Do Follow v. No Follow
September 18, 2009 in Blogging, Business Plan, SEO, marketing by Rich Dansereau
“Nofollow” provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link.”
- Google Webmaster Tools, About rel=”nofollow”
This can be a very tricky subject as there are varying opinions on the usefulness and relevance of no follow. Many people believe that the no follow attribute is outdated. Wow! that is a blanket statement that would undoubtedly need many caveats. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself when thinking about no follow.
- Is the no follow attribute going to be applied to a particular page? Post? Comment section?
- What is the purpose of using the no follow on a page, post, or comment section?
- How might the use of a no follow attribute affect your ability to interact with your site’s visitors?
The application of no follow on a particular page within your site can prevent what is called PR Bleed. There is really no reason for your contact page or about page to have a page rank (PR). If you don’t use the no follow attribute <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> then your other pages will leech the PR from your main page where you want it concentrated.
I do not recommend using the no follow attribute on individual posts that are on your main site. New content is new content and Content is King.
Using the no follow attribute in the comment section is a bit more complicated. If you do not use a spam filter like Akismet nor manually moderate your comments, then using the no follow attribute might be advisable. It is unfortunate that the explosion of comment spam in the blogosphere has necessitated the implementation of the no follow attribute for many non moderated comment sections. 
This real estate network believes that the comment section is a great place for dialogue with site visitors and potential clients to begin. Because of this, Positive Real Estate Professionals uses the 
system. Comment Luv is an excellent system that encourages commenting by site visitors because it provides a do follow backlink to their most recent post and a second do follow backlink to the commentor’s website. With Comment Luv activated by default on all members’ sites you may be wondering how we combat comment spam. The use of Akismet is the primary line of defense against comment spam. The second line of defense is the ability for members to moderate all comments left on their posts. This allows for the site’s owner to determine if a comment contains unwelcome spam. The final option is to not allow any commenting on your posts at all. In my opinion this is an extreme step, especially for a site that is used primarily for business. Dialogue is the first step in converting site visitors to clients or referral sources; eliminating commenting eliminates the most frequently used method to do this.
In my final assessment, no follow should only be used for particular pages within your site that you do not want leeching your PR while do follow links for posts and comments have many beneficial uses that far outweigh dealing with a bit of comment spam.
Here are two other excellent posts by respected SEO bloggers on Do Follow v No Follow:
Posts
Sincerely,
Grace
P.s. Happy Birthday ( early ) have a great weekend celebrating!
Emma
Great question. I am mainly discussing the PR bleed among internally connected pages on a single site (whether part of a network or a standalone site). For example, your home page (whether a blog or static page) is where you generally want all your PR concentrated. The use of the Robots meta plugin allows you to choose among four options: ‘index, follow’, ‘index, nofollow’, ‘noindex, follow’, and ‘noindex, nofollow’. This allows you to control the sharing or leeching of your PR among your other pages. Blogs are generally ‘index, follow’ because you want the individual blog posts to be both indexed by the search engines and to lead (follow) back to your main blog; both of these contribute positively to your PR. Ancillary pages (i.e. ‘about’, ‘property search’, etc.) are generally ‘index, nofollow’ because although you want the pages indexed by the search engines you don’t necessarily want your PR shared or leeched to these secondary pages.
As for using ‘do follow’ in your comments you must individually decide if the potential benefit from the increased commenting on your posts do to the ‘do follow’ attribute outweighs the small amount of PR you share with those who comment and backlink to your site. No doubt your PR will be helping sites with a lesser PR but it is unclear whether your PR will actually fall. Because this is uncertain it is even more important that comments on ‘do follow’ sites be moderated and spam sites, who make it a practice to use comment spam, not make it into your comment section. Personally, I do not worry about sharing small amounts of PR with other sites.
Thanks for the post, something to think about.
Louis @ Auto forex´s last blog ..Forex Trading Online System