Do Follow Blog List thats Accurate?

January 6, 2010 12:42 PM

How do I find an accurate list of do follow blogs? These are blogs which do not have the rel=no follow tag on their comment posts links.

I have educated myself about offsite SEO "search engine optimization" and I know that in theory I need to find good blogs which lack the rel=no follow tag to post comments on with links bag to my blogs, sites etc. However, I have used the search function at a site like followlilst and it has given me results which are indeed nofollow. What gives? Is there a place I can find an honest to goodness list of dofollow blogs?

Since its offsite SEO I am looking to target high page ranking blogs (ideally) on the topic I blog about, where I could leave meaningful comments and benefit from it.


Am I incredibly behind the times? Has the internet once again evolved faster than I can keep up?

Please I am not in the market for a consultant just want friendly Askmefi advice. thanks.

posted by Twinedog to computers & internet (10 answers total)

I think what you want to do is known as comment spamming (even if in subtle form) and has resulted in all the no-follow tags you seem to have found.

What if you were to write comments insightful enough to draw the attention of the folks writing the blogs you purport to admire? Then they might be interested enough to read your blog, and you might find them actually linking to your content.

But, I confess, I may myself be behind the times.
posted by OmieWise at 12:53 PM on January 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

Don't waste your time with SEO voodoo. Nofollow is a common SEO bugbear that people waste a lot of time worrying about. Google is a very smart company run by smart people. All the little tricks you've heard about on WebMasterWorld are largely bogus or wishful thinking. What matters is whether you have good content, that is well organized and cleanly presented, not whether you can beat the system by exploiting blind spots and loopholes.

Commenting on other blogs should be used as a means to foster relationships with their authors and their communities. Your goal should not be to artificially inflate your search engine status by mass commenting, it should be to add value to their sites in the hopes that your contributions are recognized and the blog author decides to link to you.

SEO is a way to ensure that search bots can read and interpret your page. It's not a way to trick a search bot into thinking your page is more valuable than it truly is.
posted by mpbx at 12:59 PM on January 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

People like this are why I don't allow comments on my blog anymore. Using my content to promote yours is not how things work.

If you want links to your site, buy an ad.
posted by jrockway at 1:18 PM on January 6, 2010 [5 favorites]

"offsite SEO" is a euphemism for "spamming." Please don't do that. And, if I may be so bold as to gauge the collective temperature of Metafilter, don't come here expecting a warm reception to the idea.
posted by adamrice at 1:33 PM on January 6, 2010

IMO, there is a grey area here.

I blog about two topics - my daughter's rare cancer/our grief and surrogacy/infertility/ivf. I have definitely gotten to know a lot of bloggers on different topics, and comment back and forth with them. I have certainly had traffic come over to my blogs as a result of this, and often (with or without my asking) those kind folks have linked to my blog (and vice versa). My goal in making those comments is to participate in the community; to get support; to talk to people. Sometimes, if I have written a really good post that answers a question someone has raised, I'll go ahead and say "I wrote about this on my blog, here is a link if you are interested. No intent to make an inappropriate comment, just expanding the conversation" or something like that. I do always include my blog (whichever one is relevant) in the comment form if given the opportunity, but I have NEVER written a comment just as an excuse to drop a link.

If your intent is to participate in a community, fine. But if your intent is to appear to participate for the purpose of generating links, you are spamming. To the extent you care about this, link schemes and other SEO can sometimes break Google or other guidelines. I for one really hate getting certain comments where I have to really look at them and carefully, critically consider whether they are just spam or a real comment. So please don't 'pretend' to participate in people's content.

I'm not intending to unduly criticize you or pileon, but you asked if you are "behind the times" and I just think that if you want to earn cred, respect, etc., do things the right way. Be known for the content you produce, not spammy methods of getting attention.
posted by bunnycup at 1:52 PM on January 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

I can't think of a single reason to do this outside of comment spamming. Since you're obviously interested in SEO value, you should know right now that comment spamming will not get you anywhere and could in fact harm you since search engines are savvy to it.

You likely will not find much helpful advice here on the list you are seeking as I can't think of a single person that feels you add value by comment spamming.
posted by Elminster24 at 2:22 PM on January 6, 2010

Google do follow blog and you'll be provided with a list of suggested google searches but I would avoid this kind of link development strategy.

It would be better to contact respected blogs you like and offer to do a guest blog post or something similar.

Building relationships is better SEO than hit and run URL dropping. And as someone said here, Google peeps are smart and your search rankings will suffer.

Someone sees a way to get a brief bump up in their traffic and then everyone else does it and google finds a way to penalize them. Follow links. EDU links. Domain age. Rinse and repeat.
posted by Scott H at 5:07 PM on January 6, 2010

ref=nofollow is baked into every modern blogging platform (Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress, MovableType, Drupal, et al) and has been for years now.

Most likely that list was current when it was made. But everyone has long since updated their blog software. I don't even know how I'd remove ref=nofollow from my blog if I wanted to - it's not like a setting that you can control.

If there are any sites that allow do follow in their comments, it would have to be hosted on a custom blogging platform. I'm sure there are some of those, but I'm not aware of any.

Put it this way: any site that allows follow on its comments is by default so marginal and behind-the-times that it wouldn't give you much Google juice to comment there.
posted by ErikaB at 5:13 PM on January 6, 2010

ErikaB has it: most blogging systems are nofollow by default. Wordpress, which is perhaps the most popular, requires installing a special plug-in to even have the option to turn off nofollow. And nobody does this because nobody wants spam.

My blog is on a bunch of "dofollow lists", which means I get hundreds of spam comments a day, and I use nofollow anyway.

Please don't be a spammer.
posted by mmoncur at 7:15 PM on January 6, 2010

If you'd like links from other blogs, write content that they'll want to link to in their own posts.
posted by anildash at 9:37 PM on January 6, 2010