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Nofollow? No Problem

Should you waste your time commenting on blogs with nofollow links? In short, yes. 

Many bloggers don’t like participating in blog commenting or forum discusions if their blog won’t benefit from

While it would be great to know that the link within your comment will provide your blog with some much needed link juice for search engine optimization, we still want our comments to be useful so the people reading them will click our link and read our blog. An actual visit through that link is my ultimate goal. Search engines may not follow the link but I appreciate the visit from the people that click on it. I suspect that the actual traffic generated by a nofollow link is still considered by search engines for PageRank, but I have no proof.

Nofollow Links That People Do Follow

If you leave a helpful comment people will click your link out of curiosity. In my opinion building traffic is more important than increasing PageRank for a newly launched blog. I’d love to have a great PR but when I comment and interact on other blogs or forums, it’s to be helpful. The reward is not PR, but an actual visitor. When I read a blog post and see a comment that interests me further I click the link within that comment. If that comment is on my own blog and that person’s site is similar and useful, I remove the nofollow from their link. Don’t you? What about bloggers that never turn off nofollow? Comment anyway. Borrow their visitors that click on your link. Some of the people that click on your link might subscribe to your feed or newsletter. They might bookmark your blog, or possibly link to your blog  elsewhere on the internet.

Participating in online forums and blogs of the same topic as your own blog can help build authority (PageRank) for your website, but make sure that your comment is helpful. Useful comments can be in the form of a question, an answer to a question, or just your opinion. Even bloggers have questions. I’ve written posts that were nothing more than a question to my readers. And they left me answers in the form of comments. Other times the Q&A occurs amongst the blog vistors within the comments section as a spin off to the original post. Blogs aren’t just for the reader and author to network, it’s also for reader-to-reader networking as well. Our comments, if done well can send traffic to our blog.

Comments Can Be Link Bait

Having a top rated blog boost  PR for your site with a normal linkback is awesome, What if, not a single visitor arrived at your blog through that link? If you know the link is nofollow, leaving a comment saying “great post” probably won’t hurt your blog, but I doubt anyone will click your link to view your website.

Don’t be afraid to write a lengthy comment if it solves a problem or answers a question. Instead of commenting for the sake of a linkback or PR boost, treat your input on other blogs and forums as an extension of your content. Many blog posts came about because of a comment a blogger read on their own blog or even a competitors website in which the comment was more interesting than the actual post that sparked the comment.

Most of us blog so that other people will read our blogs and, hopefully leave a comment here and there. Treat your comments like your content. Continue writing for people even when that writing is a comment on other blogs or forums.  Put some thought into your comments and people will click your links and eventually help increase your blog’s PageRank by linking to your content on their own. You’ll end up getting some unexpected, but powerful links later on down the line by connecting with other people. The best part is that those links will be unsolicited and completely natural. Try to turn your comments into linkbait (comment bait) that pull in traffic from existing websites within your niche. Use good anchor text for any clickable links within your comments so they don’t end up in comment spam. Diversify the way your blog draws in its traffic with useful comments on as many on-topic websites as you can. 

By the way, don’t forget to give your opinion in the comments section, below.  Shameless, I know.