Ever since I started showing up on those silly “dofollow” blog lists a little over a year ago, I’ve wished that there was an easy way that I could choose to reward ONLY my friends by removing rel=nofollow from their comment links (while leaving it intact for people I don’t know yet). Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate everybody who stops in here at tmtips and leaves a good comment. However, I don’t feel at all obligated to provide a keyword anchored link to every yahoo who finds my url on some list, then pops in to me “what a good writer/photographer/theme customizer” I am. I know that a few of my friends, including Lin from Tellin it Like it Is and RT from An American Living in the Philippines have experienced similar frustrations with comment spammers and dofollow divers.
However, for people I already know, and/or those who have over time, left quality comments (ie: contributed to my blog), I DO want to give them those good keyword anchored links … ideally from indexed and ranked pages.
In the past, I’ve tried using plug-ins such as Lucia’s Linky Love, which only removes “nofollow” after a certain amount of posts. In theory, this sounds like it should be a good solution. However, in practice, all it really means is that the “hit and run” commenters will leave 3-5 quick and easy 1 or 2 sentence comments, instead of just one.
Good news … I think I’ve finally found a solution.
It’s a plug-in called SEO Super Comments
Obviously, given the title of the plug-in, there are some pretty cool benefits to me in using this code. Each and every comment is now it’s own page. And for most commenters, their name links to that page … not their website (they do however get a dofollow link from the individual comment page). What this means is that if you have alot of people leaving good comments, it’s quite possible to get a lot more pages indexed by the search engines (read the plug-in page linked above for details).
The feature that I like the best though, is on the SEO Super Comments options page. There is a place where I can go in and input urls that I want to be “dofollow” right from the post (the one most likely to eventually have PR). In other words I can choose exactly which of my friends should get keyword anchored followed links. And since the majority of the comment links will now lead to internal pages, those few followed outbound links could potentially be much more valuable than they otherwise might have been. (even when all those other links had rel=nofollow”, they were still outbound, and with google’s recent change in how they calculate outbound PR they diluted the “good” links).
Right now, I’ve only put a couple of urls in there. I’m sure I’ve left a few of my friends out … but it wasn’t on purpose.
To be honest, as busy as I am lately, probably the best way to bring any oversight to my attention, and have your site added to my “personal” dofollow list, is to go ahead and leave some good quality comments on my posts … 
Todd
Todd,
This SEO Super Comments plugin sounds really cool. I have Lucia’s Linky Love plugin (I think I got it after your recommendation) and I too am not that impressed with it. The SEO Super Comments plugin sounds way better.
Doesn’t Comment Luv give automatic do-follow backlinks already?
Twitter: whoistodd
Hi Denise,
I have nothing against the Linky Love plugin … for it’s time, it was actually very useful … unfortunately, people being people, found a way to “defeat” the concept.
As for CommentLuv, to the best of my knowledge, it does not automatically do-follow the links … you have to use another plugin to take off rel=nofollow. The way I see it though, those comment luv links should do a good job of driving direct traffic … if you write good post titles, and quality comments.
That sounds interesting – I will got ahead and investigate – does it work retrospectively – I have an awful lot of comments…
Yeah LLL never really did it for me either!
Lissie´s last blog ..Do You Have a Plan B to Support Your Passive Income Business?
Twitter: whoistodd
Lis,
Yes, it converted all of the old posts. However, it is a little bit “theme dependent” … for some reason I couldn’t figure out how to make it work with my Justin Tadlock’s hybrid theme (which I really liked otherwise) … one of the reasons for the new look.
I have been considering do-follow on a couple of my blogs as a way to help people out. I think this plugin may do the trick.
BTW–like this theme you have on here, the elegant themes guy does really good work for just $19 a year. This is one of his newer ones I think.
AL
Allyn´s last blog ..Natural Links And Online Friends Help Us Get By!
Twitter: whoistodd
Hey Al,
Thanks for stopping by. I think I joined that Elegant Themes sometime last year, I just never found a reason to use any of the themes until now.
I did want to say I’ve been enjoying your blog here lately too … the videos are hilarious … although, I have to admit I haven’t made it all the way to the end of one yet. (my wife and kids are Very understanding about my “computer time”, but 20-30 minutes with the headphones on still doesn’t fly most of the time).
Todd
Sounds good, I will look into it further, so far my only method was moderating my comments by hand, i.e. approving only really good ones and deleting the “waht a great blog you have” ones. Sometimes, when I liked the comment, but not the site / blog it linked to, I just deleted the url but left the comment otherwise intact. I was also looking at the top commenter plugin, but it doesn’t support keywordluv ;-( Seems the one you found might be a great alternative, thanks, SY
hospitalera´s last blog ..Brand: [insert name here]
Twitter: whoistodd
Hi SY,
Actually, my ultimate goal, in an “ideal” world, would be to have a blog that gets 100+ comments on some posts … with 85% of them being dofollowed links … because they’re being left by people that I already know, like and trust. And here’s the added benefit that most people don’t take into consideration … once you have a good group of friends who know like and trust each other, getting keyword anchored links for the that new xbox, cooking, or even personal finance site that you want to use to actually make some money, becomes a whole heck of a lot easier.
Todd
Sounds like a good dream! Would the plugin work also with Keywordluv? It would be great if we could use keywords AND our names. SY
Niche Marketing´s last blog ..Brand: [insert name here]
Hi Todd,
Woah, the new theme threw me off for a second. Looks good! I haven’t ever heard of SEO Super Comments, so I’ll definitely take a look at that plugin and check with RT to see if it works with my current theme. Those pesky spammers have been driving me batty. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time deleting so-called comments than actually writing posts and responding to REAL comments.
Twitter: whoistodd
Hi Lin,
I swear I really wasn’t planning to change themes again … I liked the other one. But, the fact that I couldn’t figure out how to make this comment plugin work was all the push I needed to switch.
Hi Todd, I am constantly amazed at how someone constantly comes up with new plugins for WordPress. I reckon that is one of the many positives of having a WP blog.
I don’t think I will use this plugin on Wassupblog as I’ve made such a big deal about it being dofollow, but it may fit in with one of my other blogs.
Sire´s last blog ..Have The Gremlins Invaded Twitter?
[...] Now, not everyone is a fan of becoming a dofollow blog, because it sometimes does lead to people leaving stupid nonsnsical comments just so they can get a link back to their site. Don’t they realize that there is a spammers hell waiting for them? Luckily Todd of Todd’s Tips has found a plugin that will enable you to Reward Only Your Blogging Friends With DoFollow Links. [...]
I have been using that SEO Super Comments plugins for a few weeks now and I have even noticed an increase of traffic to the actual comments left… so very useful!
I would recommend checking out his other SEO plugins as well…very useful.
Now that sounds like a plugin I’d be willing to try. I have been “looking” for something like this for quite a while. I say that in the lose term because I was never actively looking but rather open to it when I saw it. I have used a plugin that dofollowed comments after the commenter left x number of comments which I never publicized as to avoid hit and run comments like you mentioned above. I will def look into it and try it out.
The Real Josh´s last blog ..Model Successful People to Grow Your Market and Brand
Twitter: whoistodd
Hi Josh,
So far I’m really liking this plugin … it’s doing exactly what I intended. I’ve got a list on plugin admin page of about a dozen sites of people (yours is now added) who I’ve interacted with on a regular basis, and who I Want to give good followed links to. Another unintended benefit (although it actually feels a little “evil”), is that for the hit-and-run commenters who found my blog via a do-follow list, the comment links still appear to be followed … even though they now lead to a page on my site, instead of to the commenters site. I still get the traffic from those lists (every once in a while someone who I might want to interact with on a long term basis may find my site via those lists), but now I don’t have to worry about “accidentally” linking out to “bad neighborhoods” (which I think is really the primary “danger” of having a totally dofollow” comment policy).
I totally hear you and have returned the favor. I think you mention a majority of great points. I noticed something different with your comment structure when I first left a comment but did really think to much of it as my purpose was not link juice. But being able to reward friends and prevent hit and run link juice is great. To bad I didn’t know about this plugin two years ago before G changed the way it dealt with link juice, ha. This would have been awesome in the pr sculpting days. Now, it is what it is.
The Real Josh´s last blog ..Model Successful People to Grow Your Market and Brand
I like the idea of rewarding your visitors with dofollow links as long as the contribute something with usefull comments. I also think comments like “Hi I like you blog” don’t deserve dofollow. Spam and obvious advertising deserve nothing.
With plugins it’s easier to manage and identify good contributors. I use it on my blogs (not yet on the above as it just in starting phase, but will have it in a month or so).
Hey Todd, back again mate. I had another look at the plugin and I’ve noticed that you can actually make it so all comments are left as dofollow so I’ve installed it just to see if it has any SEO benefits.
I’m not sure how the ‘every comment is now it’s own page’ thing works?
Sire´s last blog ..The Journey To Bloggersville
OK. I’ve just disabled the plugin as the author’s urls are no longer showing their blogs, but a link to the new page it generates?
Sire´s last blog ..The Journey To Bloggersville
Twitter: whoistodd
Hi Sire,
I stopped using this plugin a little while back, because it didn’t want to “play nice” with my blog’s theme. That being said, in your case it was doing exactly what it’s supposed to …
The link from your comments opens to a new page … but author link from that new page, is a dofollowed link to the commenters URL.
In the plugin admin section, there is also a “white list” where you can add urls that will be linked to right from the original comments page. So, for instance, you could set it up so that when Mitch leaves a comment on your site, the link goes right to his page … but when some other Tom, Dick or Harry drops in for the first time, that new page is created … he still gets a link, but you also get a whole nother page for google to spider and possibly index.
Hope that helps explain things.
Todd
Actually it wasn’t Todd, that was the problem. The link on the new page was the same as the link on the original page.
I used the white list feature and gave it a test, and even that didn’t work. I even deleted the cache in case that was the problem and no dice. Not to worry, it was worth giving it a shot.
Sire´s last blog ..The Journey To Bloggersville
Twitter: whoistodd
ahh … in that case, I don’t blame you for ditching it then … you probably had something similar to me … some sort of conflict with a term or two in your comments.php file … oh well.