A nofollow link is a link that search engines will not follow and that doesn’t flow page rank. You can do this by using an attribute in the anchor text and that is “rel=nofollow”. When you place a comment on a website you have the ability to list your website address, your name, e-mail address (that usually is not published) and the comment itself.
By default the links posted in comments are nofollow links. My SEO tip for you is to leave it just like this. Changing those links in dofollow links could damage your website in terms of SEO. The reason is because search engines consider that you have total control of what’s being published on your website.
So any link pointing to low quality websites, or websites that are penalized by search engines will affect you as well. Usually when you enable dofollow links in comments many people will comment just for the sake of it. They will also put their keywords in their names with links to their websites.
Even if you moderate the comments and allow only websites that are from your niche and that are trust worthy your SEO will suffer because you’ll offer more relevancy to those domains by linking to their websites with their keywords. Maybe those keywords are exactly the ones you are targeting and now you offer all your work to another website.
What do you have to say about this? Do you have dofollow comments on your website? If you find this article useful please consider subscribing to my blog.
Toma ~ Very timely post for my real estate blog. I get a lot of “ping backs” & most are from sites that I would say are low quality. Your article makes me ask … if I allow that to post in the comment section and it is a low quality site, does this also make my blog’s SEO suffer? Thanks!
Hi Jennifer,
Good question. As long as you keep it as a nofollow link there is no problem. Your website will not suffer, in terms of SEO, if low quality websites link to you because search engines consider that you can’t control links from other websites pointing to you. It’s a way to protect you: otherwise there would be a lot of people trying to do bad things to good websites.
Thank you for your comment!
So if I use WordPress for my blog, does that mean I’m already set at nofollow by default? I don’t have to do anything? Or is there an action I still need to take to follow your advice?
Hi Deborah,
WordPress has nofollow on comments by default. You can check nofollow links either by installing a Firefox toolbar (like the one from seobook) or just right click on the page, click on View Page Source and then search the link you want to check (you’ll see its attributes)
Thank you for your comment and interest!
So if I use WordPress for my blog, does that mean I’m already set at nofollow by default? I don’t have to do anything? Or is there an action I still need to take to follow your advice?
So any link pointing to low quality websites, or websites that are penalized by search engines will affect you as well. Usually when you enable dofollow links in comments many people will comment just for the sake of it.