Join the Do Follow Community

[Peter Kersbergen]

Assuming that you moderate the content on your blog(s), and weed out the links which could have negative effect, links to neutral sites are a natural thing on both blogs and forums. If your users are people with interest in the topics you are posting about, you will get some good user-generated content with links which can be positive to your site.

I am not saying the links generated are going to cause any magic effect to your SEO, you have to look more at the flip side of the coin: NOT allowing links to count gives an unnatural balance of internal/external links on your blog & it reduces the amount of potential free content..

[Liam Billington]

The whole point is to have the high quality links within the blog post and article itself, not allowing a free for all.

Allowing "do follow" links hasn't really worked for this forum in attracting new/regular users has it?

[Peter Kersbergen]

Originally Posted by Liam Billington

The whole point is to have the high quality links within the blog post and article itself, not allowing a free for all.

Allowing "do follow" links hasn't really worked for this forum in attracting new/regular users has it?

You don't really create a "free for all" with proper moderation, as Sante and Oscar above already mentioned as well. We are also talking about a blog and not a forum, these are two different things which require a slightly different strategy. Comparable, yes but identical: no.

Either way I am not sure what your issue is with removing no-follow. It is easy to battle spam using Akismet and half decent moderation, so there really isn't a good reason NOT to do it.

[Liam Billington]

"You don't really create a "free for all" with proper moderation, as Sante and Oscar above already mentioned as well. We are also talking about a blog and not a forum, these are two different things which require a slightly different strategy. Comparable, yes but identical: no."

Considering that most blogs and forums are held on the same domain or server as the site you are optimising for, there is some potential to harm your site through people shoving in links. What if a competitor started to use your blog to get link juice?

My point was that the article you write about is the main content of that page, the links which lead out should be of your own and external links which are entirely related to the point you are making.

Many people who leave comments on their blogs will link to their own business which isn't relevant to that topic. They maybe in the same industry, but they are not relative to the topic you are talking about.

[sjachille]

Originally Posted by Liam Billington

How is linking out to people with usually crap sites benefit your SEO?

It doesn't. Linking out must be a natural thing and well thought out too. There are at least 2 good reasons:

1. Users are enticed by posts bearing links viewed as an opportunity to find more interesting leads
2. by systematically linking out to a "good neighborhood" you strengthen your belonging to a Clique

There was a good post worth reading today about the quality of blogging (or should I say deep blogging) by Steve Rubel - a great bolg.

[Liam Billington]

I know linking out doesn't benefit at all. I was being sarcastic.

[marketraise]

how can we come to know weather it's do follow community or not .