Blog comments are a fantastic way for bloggers and their readers to get together and discuss points of interest or anything else that is to do with the blog. When used properly, this is a great community building tool.

Unfortunately, spammers will abuse good, worthwhile tools like blog comments in order to further their own ends in totally the wrong way. Mainly because of this menace, blog software developers like Wordpress have added a small piece of HTML code to help bloggers halt the spammers in their tracks. This code causes ALL outbound links from all comments to be given the rel=”nofollow” attribute. What this does, is tell the search engine spiders not to follow the link. Basically it denies the very back-links the spammer is trying to acquire.

This, then is a good thing?

Only sometimes. Good for beating spammers. Bad for the blogging community spirit.

Bloggers like to visit other bloggers’ blogs. It’s an interest, or hobby that transcends their own creation and generates a great interest in what other people are blogging about. When bloggers visit other blogs, they are apt to leave comments if they enjoyed a particular post, or even if they disagreed with it. It sets up a dialog between bloggers and furthers the community spirit of blogging.

Creates an atmosphere in the blogosphere, if you like!

Many bloggers also like to leave good, readable and often knowledgeable comments in other people’s blogs because it also lends more gravity to their own expertise, lets more people know who they are and has the potential to generate some more traffic to their blog. Were it only for the additional back-link to their own blog, it would be one more positive side-effect of their comment. That’s because the is that the more back-links a blogger accrues, the higher his page rank will grow in the eyes of the search engines.

The rel=”nofollow” attribute has upset a lot of bloggers. A heck of a lot of bloggers!

Bloggers see it as a small renumeration that they ought to be afforded for their contribution to the owner of the blog they commented on. The owner of the blog gets more quality content in the form of those comments and those comments are seen by the search engines as pointers to the blog’s popularity. The poster therefore, in all fairness should have the benefit of the backlink to their own blog for going to the trouble of posting the comment.

It’s a fair case of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine”. Fairs fair and all that.

Well, I for one will be giving the authors of good, readable and well written comments on this blog that bit of fairness.

I’ve just installed the DoFollow plug-in here, so your comments will earn you a back-link.

That is, your good, relevant, well-written comments will. Garbage one-liners and spam will still be moderated into the void with no back-links. Please limit your links to one link per comment. Thanks!

Fairs fair, right?

Terry Didcott
MAKE MONEY