Don Lawson wrote an insightful post asking, “Are Do-Follow Bloggers Dishonest?”

The post is rather convicting in that it points out the ways that some bloggers are trying to implement a Do-Follow strategy, but falling quite short.

For those who do not know what the Do-Follow movement is, it is a movement that strips the “no-follow” attribute from a link a reader has left on your site. In theory this makes the reader’s comment more valuable from a search engine optimization perspective.

The Problem with the Do-Follow Movement

Don’s post highlights a serious problem with the Do-Follow movement: not all of the bloggers are honest about it. Either that, or some bloggers aren’t aware that the “no-follow” attribute is still being displayed.

One of the points that is brought up is that some bloggers join the movement without realizing action needs to be taken. This action is usually in the form of installing a plugin, placing a badge on a site, or manually editing code.

Spammers Reign Free

Another issue with Do-Follow that Don brings up is how spammers have taken over his comments. As a result, he dropped out of the Do-Follow movement and opted instead to reward his top commenters.

RA Project and Do-Follow

The Reader Appreciation Project has always been a supporter of the Do-Follow movement.

Andy Beard, a long-time proponent of the Do-Follow movement, has a nice list of tools to banish no-follow from comments and/or trackbacks. From that list we tried the Link Love plugin (site seems to be down, but e-mail me if you want to try the plugin).

I modified the Link Love plugin to remove the no-follow attribute from all comments, regardless if the commenter is a first-timer or not.

RA Project, Do-Follow, and Comment Signatures

There are some bloggers who disapprove of readers leaving signatures in their comments. Not here.

In further support of the Do-Follow cause, leaving a signature in your comment is fine. We do request you keep the signature to only one line with only one link (as per the our Comment Policy). All we request is that your comment adds to the conversation.

Are We Going to Disable Do-Follow?

As of this writing, I have no plans to drop out of the Do-Follow movement. I love the reader comments here and feel that “no-follow” is absolutely unnecessary.

If anything, I’d like to find a way to make the readers’ comments stand out more on this site. I’ll definitely keep this in mind for the upcoming RA Project re-design.

Conclusion

It is not our intention here to scam the readers and be a proponent of Do-Follow while still having the “no-follow” attribute in our comments. If for any reason you see otherwise, please contact us immediately.

We appreciate all comments here as long as they adhere to our comments policy. We allow signatures. We allow relevant links. To sum it up, we’re really not too picky as long as you add to the conversation.

What do you think about the “Do-Follow” movement? Is it helping the concept of reader appreciation, or could it be that it is just adding more confusion?

Thanks for reading.

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