Everyday I check my spam comments and wonder what these people are thinking. Clearly a bunch of SEO experts are out there wasting their time and energy trying to create link relationships that add no value. They are also wasting the bloggers time and energy.

You should blog because you have something interesting to say. And you should comment because you have something interesting to say.

If you want your blog/website to rise in the rankings, write something interesting. That will do it.

I encourage bloggers to leave comments on other blogs. I actually encourage bloggers to leave more comments on other sites than posts on their own sites. But I encourage the commenting to get them into the conversation, not to explicitly generate links to their own sites.

Too many bloggers just post. They don’t respond to comments on their own blog and don’t leave comments elsewhere. That is like talking to yourself in an empty room.

You’re right, no one should be commenting with the intent of seo benefit period.

In the end, my point is less practical and more philosophical.

As you point out, I too am a victim of auto nofollow. As I imagine is the case with so many others, at this point, the principle doesn’t outweigh the impracticality of hacking out the nofollows. However, I am looking at other hosts who haven’t implemented the auto nofollow.

In the meantime, all I can do is hope for a selective nofollow future.

Keep up the great blog!

I just read your post, but here’s the issue: you are saying how things ‘should’ work rather than what they are in reality. Like it or not, this is the situation lawyers are dealing with. You can’t help clients build a strategy based on how you *want* the world to work. Right?

Also, I noticed you haven’t hacked your own blog to remove the no-follow attribute on comments. And links embedded within individual comments are completely disabled. Will you be changing that?

It seems, however, that you are missing part of the technical side here. Bloggers don’t choose to ‘no-follow’ links; but rather blog software auto-converts ALL comment links into no-follow. See the Google link above which shows this is the default practice of all major blog software companies.

As an example, I just checked your blog’s source code, and none of the comments are getting link value. It’s just a default function. The links go in normally, but come out as ‘no-follow’, and thus worthless for SEO.

My point being, most bloggers have no clue about no-follow, but ALL of the blog software companies do. And those companies, along with Google, put an end to this nonsense 4 years ago.

Unless they are using a blog platform other than WordPress, Lexblog, MT, Blogger, or a host of others. This is a standard install feature, and one that requires a plugin or code hack to alter.

Blog comments help build relationships, not rankings.

The truth is, many bloggers haven’t adopted the “no-follow” tag as standard. So, there is still some seo value to commenting.

On the other hand, comment spamming is an absolute no-no. Just like every other type of writing on the web, commenting should be relevant and value-based.

Don’t comment for the sake of commenting. If you don’t have something worthwhile to add, don’t add anything.

Commenting, as a general strategy, has its place. However, it certainly doesn’t belong amongst your seo firm’s core strategies.

I have read the post you mention, and simply put, I don’t agree with the recommendation he gave. Blog comments help deliver new relationships, which can be a great value; but they do absolutely nothing to help your search rankings. Further, if lawyers sink low enough to drop comments similar to the one left on Nick Holmes post, then their business & online reputation will pay a price.

As to the merit of the tactic itself, check the links I cited in this post. My opinion is well supported. You can also do a ‘view source’ in your browser, and see that all comment links have a portion of the tag that reads: alt=”nofollow”.