I wrote this page so that you do not have to "view source" to ascertain if I use the "no-follow" tag in the comments section of this Blog, or not. By reading this you can be safe in the knowledge that I do not employ it.

The no-follow tag was invented as a method of trying to eliminate Blog comment spam, which was playing havoc with dear Google's algorithm. So what you'll discover now is that the majority of Blogging platforms now ship with the "no-follow" tag included in the code. You can easily check that out by "viewing source" and looking at the HTML itself, if you do not know what that means it's time to learn.

No-follow?

Yes, this is a snippet of code which instructs search engine robots to not follow urls in a web, or more to the point, to not pass on any page rank to the linked page. The logic here is that unscrupulous webmasters/mistresses were using robots (still do) to automatically post comments with a url back to their site which they are/were pimping.

Why take it out?

I have not employed it on my Blog here because I think that if you are kind enough to come along and leave a comment the least I can do is share some Google Juice back to your site, it would be pretty selfish otherwise, which is common practise actually. As well as that I have an anti-spam comment system in place which is perfectly adequate of detecting a human.

Technorati Tags: engines google juice no-follow page rank ranking robots search spam google juice no-follow spam robots search engines ranking page rank

Having been involved with the web, in a business sense, since the mid 90s I’ve found that it has been essential to practise search engine optimisation (SEO) in every aspect of my online work from forums, blogs, articles and links, you name it, my head is in SEO.

If you are reliant on the internet for your traffic it makes crystal clear sense that you ought to optimise all of your content for the search engines, to provide them tasty food that will keep them coming back for more, time and time again.

Ignoring appropriate SEO is akin to taking cash and setting fire to it, if your site is not optimised to rank very well you are simply throwing away prospects and essentially income, from whatever means that may be, affiliate links, google adsense or product up-selling.

I’m also fully aware of the power of “word-of-mouth” or new/social media communities and I am an advocate for that approach 100%, but the secret really is in a blended approach, you can have a large community all digging your content for you with various tools, but that community is infinitesimally small to the power of ranking on the first page of google within a competitive niche, period.

The other thing many people working exclusively in social or new media don't always get is that their own tight-knit community of "diggers" are often not the prospects, not the customers, so hence no income generation!

I have operated for a variety of clients over the years helping them to optimise for their niche market, tweaking code and content here and there and creating a variety of campaigns and methods for organic growth of back-links (essential activity), of course social media now helps immensely with the later IF the rel="nofollow" tag is omitted.

I am available for SEO and Social Media contracts, just inquire and we can have a chat about what you want to achieve.

I’ll gently challenge you and leave you with the tools to empower yourself too.

Technorati Tags: engine forums google links media online optimisation prospects ranking search social tools traffic seo media social optimisation search google engines