09 December 2008

How to Delete ‘nofollow’ Attribute from Blogger Blog

Blogger by default, and other blogging software such as WordPress, automatically adds the "nofollow" microformat extension to all links from user generated content. User generated content is defined as comments or external sources such as linkbacks and trackbacks.

Difference Between NoFollow and Follow Links?

Follow Back Links

These links pass on all “link juice” to the site being linked to, which means search engines follow this link to your site and take note of it. This is why the link is called a follow link, and this is also why these links are the best for your SEO.


Pros

* Link Juice - The most obvious and lucrative benefit of follow back links is the link juice they send to your site. This will help boost your rankings in search engines because most search engines (Google being the main one) calculate your rankings based largely on the amount of links you have coming into your site.

* Increased Interaction - Every visitor of your site had something they were looking for. If you own a webmaster or make money blog or site like mine, follow back links can increase your interaction because these readers are often looking for ways to get a free back link when they visit your site.

* Higher Value - If you sell links on your site, they will no doubt sell for more if they are follow back links rather than if they are no follow back links.

Cons

* Search Engine Backlash - Search engines, Google in particular, are really cracking down on follow back links. They are not only penalizing the site that sells the links or distributes them, but if they have proof of a paid link they will go even further and penalize the buyer. This could backfire on you, so you have to make sure your links look and seem organic, all while not overdoing the whole process.

* Decreased Value - Too many follow links on your page and Google will label you as a link farm and discount the value of each individual link and may even reduce your rankings. Generally speaking, the fewer follow links on a page, the more juice to pass on to each one of those links.

NoFollow Back Links


No follow back links are just like any other link, except they have a small “rel=nofollow” added to the end of them, which means that a search engine crawler will not follow the link to the next site and therefore will not index your page and mark the link as a backlink. These links will still bring you traffic though, which means they are just as useful for normal visitors.


Pros

* Make Genuine Ones Count - By keeping the majority of your links as no follow, you will be making sure your actual in-post or on site links are worth more. So if you’re selling paid reviews and paid links, it may be in your best interests to keep the paid links nofollow to increase the sales of your paid reviews and to make the actual links in your post count more.

* Search Engine Favour - Google has repeatedly been quoted as saying that sites with more nofollow links will fare better in the future, and many are pointing this out as a clue on their part that if you use nofollow links for all your irrelevant or link sales, you will rank higher in the search engines.

* Made for Users - Even though a nofollow backlink may not be helpful to search engine or a webmaster, it is made for users. There is no visible difference in the link, first of all. Secondly, you are helping keep the web clean and to maintain its high quality. Finally, since you are not changing the appearance of a nofollow link, you are still sending traffic or allowing users to visit a site of a commentator or a friend.


Cons

* Link Juice - Once again, the primary and most important factor in the entire nofollow vs follow debate is the “juice” you get from high pagerank or high quality pages linking to yours. This juice is not passed on in a nofollow link and therefore you get minimal SEO benefit.

* Reduced Interaction - Some of your visitors might be “turned-off” by a nofollow link on blog comments, and many times they will not comment if the links the blog is providing are nofollow. This can be a big hit if your blog is fairly small and in a webmaster related niche as commenting and interaction on your site and blog will dip.

* Lost Revenue - If you sell text-links on your site and you mark them as nofollow, be ready to take a hit in your revenue. Like I’ve pointed out above, nofollow text links do not bring nearly as much money or sales as a follow text link will. The reason behind this is because people who are looking for text-links are primarily looking for SEO benefit.

As you see, the advantages of removing no follow attributes in your Blogger blog are not straightforward, and you might decide not to do that removal after all. But if you want to experiment with that modification, or you are positive that potential advantages are overwhelming, you will find below the Blogger hack on how to remove “no follow” attribute from you account.

How to Delete ‘nofollow’ Attribute on Blogger

1. Login into your blogger. Usually you will bring to Dashboard after login.
2. Choose your blog and click “Layout”.
3. Click “Edit Html” subtab on the “Template” tab.
4. Before removing ‘nofollow‘ attribute (as with any other template modification), it is recommended to backup you template by clicking Download Full Template and saving in the safe location on your Hard Drive. You can re-enable it if your template modification producing the errors.
5. Check “Expand Widgets” checkbox at at the top of the Edit Template text box. This expands the Blog Posts Widget Code within which is the comments code.
6. Scroll down the template and find below code

<dl id=’comments-block’>
<b:loop values=’data:post.comments’ var=’comment’>
<dt class=’comment-author’expr:id=’"comment-" + data:comment.id’>
<a expr:name=’"comment-" +data:comment.id’/>
<b:if cond=’data:comment.authorUrl’>
<a expr:href=’data:comment.authorUrl’ rel=’nofollow’><data:comment.author/></a>
<b:else/>
<data:comment.author/>
</b:if>
<data:commentPostedByMsg/>
</dt>


7. Detele the code rel=’nofollow’ (or you can remove only no, making it rel=’follow‘) and save the template.

You are done!

3 comments:

  1. Very good job on defining the differences and detailing the pros and cons of each. Felt like I was reading a textbook. Good work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for your encouraging remark.
    Good Luck!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I really do believe that nofollow will not be followed anymore. As people now can control relation between link juice and fidelity, blogger will reward their customary clients, content will be spread (wikipedia had decrease its participation numbers incredibly after nofollow adoption) and internet continues with its democratic and open character

    ReplyDelete

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