Why NOFOLLOW My Comments?

Some people are wondering why I have decided to remove the NOFOLLOW from the comments section of my posts using the “NoFollow Free” WordPress plugin.  The answer is simple:  to encourage discussion.  Will there be some jackassess out there that will leave a “great post” comment just to get a link?  Sure there will.  When they do, I’ll delete them as SPAM. If it becomes too much for me to manage manually, I can always change it back.

The fact of the matter is that I want to encourage people to leave comments on MY blog.  I also want to offer them something in return for doing so…and all I have to offer is a link back to your website.  Sphinning a post is awesome…submitting it to StumbleUpon is much appreciated…bookmarking on Delicious.com or Digging a post is fantastic, but those things don’t actually get the person taking the time to do it ANYTHING.

Therefore, I’ve decided to remove the NOFOLLOW attribute from my comments section to see if it gives anyone incentive to actually carry on a conversation here.  Oh, and for the record, you have to have left a specific number of comments already before the NOFOLLOW will be removed from the links.  I set it at a purposely low number to weed out those who would initially use it as SPAM.  :)

UPDATE (09/09)

I started thinking more about my motivation for removing the NOFOLLOW from my comments after I’d gone to bed last night, so I decided to elaborate a bit more.  First of all, I’m kinda new to the game of SEO.  Not “new” as in the sense that I have no experience, but “new” in the sense that until recently “SEOAly” lived only in my head as a persona…a symbol of how I would go about learning more about how to promote a website on the Internet.  She was the anonymous conscience…my guide for learning the ins & outs of SEO and trying to figure out how all of the puzzle pieces fit together to make up the big picture.

Once I decided to turn that conscience into a website, she became more of a muse.  The site has become a place conduct testing of theories, like the internal use of NOFOLLOW to pages that are designated NOINDEX.  It’s also a place to to chronicle some of my experiences based on testing different aspects of on-site SEO…like the use of NOSNIPPET.  In the process, though, SEOAly has also become somewhat known and that loss of anonymity gives me the chance to get some of the best and brightest in the search marketing field to read what I’ve written and comment on it.  For taking your valuable time to comment and participate in the discussion, you get a link – it’s not much, but in this game it’s the only “bonus” I have to give out.

UPDATE (12/03)

Still no SPAM or PageRank issues to report.  The naysayers that claimed removing the NOFOLLOW attribute from my comment links was a stupid idea appear to have been a bit off base.  Aww…too bad.  Looks like some people just don’t know as much as they thought they did about the repercussions of removing NOFOLLOW.  

I’ve also seen this issue discussed on a wide variety of posts since this was originally published.  Many of them have also elected to remove the NOFOLLOW attribute from their blog comments.  Kudos to those of you who followed your instincts and didn’t allow yourself to be swayed by the know-it-alls in the SEO world.  :)