Did you know for your own link juice safety WordPress sets your out-going comment links to NoFollow.

Now if you are a big heavy weight blog which is getting over 5000 visitors a day then maybe, just maybe you shouldn’t worry about changing these settings.

However. If your blog is new or you are still trying every trick in the book to generate traffic then you need to have your blog as a DoFollow blog.

It is very easy to do and in this blog post I am going to show you exactly how to turn your NoFollow WordPress blog into a DoFollow WordPress blog.

(This is the kind of blog you will want to share with your community).

What Is NoFollow And DoFollow?

With any url links (internal or external) that you have on your blog you have the ability to tell the search engine bots to either follow these links (DoFollow) or not follow these links (NoFollow).

If you chose to follow a link you will pass some ‘link juice’ from your blog onto the page where the link points to. Resulting in you losing a little link juice and the end user gaining a little of your link juice.

What Does NoFollow And DoFollow Look Like?

To the reader Nofollow or Dofollow can not be seen. The only way to know whether or not a link has been set to dofollow is to look under the hood of the page / section that the link is on. You have to look at the HTML part of the page.

A Typical DoFollow Link Looks Like This – <a href=”http://dwaynehuggins.com</a>

A Typical NoFollow Link Looks Like This – <a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://dwaynehuggins.com</a>

Why Set Comment Links To DoFollow?

You want people to comment on your content. The more comments your content gets the more useful it is deemed to be. We all consciously or subconsciously use the amount of comments a piece of content has as a way or measuring how good / valuable the content is.

When people comment on your content they are adding value to your piece of work. They are also helping you with your SEO as comments are seen as a vote for your blog by the search enignes.

As comments help and assist you, it is only fair that you reward the persons commenting by sending a little link juice their way.

Did you know there are some people who won’t comment on a NoFollow blog? They value there input and want to be rewarded for it. If there is no reward there will be no comment.

My blog used to be a Nofollow blog. In all honesty I didn’t pay much attention to it. I naively thought that everyone thought like me. I comment on content that I like or inspires me to comment whether it is a Nofollow or a Dofollow. I wasn’t looking for any reward as the content was reward enough.

Not all great bloggers think a like.

A good blog encourages community interaction. A good blog knows that its readers are a big part of why the blog is a good blog. So in the ever growing competitive field of blogging it is wise to give as much as you can to your readers.

How To Change Your Comment Links From NoFollow To DoFollow

There are some plug-ins that can do this for you, but as it is such a simple change to do I am going to show how to do it the ‘native’ way.

>>BEFORE YOU DO ANY OF THIS MAKE SURE AND BACK UP YOUR FILES<<

  1. Login to your CPanel
  2. Go to File Manager
  3. Click on wp-includes
  4. Download comment-template.php
  5. Open comment-template.php in Notepad (PC) or Text (Mac)
  6. Search for the word ‘external’
  7. <a href=’$url’ rel=’external nofollow’ class=’url’>$author</a> should appear
  8. Delete the word ‘nofollow’
  9. Save file (do not change the file name)
  10. Upload saved file to wp-includes. Overwrite existing file.

Your blog is now a DoFollow blog. Simple.

What Are Your Views On NoFollow Or DoFollow

Let me know how you feel. Would you comment on a NoFollow blog?

Does link juice mean anything to you?

Have I given you food for thought?

Talk to me in the DoFollow comment arena and get your reward.