I have just been gloating at how I have been maximizing the DoFollow movement by traipsing along the trail of DoFollow blogs, reading and commenting merrily along. I was under the impression that merely leaving comments relevant to the post I had just read on a DoFollow blog would result in a link back to my page. Apparently, it ain't necessarily so. (If I am again mistaken here, I would love to be enlightened some more.)
According to Andy Beard, from whose blog I learned how to remove nofollow from my blogger template, one should instead choose to comment on posts tackling a topic that you have also written on in your own blog. Your comment, while being relevant to the post, should also be linked not just to your blog in general but to your specific post on the topic. Links should always lead to related content and should also be "wrapped" in related and meaningful content.
I take this to mean, for example, that when I go to a DoFollow blog I better search for a post that talks about something I myself had already written about. The simplest way would be to find a post on DoFollow. After reading the post, I could then make a meaningful comment and leave a link within it - choosing relevant anchor text - leading back to my specific post on the topic. I hope I got it right this time.
Of course, I am not limited to DoFollow posts. I can find other posts on topics that I have also tackled.
Perhaps reading other blogs will also give me an idea of topics I would want to write on, giving my own opinions and angles. I could link to the blog that inspired me and return there to leave a comment linked to my new post.
So now I have a new way of doing things here.
What I have been doing hasn't been a total waste, though. As of this moment, this blog has been favorited by 107 members at Technorati and has 148 links from 89 blogs, upping its Technorati rank to 47,671. And I just saw that I have a Google page rank of 2/10. Not bad for less than two weeks' participation in the Favorites Exchange and a little more than a week in DoFollow, and for a blog that's just little more than a month old.
Things will improve even more as I implement what I have just learned, I hope.
And the more I surf and read, the more I learn. Part of my processing is expressing all those lessons learned here, both to share with my readers and to solicit advice in case I got things wrong again. I very much appreciate constructive straightening out.
P.S.
Engtech very kindly dropped by here and left a comment with a wonderful gift attached - a free software to automatically fave back everyone who faved you at Technorati. Clueless me had to go ask him how to use the software after I download it. He again kindly gave me instructions. Now I have it up and running. Hurray!!! This will save us a lot of time, folks. Just remember to run the program often, he says, because it may miss a few links on first pass but will definitely get all of them with succeeding passes.
Angels abound on the blogosphere and there are more to meet out there...
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Technorati tags: Favorites Exchange, Link Exchange, e-gold, make money online, work at home, money, writing, work
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15 comments:
Hi MJ.
If you want to know if the link given in any comment counts for google, you "just" have to look in google.com whether they picked up the link or not.
The idea of gathering a bunch of links is old SEO news. The new logic is that a link from a page with a topic similar to yours, means more than a link from let's say an eskimo (unless you write about eskimos).
That's why I asked you 2 weeks ago for a reciprocal link, as stay at home work is oh so related to my blog, so the reciprocal link is very valuable for both of us.
Indeed, I'm new at all these so there's a lot to learn. I see from your blog that it's new as well but you know a lot more about SEO and other important stuff. I'll be reading your blog to learn more :) Thanks for visiting!
Grats on your site's improvement! You got me interested in Page Ranks and links and such. Thanks so much for the valuable info!
One of the problems is that you are using blogger for most of your blogs, which doesn't as far as I know give you the ability to trackback/pingback another blog.
It would be looked on by many bloggers that if you left a comment signing your name as "Dofollow list" or something similar, it would be spammy.
Haloscan offer 2 services (or they did last time I looked)
One is a replacement comment system - I wouldn't use it because it isn't dofollow friendly.
The second service is trackbacks, allowing you to send a trackback to any blog.
You wouldn't need to use this with Blogger, because blogger works with linkbacks, it is like a search function, not an interaction / notification system.
With a trackback, your link text is the title of a post.
As an example on my blog, I would be quite happy you leaving comments using Manila Mom or Maia Jose, but I normally delete links from people who leave comments signing themselves as UK Web Designer, no matter how relevant the comment was.
Sitewide links and blogrolls are very heavily discounted by search engines, much better to use a link in content.
because if the link system is not like that, it will be dangerous for "other websites" and those legit website to a topic because of bloggers linking and linking back because of DoFollow.
I would also find it weird to sign my comments with keywords. But is it okay to put in relevant links inside the body of the comments? That's how I understood your post.
Thanks, too, Trinity! Now to have fun while learning about gaming - on which I'm also clueless - I go to YOUR site :)
Nietzche, that's true. That's also why it's always safer to moderate comments.
"I was under the impression that merely leaving comments relevant to the post I had just read on a DoFollow blog would result in a link back to my page. Apparently, it ain't necessarily so."
Yes, it results in a link back to your page that search engine follows. But it will only help in optimizing your homepage and not a specific page on your blog. I've been doing it for months and my macuha.com blog is now a PR4 :), but of course, the other pages have different Pagerank. As I see it, Andy Beard's suggestion is to spread the link love not only to your homepage but to a specific post on your blog, so that even those post pages will have better search engine rankings.
But linking to a specific post on comments looks like spam to me, unless you put it on comment's body. Besides, the input form says "Your website:" and not "Related Post from your website:"
Just my 2 cents.
Yes, Marhgil, I meant leaving a link to a specific post inside the comment itself, through relevant anchor words. The signature remains as Manila Mom, linked to the homepage. Is this allowed - having another link in the body of the comment?
Thanks for clarifying about the signature link still being counted but to the homepage.
I think I do prefer having my homepage rank high soon, even if the other pages still lag behind. I can work on them later so they can catch up. It's the homepage that matters most, right?
So I guess I should find dofollow blogs that generally focus on the same topics as Manila Mom and comment there.
One thing that mystifies me is how my Cafe Romanza blog got a PR3 when I haven't been using it much as a link to my comments. I was even feeling bad about not having enough time to promote it as much as Manila Mom.
Having another link on the body of the comment is allowed, as long as you are linking to a relevant blog post that will give additional information to the topic, otherwise, the blog owner will think it as spam and delete it :D
I think I do prefer having my homepage rank high soon, even if the other pages still lag behind. I can work on them later so they can catch up. It's the homepage that matters most, right?
Yes, it's the homepage that matter's most. When they say that your blog is PR 4, they usually (or all of the time) refer to the homepage.
So I guess I should find dofollow blogs that generally focus on the same topics as Manila Mom and comment there.
One thing that mystifies me is how my Cafe Romanza blog got a PR3 when I haven't been using it much as a link to my comments. I was even feeling bad about not having enough time to promote it as much as Manila Mom.
Related links (links coming from the same niche as your blog) are valued higher than unrelated links. A thousand link from unrelated sites can be an equivalent of a single link from a related site with a high PR. Maybe, that's what happened to your Cafe Romanza blog. Maybe, a link from Manilenya gave it a Pagerank boost because they are both in Tagalog (just guessing here).
It must have been something like that. Great! That means I've been doing something right - I was using the Cafe Romanza link basically when commenting on fellow Pinay posts since they are the main audience for my Filipino romance novels.
And to think - all the work I put into promoting Manila Mom is about more than a hundred times the effort I put in promoting Cafe Romanza.
More lessons learned.
I set up a randomized feed list at my blog that also spits out the titles. I look at it every day, and if a blog with do follow posts an article with an ontopic title, I'm there! I read and if the post is relevant comment on that post.
I find this much more convenient than using Feedreader because I visit my own blog every day! :)
Thanks for dropping by, Lucia!
I do the rounds from the Bumpzee DoFollow community myself. It's fun!
This is kind of confusing to me. I didn't know that their is a need for you to link to a related site post in my blog in order for it to matter. I have felt that by someone leaving a link, although nice and thoughtful, would seem like they are trying link up a storm. I agree it would only make sense if the link provided related content and value. I just didn't know that it was necessary.
I have been corrected on this, Cade. Apparently,any comment on a dofollow blog IS counted as a link to your site. That is, if you left your url.
However, the link becomes more valuable if you comment on a topic which you have also written about in your blog. It would then also be better to leave the specific url of your post instead of your main page url.
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