I visited a website the other day and as I was about to leave a comment I read, “If you’re from a DO Follow list, please don’t comment.” What could this mean? Why would anyone not want comments? I love comments. Well, relative comments, anyway.
Although The Blog World is do follow, I’m not on any lists. Could this be a good thing? Is traffic worth getting if it’s not quality traffic? People have taken to spamming do follow lists to increase their link back rate, which ranks them higher when it comes to selling ads or posts on their site. This is a great method to cheat the system and drag down others, if that’s your thing. Personally, I like to take a slightly more honest route. Probably why I don’t have a high rank and low Alexa.
I’m not going to mention any names, but I’ve observed someone who follows any do follow list she can and comments on hundreds of pages a day. I’ve commented after her on some sites and wondered if she actually read the post. Now, I’ve heard that Google realizes this type of thing and lowers your page rank because they feel like you don’t deserve these links. Which is great, in my opinion. However, other systems depend on how many backlinks you have, like Yahoo!, and in that case it’s helping her tremendously.
So it looks like this is a method people are using, but they’re not reading your posts, or not reading them thoroughly. People take off the no follow from their comment links to “Thank” their readers and commenters, not to be spammed by people. Consider that it should take you at least 3 minutes to read a post, think about it, and come up with a proper response. Then maybe another 2 minutes to comment. That’s if you have any interest in the post at all. At this rate if you had interest in 100 sites it should take you a minimum of 500 minutes to comment on those 100 sites (that’s 8 hours).
I’m all about making money online and about getting yourself out there and known. But be honest about it.
I definitely agree that honesty is the best policy. And I believe that I know of the person you’re referring to. I hate it when people insist on ruining a good thing for others by abusing it.
November 12, 2007 @ 6:08 pmI agree with you, too. Reading a post and then making a relevant comment about it are essential. I don’t have data yet, but I’m pretty sure those who build a community of followers over time will be a lot more successful long-term than those out to make a quick buck. Long-term success comes with building relationships (and subscribers), not spamming comments of other bloggers. If you don’t want to bother to read a post, don’t waste the blogger’s time with an irrelevant comment.
November 14, 2007 @ 12:34 pmI’m on the dofollow list, but I never use it. It just sits there. And I never get any comments from anyone on it, so it kinda is a waste of space in my opinion. But I don’t see how it’s causing lower page rank. I thought only paid linkage did that.
November 14, 2007 @ 3:06 pmIt’s not being on the list that causes it, it’s the hundreds of links you get per day by commenting so much. That can have a negative effect.
I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear.
November 14, 2007 @ 8:09 pmI guess I am still confused about the whole no follow thing. I took it out of my comments and joined in on the “no follow” act. But I also try to go and visit anyone who leaves me a comment. but I understand about how people could be going from blog to blog and posting, at least make your comment about that specific post.
how does getting hundreds of links a day a bad thing? I also read somewhere that if you post a link to someone with a PR0 it can have a bad effect on your own PR? Is that true?
November 18, 2007 @ 11:52 pm