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This post is about commenting on so called “dofollow-blogs”.
Does commenting as a link building strategy make sense?
Spoiler alert: it doesn’t in most cases.
It’s not a real link building strategy to be honest.
Yet it can make sense. Let me explain why!
WTH are “dofollow blogs” and why do they exist?
First off: what are we talking about? Dofollow blogs?
- “Dofollow blogs” are blogs that allow commenting.
- On top of that they allow adding links to comments.
- The best thing is that these links don’t have the “nofollow” attribute added to them.
Hence dofollow as in “do follow” alias the opposite.
It’s a made up word. There is no “dofollow” attribute. It’s just the absence of nofollow.
So what is “rel=nofollow” about then? Why does it matter?
The nofollow addition to a link means basically “not trustworthy, please ignore” for search crawlers.
Thus such links are virtually pointless for SEO.
For a few years search engines do not take nofollow (and UGC or sponsored) as seriously anymore.
Yet the flaw persists. Most people in SEO don’t like “nofollow”.
It is also called link condom by many.
Also when nofollow was added in 2005 “to fight SPAM” many bloggers disliked the idea.
When WordPress and other platforms added the attribute to comment links by default many bloggers were not amused.
Hence a movement of dofollow bloggers started.
For me it worked well in the early years.
I was rewarding comments with real links and I trusted the people who commented on my blog.
- Thus many comments were the benefit
- some real online friendships
- and the establishment of a community.
Over the years the comment quality dropped though. Many links were added just for the link.
I had to invest more time into sifting through comments and by 2025 I finally gave in – I removed comments.
One of the reasons was the ongoing abuse of the comment section for low level link building.
The bad habit of SEO worst practices
No doubt the power of habit is the reason you perpetuate the worst mistakes sometimes.
Don’t believe me? Let me give you an example most of you can relate to.
Some people will vote for the same party again and again.
No matter what disastrous laws it will enforce. They just always voted for them!
- Their parents did it before them.
- All their peers do it.
- It’s expected!
- It’s not to be questioned.
That’s also how many outdated SEO worst practices seem to work or rather backfire.
Bad habits of early SEOs
SEOs are prone to be victims of the power of habit.
The power of habit can be even inherited! Then it’s called tradition.
People who have never done a thing before will do what they perceive to be a habit of others.
They just practice the same things others have done before them.
After all they worked for generations already.
On the Web people stick to the same habits like in the real world.
The Web changes at an amazing pace though. What worked yesterday may backfire today.
Thus many webmasters still stick to the habits of the late twentieth century while we’re already part of a very different Internet nowadays.
One of the hopelessly outdated habits is: search engine and directory submission.
Search engine submission is obsolete since the appearance of Google more than 25 years ago!
Yet directory submission did make some sense for a few years longer.
Google vs directories
In 2007 and 2008 Google killed off most general Web directories for being too low quality.
Ever since directories were a thing of the past.
By now even DMOZ – the most important directory of the early Web – ceased to exist.
The popular Yahoo Directory disappeared even earlier.
The nineties are irrevocably over. Yet many people still can’t give up their habits.
Just like animals that come back to the same place where they’ve found some food before.
Sometimes when the place is gone they are trying to do the same thing in other places.
Some directories still exist but they are a completely different breed of directory.
Crunchbase is my favorite example of a modern web directory.
The wrong approach
I do not want to write about directories this time though.
I want to write about the wrong “directory submission” approach.
It’s clearly a bad habit. Its like smoking.
It is very often part of the typical SEO 1.0 mindset.
People just don’t get the change that took place.
Even without directories people still want to act as if they do.
Most webmasters still seemingly assume that the best way of gaining links is to “submit” them somewhere.
Where can you submit nowadays when directories almost disappeared?
You can press “submit” on blog comment forms. It was even the same word on early blogs!
It looks very similar and does not take that much time.
Many people still recommend commenting on “dofollow-blogs”.
Blogs that do not add the “UGC” or “nofollow” attribute to comment links are popular among spammers.
This way the links do not get discounted automatically by Google.
They are meant to be helpful to improve your ranking in search – theoretically.
The nofollow stigma vs UGC
Usually the nofollow attribute marks links as low value for search engines.
Especially Google rather discounts them for being “not trustworthy”.
Now Google also added more link attributes: UGC and sponsored.
Market leading CMS WordPress adds the UGC attribute to comment links by default as of now.
UGC is not as bad as nofollow but still tells Google to trust these links less.
To make sure their comment links count many low level “best Seo experts” still collect “dofollow blogs”.
My blog became part of many “dofollow” lists over the years. The more popular I became due to these lists the more
clumsy commenters visited my blog and left their meaningless comments here just for the link.
For a while I have formulated quite strict instructions as to how you should comment here.
Yet many people failed to follow those simple common sense rules.
Low quality “commenters” who aggressively self-promoted simply got their comments removed.
Why? For breaching my commenting guidelines. Yet it did not suffice to prevent that kind of “manual spam”.
Thus I simply removed all “name” links from comments one day using a WordPress plugin.
Also I’m amazed at how people apparently assume that blog commenting is a viable link building strategy in the first place. Why?
Dofollow links in comments get discounted as well!
It’s widely known at least since 2006 that Google knows where a link resides on a given page.
They can trace whether a link is in the footer, in the sidebar or in the editorial part of a page.
Google reads comments
Google knows that a link is a comment link.
This is no wonder as most blogs out there are either using
- Blogspot
- Tumblr
- WordPress
Additionally most other platforms have a similar page structure.
Not surprisingly Google assigns less value to comment links.
Other types of low value links have been discounted over the years simply given their position on the page.
- Footer links have been discounted many years ago – I think 2005 or 2006.
- Sidebar links have been discounted a while ago as well – in 2007.
- So called “blogroll” links have been demoted when the first anti “paid links” campaign by Google has been started.
Google simply prefers editorial links! What’s that?
Links added to page by the author or publisher of that page are what Google is looking for.
It’s no secret whatsoever. It’s a SEO best practice to seek those!
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Even when your comment link is on the same page as the high value editorial link in the post your link counts much less if at all.
Watching the bizarre ways people comment for links I can only scratch my head:
- Barely any context agreeing: “I also like SEO”
- Bot-like flattering: “Thank you, great post”
- Stupid questions: “What is the difference between blogs and SEO blogs?”
- Repeating a phrase from the post or rephrasing it, sometimes ignoring the message in the post: “dofollow blogs are great for link building”
The ways people used to circumvent my guidelines were ridiculous as well.
- Making up a keyword containing nick name like “SEO guy”: I said a name not keywords, besides, I’m the SEO guy here.
Do you really think that dropping a nonsense comment on my blog will be of advantage for you?
Do you really assume that bloggers won’t notice “solely for SEO” links?
In my case – as a SEO practitioner since 2004 and online publisher since 1997 – it’s even less likely.
Google by now discounts or even downright penalizes sites for having too many low quality comment links like these.
Even when you link out too much to low quality sites you may get penalized.
Finally I had to bow down to the Google pressure and simply remove all the comment links from my blog.
Literally thousands of them were broken or redirected already anyway.
Most ended up linking to parked domains at best.
In general be cautious when commenting just for the link juice. It might backfire.
When you add genuine comments you are more likely to get an editorial link in contrast.
Real people comment
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Luckily a few real people also visit my blog, be it other bloggers or my peers from social media.
Even without seeing their names I could already recognize their style of commenting:
- It’s adding value
- it’s conversational
- it’s not flattery even if it’s a compliment
I checked each of my comments and I visited the sites you linked to.
- I deleted links to empty pages etc.
- I just took a short look at the “directory submission style” comment links.
- I visited the pages of real commenters and read the content there
- I sometimes reshared your posts or shared some myself
- I sometimes also bookmarked or linked your blog
Do you notice the difference?
The SEO 1.0 type commenters add no value and receive no value.
The SEO 2 type commenters add value and get more value back.
Sense vs nonsense
OK, then. Does commenting on “dofollow-blogs” make sense as a link building strategy? No, it doesn’t.
Does it make sense to participate in debates on comment sections of blogs to get links and traffic?
Yes, it does! In case you have some valuable content it will often end up getting a share!
I will spread the word about you to my engaged audience of thousands followers.
Often I even added a bookmark or a link to your resource later on.
In the best your resource may get added to the original post!
Take note: as of 2025 I removed my comment section! Why?
- Most comments were many years old by now.
- Most newer comments were people complaining (about Google).
- Some remaining comments were made for the SEO benefit.
I enjoyed none of them and most weren’t useful (anymore) either.
* Creative Commons images by Sprout Labs