How To: Remove nofollow from WordPress Comments
By StrangeWork.com: I decided to remove the nofollow code from my blog comments. Nofollow is an attribute that can be added to links to discourage comment spam. I use Akismet to block spam comments, which works about 98% of the time, so why penalize good comments from reaping the SEO benefits of outbound links on my blog?
I used the dofollow WordPress plugin. You can download the plugin here:
http://www.semiologic.com/software/wp-fixes/dofollow/
To install upload the dofollow plugin folder into your plugins directory and activate the plugin through your WordPress Plugins admin panel. Easy as that! Now readers of my blog who post comments will receive a good inbound link to their site. I wonder if this counts for good karma points?
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Tags: Blog-Update, How To, SEO, WordPress
Brad Williams is a computer programmer and tech junkie who enjoys exploring technology and sharing his knowledge and experience with others.
LinkAdage
said
am September 26 2007 @ 2:00 pm
Interesting perspective. You’re correct, Akismet seems to block spam comments so why not give link love to your active readers?
Unfortunately, the nofollow is being used more and more to hoard PageRank, rather then stop spam or not credit a site you link to you your blog that has questionable quality.
Brad
said
am September 26 2007 @ 2:06 pm
Good point. Everyone is so worried about pagerank these days. I say share the wealth! I’m more than happy to spread my pagerank to other sites that are contributing to mine.
Bape
said
am September 28 2007 @ 6:55 pm
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow I have seen many blogs leeching off the dofollow movement claiming to be dofollow sites but actually use nofollow, they are worse than the comment spammers in my eyes.
Brad
said
am October 1 2007 @ 12:35 pm
Agreed, unless it’s purely by accident. I would imagine some blog owners who update their plugins or wordpress probably forget to re-apply the changes and therefore accidently add the nofollow tag back in.
Mauricio Pastrana
said
am December 6 2007 @ 3:31 am
…which solves the question for me (are all these links on comments counting towards pagerank?)
-mp
Incontri
said
am January 15 2008 @ 6:51 am
Nice plugin, i install it now on my blog
Paul
said
am February 21 2008 @ 6:21 am
I used a similar plugin from seopedia.org. I actually think WP should look into integrating one of these plugins so you can just easily turn it on or off in the options.
Guitars
said
am May 24 2008 @ 10:07 am
The dofollow WordPress plugin at semiologic works great. Thanks for sharing your article. I think it does count for good karma points!
TheDonSansone
said
am August 27 2008 @ 2:54 pm
Does any of these plugins actually include the facility to individually control each comment’s follow/nofollow setting ?
Rick
said
am February 23 2009 @ 3:37 pm
I know this is a way old post but I just wanted to say thanks for the link, the plugin seems useful however it should be updated to http://www.semiologic.com/software/wp-tweaks/dofollow/ as that is the new location of the download page for it.
Neil
said
am June 22 2009 @ 8:48 am
Agree. A bit late in posting here but I think WP ought to have this option as standard. Not sure why they nofollow’d it in the first place with Akismet doing a sterling job.