thing about Wordpress is that it has a lot of beautiful templates that are offered absolutely for free. It’s a good thing because you have a lot of choices but at the same time it’s a bad thing as well because without a clear template in mind, you could be overwhelmed by the choices in display.

After several days of searching for the perfect wordpress template, I finally stumbled on Dezzain Studio where I got to see the Timeline Theme for the first time. I was instantly drawn to the color combination and the features embedded in the theme. So I worked on putting all the necessary wordpress plugins and widgets and did a little template tweaking until I was satisfied. Now it still retains its proud form but somehow I’ve managed to insert a little of me here and there.

And then I came across this wordpress template collection at WPZoom. Holy guacamole, I may have to change my template again. Gah.

Next up, I’ll be compiling my ten best free wordpress templates.

Free Wordpress SEO eBook

This free SEO eBook could not have come at a better time. I have recently migrated my free Blogger blog to Wordpress and I was anxious to do everything right the first time. Luckily I found a good Wordpress resource from the Search Engine Journal site. This resource is a FREE WORDPRESS SEO eBOOK authored by Mihaela Lica of http://ewriting.pamil-visions.com. I have been an avid subscriber of Search Engine Journal and have religiously read their articles everyday. I find most of their posts to be very helpful for bloggers.

The FREE SEO eBOOK is especially written for Wordpress although it can be adapted to apply to other blogging platforms as well. Although the SEO techniques described therein is very basic from the point of view of an SEO expert, to a newbie blogger like me, the techniques were very helpful. The FREE SEO eBOOK covers general topics from installing Wordpress to link building tips.

I especially liked the part where that very helpful Wordpress plugin, All-in-one SEO Pack was discussed. It’s very enlightening and made me realize the mistakes I’ve been doing all along.

I strongly suggest and recommend that you download and read the FREE WORDPRESS SEO EBOOK.