Do Follow
NoFollow attribute
If you haven’t learnt by now - Google introduced a tag on links called ‘nofollow’ and got pretty much all of the blog software developers to turn it on for links by default. This stops Google from indexing the backlink and did put a huge dent in the number of spam comments that were being created on blogs. All the social bookmarking and image sharing sites also use the nofollow attribute.
Here is an example of the nofollow attribute in use for this site :
<a href="http://backlinktactics.com" rel="nofollow">Backlink Tactics</a>
It seems that things have quietened down a little bit on the blog comment spam arena - especially because most blogs are comment moderated and have spam detection plugins.
Getting backlinks to your site that are nofollow is still valuable for generating traffic and also for Yahoo searches, but doesn’t help your Google Page Rank. Saying that generic traffic can help boost your visitors and in turn potentially create better organic traffic and valuable backlinks.
Do Follow
“Do Follow” is referring to a site that doesn’t use the nofollow tag. This blog is one. Why have I done this? Well because the value of the links on my site are high (if I end up with a good Page Rank) without the nofollow links then it will drive traffic. How will it drive traffic? Webmasters actively search for Do Follow blogs and there seems to be movements out there promoting them. There are even search engines out there specifically looking for them.
Here are a list of Do Follow Directories:
There are also search engines dedicated to finding Do Follow blogs too :
Remember to check the Page Rank of the site - especially where the comment is going to appear. This could create some very good backlinks if you can find high page rank keyword targeted blogs to comment on.
There is a trade off here though. If too many low page rank sites backlink to your site too quickly then it could negatively affect your page rank.
Low Page Rank Sites
There may be future value in low page rank sites. If you think the site is good it might increase in Page Rank and then your backlink will be worth more to your own Page Rank.
Link to Different Pages on your Site
Don’t keep backlinking to your home page - choose different individual pages on your site and link to those - much better for making more of your site have a good page rank - not just one page.
WordPress Do Follow Plugin
I’ve overwritten the default WordPress nofollow status with a plugin called No Follow Free. It’s worth checking out if you have a Wordpress blog and are interested in generating traffic purely because your blog is giving valuable Google backlink comments.
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Backlinks from Twitter
Twitter has created quite some interest lately and is becoming hugely popular. In fact Facebook wants Twitter putting $500 Million on the table for it. Twitter is described as a mini-blogging site where you can put thoughts of up to 140 words or less in each post.
At one stage some Back Hat SEO types worked out a way to use the Twitter API and generated lots of back link juice. It wasn’t much later that Google put pressure on twitter and now there is no backlink viagra from twitter.
This doesn’t mean that Twitter cannot be a good source of links to your site. In fact there are a couple of sites that watch all Twitter posts and track which URLs are getting lots of attention. Two of those sites are :
TwittUrls.com and Twitt(url)y.
So how does this help with backlinks? Well Twitter uses TinyUrl to post all it’s links and all the links are posted with the nofollow tag (which tells Google not to treat it as a backlink) so you don’t really get a valid backlink from twitter - BUT you could get people clicking on your twitter url post link and bringing them to your site.
There are some automatic twitter tools to help sites with rss feeds automatically post the title and url to twitter as it is added to the feed - try out : Twitterfeed.
The thing to watch out for is popularity - if you are looked upon as just being a spammer adding links all the time, no one is going to click on your links or follow you. The trick to this is to use Twitter like any other twitter user - putting in your thoughts and day to day rants. Try the humour approach and post funny one liners, and then every 20 posts or so put your links in (or time it right if you have your rss feed linked up).
Another good tactic to get followers on Twitter is to go each each of the people you are following, see who follows them, and then follow each of them. There is a limit of 2000 people you can follow, but you’d be surprized how many people will automatically follow you back (I’ll describe this later on). I managed to get 400 followers in the space of an hour, and over 2 weeks I’m up to 1000 folllowers.
There is another great tool that automatically replies to people who follow you and also follows them back. Try out Twollow or the one I really like TweetLater because not only can you auto follow but you setup auto welcome messages and use GTalk to alert you when a tweet is done with a particular phrase. Combine that with the ability to also follow people from a GTalk chat - and it’s a really good free application.
Once you start getting alerted on tweets that are related to your site’s content I suggest you follow those people beacuse your rss feed might interest them and generate your site more interest.
There is one way to get a valid following backlink from Twitter - put your site into you Bio.
Other sites that use the Twitter API and replicate all the tweets - like Twemes don’t post links with the nofollow flag - so it looks like it could be a good technique anyway for back links if you get into the flow and really start enjoying Twitter for what it’s really for - dumping your thoughts with the occasional rss feed insert.
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By N2H
