This is a post that I should have written some time ago.  I appreciate those who have added their dofollow blogs and have made the FollowList Dofollow Blog Directory a success.

I want to make sure that those who have added their blogs to get the most out of their listing.

I also want to take a moment to ask those who are adding their nofollow blogs to the list to please stop.  I am working on processes to identify and remove nofollow blogs, so may as well not waste your time adding them.

Too many blog owners are adding their blogs, without taking advantage of the blog directory name and description.  Following is a screen shot of the fields to complete when adding your blog.

Dofollow Blog Directory

Blog Name

The Blog Name is for your use, and is not seen in the directory listing.  It is used to help you identify your blogs.  By the way, you are allowed to have multiple dofollow blogs on the same Followlist account.

Blog Description

The Blog Description is the short description of your blog that will be the title of your blog listing.  It is best to use your main keyword for the blog description.  I see too many people not taking advantage of this field.

This will be the hyperlinked text to your blog, and is a dofollow link.  Choose your blog description wisely.

Blog URL

The Blog URL is self explanatory.

Short URL

A Short URL is assigned to your listing by default.  However, you can also define your own URL name, as long as the name is not already in use.

Dofollow Blog Category

Please place your blog in the proper Category, so those looking for blogs in your niche can find your blog.  The first category, Advertising, has several blogs in it that are not related to advertising.

Since it’s the first category and selected by default, I guess it’s easiest to just leave it a Advertising.  If your blog is not in the proper category, you are loosing visitors because they can’t find your blog.

In the future, I will make Misc the default category.

Blog Long Description

Blog Long Description should be used to give a 2-5 sentence description about what your blog is about.  You can leave this blank, but you shouldn’t.

New blogs and popular blogs are listed on the Followlist.com home page, but those with no long description are not listed.  This can be a PR3 Dofollow link for you if you fill out a good description.

In the future, I will probably tie a category selection, and a blog long description minimum length, to obtain a front page listing, rewarding those who take a few minutes to create a good listing.

Hopefully, this will help you get the most out of your dofollow blog listing.

I get Google Alerts on the term “DoFollow Blogs” to keep up with what is going on in the dofollow blog world.  If you don’t know about Google Alerts, I have written a post about how I use Google Alerts to monitor keywords.

For a while I’ve been seeing a number of people looking to hire someone to do their dofollow blog commenting for them.

Commenting on dofollow blogs can be a tedious task, and I have considered hiring someone to do my commenting.  I have seen offers of around $70 to $100 for 100 comments, which seems to be a reasonable price.

Is it a good idea to free up your time to take care of more important things, by having someone building links by commenting on dofollow blogs?

It may be a good idea for you, but there are risks involved.  If you are going to have someone else represent you by commenting with links going to your site, you need to be clear on what you are expecting of that person.

I would be clear about how many comments I want per day.  You don’t want all 100 links done in one day, but rather have them spread out over 2-4 weeks.

You want to make sure your person for hire knows where you want those links placed.  Do you want them on blogs related to your niche?  Do you want them on blogs related to your niche, and they must be dofollow blogs?

Do you want them on dofollow blogs only, preferably related to your niche, but some may be in other niches?  What percentage could be in other niches?

Are there niches you don’t want your comments placed on?  Make sure to spell out where you don’t want them posted.

Do you have Google PR requirements?  For example 20% on PR 4 or above, 30% on PR2 and PR3 and the rest on PR1 and above.

Are you going to provide the blogs to comment on, or are you doing to ask your hire to do that?

Do you require the comments be a certain length?  Perhaps a minimum of 150 characters?

I would be clear that you expect those comments to be quality comments, related to the post.

I would also provide keywords that you want your person to use for the website title, and provide them with the actual links you want them to use.

How are you going to monitor, or spot check, that good comments are being created?  Are you going to ask your person for hire to provide a list of all posts they comment on?

Wow, that’s a lot to ask of someone to do blog commenting, for me anyway.  I really don’t know if I could find someone to do my commenting for around $1 per comment, with all my requirements.

I guess that’s why I’m not hiring out dofollow blog comments.  Plus, I don’t know that I could trust anyone to represent me and my business when it comes to commenting on blogs.  So, I’ll just continue doing it myself.

Mike

I have noticed the crap comments on my blog going up recently.  It seems that commenting on dofollow blogs has become a popular link building strategy.

The problem is people are hiring out their blog commenting, or using automated tools to post generic comments that don’t relate to the blog post, or add any value to the blog posts.

This has caused me to question whether I should continue to keep this blog dofollow.  Since this blog is all about dofollow, it would make sense to keep the comments dofollow.

But, there may come a point in time, and it may be soon, that I will have to go nofollow due to the time it takes to monitor and delete crappy comments.

Recently, one of my favorite blogs, Untwisted Vortex, went from dofollow back to nofollow due to people leaving garbage for comments.

I absolutely understand why he needed to do that, and I’m afraid more dofollow blog owners will go back to nofollow because they are starting to get more bad comments than good comments.

For now, I will leave this blog as a dofollow on comments.  But, I will no longer automatically post comments and then come back and delete those comments that are bad.  I will now leave comments in moderation and only publish those that are quality comments.

This may lead to a few day delay in approving good comments since I moderate comments about every other day.

If you are using commenting on blogs as a link building strategy, I will say it again – Please respect the blog owner and leave good, quality comments.  Good comments will also help you improve the chances of someone visiting your site.

Mike

Do you promote affiliate programs on your blog?  If you do, I have a tip for you today on Wordpress link management.

As I read blogs, I see a lot of people linking from their content straight through to the product they are promoting, via their affiliate link.

If you have a small blog with little content, that’s okay.   But, if you are linking through to affiliate products on multiple blog posts, especially the same product on multiple blog posts, you are potentially setting yourself up for a lot of work.

What happens if the product you are promoting changes?  What if the affiliate program, or link changes?  What if the website shuts down?  You could be left with a lot of outgoing affiliate links that are worthless.

It’s happened to me.  I had links to a product I was promoting in several blog posts.  By following one of those links one day, I discovered the site was now being directed to a totally different and unrelated product.  I found a similar product to replace the original product, but had to review each blog post, find each link and change each link – what a pain that was!

I decided I would never do that again, and had to find a way to better manage my Wordpress links.

I knew I could create files on my domain that contained redirect code with my affiliate link.  Then, if I needed to make a product change I could just change the affiliate link in that redirect page.  I could just make one change in that file and not have to change each post.

But, since I was using Wordpress it seemed to make sense to find a solution within Wordpress instead of creating numerous redirect files.

I needed a good Wordpress link management plugin.  The great thing about Wordpress is you can find plugins for about anything you need to do.  I found a great, simple to use link management plugin – GoCodes.

Once the GoCodes plugin is installed, you give the link a name, and the URL you want it directed to.  Following is an example of a GoCodes link.

http://followlist.com/blog/go/bloggingtothebank

That link takes you to a how to make money blogging product.  If that product disappears, becomes obsolete, or if I just feel like promoting a different product, I change the URL in the GoCodes settings and those links point to the new product.

The GoCodes Wordpress link management plugin is slightly difficult to install because you have to add some code to your .htaccess file.  The GoCodes plugin ReadMe file explains how to make that change, and it’s not difficult.

The GoCodes Wordpress link manager also allows you to track clicks on your redirected links.  This can help you determine which products are converting well, and which products are not.  If a product is not converting, simply replace it with a new product in GoCodes.

There may also be another benefit to using a link management plugin like GoCodes.  Instead of the outgoing links in your content going to an outside affiliate site, the links are actually pointing back to your domain.  It would seem that this would benefit your blog in the eyes of the search engines.  I don’t have any evidence to support this, but I am sure it hasn’t hurt my search engine ranking.

I now use GoCodes on all of my outgoing links in my blog posts.  I have learned the hard way to manage my Wordpress links so that I can make link changes in one place within Wordpress instead of having to make changes in several blog posts.

I suggest you start using GoCodes, or some similar Wordpress link management plugin, today – before you create a ton of time consuming work for yourself somewhere do the road.

This is part #2 of the post related to the dofollow blog backlink strategy and if it really works.

In part one of dofollow backlink strategy, Robert was questioning whether his dofollow blog backlink strategy was working.  By looking at the Yahoo backlinks to Roberts site, I found a good number of links pointing back to his blog.

So, I have to question if Robert is thinking his backlink strategy is not working because he is not seeing the traffic he is expecting.

If a lack of traffic is Roberts gauge of success, there may be a few reasons Robert is not seeing a return on his dofollow blog backlink time investment.  Here are the suggestions I gave Robert, with some detail added.

1. Make sure you are using keywords you want to target in the comment title. First look at some comments on the blog to make sure the blog owner allows keywords. Some only approve proper names.  I tend to shy away from dofollow blogs that only allow me to use proper names.  If they allow keyword titles, or they use the KeywordLuv plugin, make sure you use the keywords you are wanting to target.

2. If you are targeting keywords that are too competitive, you are fighting a loosing battle.  For example, if Robert is using a generic keyword such as “politics” for his keywords, he will never rank well due to the amount of competition he will have to face.  He will need to use more targeted keywords that have less competition to get on the first page of Google.

4.  Use different keywords.  If you use the same exact keyword on all blog commenting you do, Google may get suspicious and it may hurt you.  Change up your keywords so you have a variety of related keywords going to your blog.

5.  Don’t always use your main blog for the Website.  Use individual post URLs for some of your comments.  This is often called deep linking, and will help Google find individual posts, and send traffic to them.  Spread those links around to several pages (posts) on your site.

6. Make sure you leave quality comments so your comments are approved.  I delete about half the comments left on my blog.  It’s usually because they are not related to the post being commented, so I know they never read the blog post.  Or, the comment is just a short comment that adds absolutely no value to the blog post.  Don’t waste your time commenting on blogs if you’re not going to do it right.  Make good comments that will get approved.

7. Don’t just comment on the same blogs. It’s okay to comment on the same blogs over and over, especially if they have a Top Commentors plugin installed.  But, you also need to spread your comments out over multiple blogs.

I would also give Robert one more suggestion.  If I were going to spend the time building a lot of backlinks to a website, I would want to do it to a website that I had total control over.  Robert has done a lot of work, created a lot of unique content on Blogger.com.

If it were me, I would move the content to a Wordpress blog on my own domain and web host.  You can get a domain for less than $10 per year and web hosting for less than $7 per month.  With your own domain, web host and Wordpress blog you have more control over your website and you can do more with it.

I hope Robert and Sally don’t mind me using their comments for this post about dofollow blog backlink strategy.  They do get a link back to their sites, so that should help

Your comments are always welcome, and who knows, your quality comments may lead me to do a post related to your comments and you may get a link back to your site in a blog post – another reason to leave good and related comments.

Mike

I have had a couple of great questions and comments lately that I have answered in comments, but thought I would elaborate on the questions/comments here.

The question had to do with the dofollow blog backlink strategy and if it really works.

As I started writing this post, it got to be pretty long, so I will have divided it into two parts.

This is part #1.

Robert from The Silent Majority asked the question below.
“I have been aggresively pursuing the do follow philosophy. As of yet I have not seen much of a return on my time investment. As I am new at this I assume that I am doing something wrong, any suggestions.”

Sally of Fast Flat Sale was good enough to respond to Robert’s question below.
“Answer to Robert, I too have been commenting on do-follow websites for nearly a month now. I have built up over 1500 backlink in yahoo but only 4 backlinks in Google. I’m not sure why but I know it won’t be an overnight thing, it does take abit of time.”

First of all, Sally is doing the right thing by monitoring the number of backlinks that she is getting.  She knows how many backlinks she is building by checking with Yahoo and Google.  How would you know if your backlink strategy is working, or not, if you aren’t looking at backlink numbers periodically.

Sally also notes a big difference between the number of backlinks Yahoo reports and the number Google reports.  I believe this is normal.  It’s my understanding that Yahoo is a better gauge of actual backlinks, because Google does not want to give too much backlink info away.

So, my suggestion to Robert is to first find out how many backlinks you have from Yahoo. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ Input your blog into the top Explore URL box.

In the Results you will see the number of pages Yahoo has indexed, and Inlinks, the number of sites pointing back to your site.

Click on the Inlinks button, then I like to select “Except from This Domain” in the Show Inlinks Box, and “Entire Site” in the To box.  This will give you the number of links Yahoo sees pointing to your site from all sites excluding links pointing to other pages on the same site.

When I do this to Robert’s site, I see he does have a good number of links pointing back to his site.  So, it could be Robert is not seeing the results of the backlinks, in terms of visitors, that he is expecting.

Tomorrow, I will finish with part #2 of this discussion on whether the dofollow blog backlink strategy really works.  I will detail what I suggest, to make sure you get the most out of your dofollow blog comments.

Mike

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