Dofollow Blogs & Link Building: What, Why and How
Posted by Lillea Woodlyns in Promotion Strategies, WordPress & Blogging
The number of dofollow blogs is growing. We’ve joined the movement by installing a dofollow Word Press plugin for this blog.
To understand what dofollow is and why it can help you promote your business, you first need to understand what link building is.
Why Link Building Can
Help You Promote Your Site for Free
Link building is placing links to your site on other popular sites and blogs – sites and blogs that already rank highly in search engines like Google. When link building is done correctly, it will help boost your site’s seach engine rankings.
Why is a good search engine ranking important? The higher your ranking, the more likely it is that a link to your website will appear on the first pages of results that a potential customers sees when they search for products on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.
How does all of this work?
It’s rather complex, but to sum up search engines have software components (often called ’spiders’) that scan websites. The information that spiders collect is used to determine what a site is about and how important it is compared to other sites online.
If a site already ranks highly in a search engine, the outbound links on that site can be seen as important, too. Outbound links are links that lead away from a site. For example, in this post I include links to other sources of information about dofollow. Because the links take you away from my blog they are called outbound.
The Most Common Free Ways to Build Links Are:
- posting comments on other blogs/sites because you are usually allowed to include a link to your site with your comment
- submitting the link to your article/post/story to a social news site like Digg. Many blogs and sites, including this one, have buttons at the bottom of posts so you can submit them easily
- putting your link into the ’signature’ part of any posts you write in online forums
- submitting articles to free article directories like Ezine. You simply put the link to your site in your author resource box. For more information on article writing as a way to promote your site for free, see Promoting Your Site with Short Articles
Why Dofollow Helps with Link Building
Links that you post on high ranking sites won’t help your website get a higher rank unless the site you’re posting on uses dofollow. Dofollow is a software code that tells the search engine spiders to look at the outbound links and give them a higher ranking simply by association.
By default, most blogs are nofollow, meaning that the search engine spiders won’t follow the outbound links and give them higher ranking by association. To make a blog dofollow you need to install a special plugin. You can find a link to the free WordPress plugin I use at the end of this post. It’s easy to install.
Keep in mind that many dofollow blogs and sites don’t have a high rank in search engines. Some never will, some may soon. That’s okay. Having your links on other sites can be very beneficial - you may get some clicks that result in sales. Yes, it’s always worthwhile to have links in spots where potential customers might see them. Dofollow just gives you an extra boost by increasing your chances of being listed in the search results on search engines.
Dofollow or nofollow, you must be careful with what you write on the site. Show respect for the site or forum you’re posting on, don’t simply promote your own products in a blatant way. If you aren’t careful about this, you will be seen as a SPAMMER and your link will probably be deleted.
And please feel free to leave non-spammy comments on this blog. I’m doing link building myself so the blog will increase in rank over time. 
Want to Know More About
Search Engine Rankings & Dofollow?
How to Check Google’s Site Rankings (known as ‘page rank’)
Google Toolbar – comes with a button that lets you check page rank
How to enable the Google page rank checker in Google Toolbar
How to Join the Dofollow Movement
~ Lillea Woodlyns
Tags: make money with WordPress, wordpress plugins
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Linkbuilding is a good way to promote your site. But it can be hard to find do follow blogs. There are some sites you can go to that have a list of do follow type blogs, which makes it easier.
You’ve by far written the most detailed dofollow explanation i’ve read thus far, and I thank you for your clarity regarding search engine optimization explanation for those who simply do not know.
Thank you. I’m really glad that my post is helpful.
I had trouble finding clear information about do follow myself so I wanted to make it easier for others to understand.
It’s true that do follow blogs can be tricky to find, but the Do Follow Search Engine mentioned in my post helps to simplify things. You can also use a keyword tool called ‘Market Samurai’ to find them. I bought Market Samurai fairly recently and love it! Great investment, and a growing favorite of pro internet marketers.
~ Lillea
Great post, I work in online advertising, so this website is really helpful to me. Thank you
i ilove do follow blog..my blog set to do follow to…thank for your article
Great post, that dofollow stuff is really important.
Legitimate posts on ‘do follow’ blogs seem to generate good links for me! I hear others opine that do follow links are devalued in building page rank, but the ‘do follow’ blogs I visit seem to be good quality and return a decent number of links.
One does have to be wary of spamming though, but a thoughtful comment that runs more than a few words seems to carry value.
Thank you for commenting! Yes, I agree that do follow blogs are often quite high quality. I sometimes get very spammy
comments from people who are trying to take advantage of the fact that this blog is do follow, but I have a good
spam blocker and I moderate all comments so it isn’t too bad.