It’s almost 2 weeks since I started an experiment on jimsmarketingblog.com.  I wanted to see what REALLY happens when a blog offers a valuable, ‘do-follow link’ to everyone who comments there.

What does ‘do-follow’ mean?

In brief, every time you comment on my blog, you will receive a special kind of link back to your website or blog.  This link actually tells Google and Co to visit your website or blog – which can really help your Search Engine Optimisation.

Sadly, the vast majority of blogs (over 99% apparently), offer ‘no-follow links’; which tell Google and Co NOT to follow the link to your website or blog. They do this to stop the mighty Google penalising them with a lower page rank and also to stop spammers targeting their blogs.  Links from do-follow blogs like mine are a lot more valuable, so spammers apparently target them more (or do they? – Read on!)

Here’s what’s happened thus far!

Comment numbers are about the same

This surprised me.  The percentage of people commenting here is, surprisingly, no higher than it was BEFORE I gave do-follow links!  The original post, where I announced I was offering do-follow links, has now had well over 200 comments.  However, the number of comments on my posts since then, have only grown at the same rate as my readership.

Links have doubled in 12 days

There has been one amazing, immediate improvement, since offering do-follow links!  You can call it the power of attraction, karma, sewing and reaping – but the number of people linking to this blog has literally doubled in just 12 days!

No increase in Spam

Another surprise is that I have not seen any increase in the amount of spam I get, not yet anyway.  I am getting the odd idiot try to use the comments section of various posts, to advertise their latest wonder product – but that’s nothing to do with the do-follow links – that’s just what some misguided people do on any well read blog.  These are deleted immediately.  Everything else has been caught by my spam filter.  I use the Akismet plugin for WordPress.

Google isn’t happy with me

Google traffic here had been increasing until I started offering do-follow links.  Now, it has stopped increasing and has actually dropped slightly.  That said, all search engine traffic combined accounts for less than 1% of the people who come here.

In case you were wondering, the 4 biggest sources of people to this blog are:
1. Direct traffic
2. Twitter
3. StumbleUpon
4. Links from other blogs and websites

Conclusion

It’s still very early days, but I have seen nothing to stop me offering do-follow links.  The readership is growing extremely well and I have attracted over a thousand new links; since offering do-follow links to my readers.

The lesson thus far, has been that the Internet is actually about PEOPLE and not about Google or any other company!  If people like your website or blog, and you market it correctly, they are going to share it with their friends and contacts.  If the people at Google are as smart as I think they are, they will catch onto this and stop trying to punish blogs that, like mine, are committed to helping others.

So, the experiment continues!

What do you think?

If you have any ideas or opinions regarding what I am doing I would love to know!

Equally, what have YOUR experiences been with linking, Google or blogging in general – share them with my readers and myself in the comments section.

If you are a Twitter user, please leave your user name in your comment, so people can follow you – I’m @jimconnolly by the way!
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If you have been reading my newsletter over the years or my previous blog posts, you will know that I am passionate about helping as many people as possible to grow their businesses, increase their sales and boost their profits.

Link love

That’s why I’m ALWAYS looking for new ways to give something of value to the people who follow my work – And starting now, YOU are going to be rewarded every time you leave a comment on this blog!

That’s because I am making the link from your comments on jimsmarketingblog.com, a lot more valuable to you and your website, blog or business!

Here’s how!

One of the best ways to increase your Search Engine Ranking, is to have lots of relevant links pointing to your website or blog.  However, MOST links are of reduced value, from an SEO perspective.  These are called ‘no-follow’ links; because they use a piece of code to make sure that search engines do NOT follow the link to your site or blog!

To show how common these ‘no-follow’ links are – I checked out 10 of the best-known marketing / social media blogs & they ALL use no-follow links!

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So, YOU take time to comment on THEIR blogs and THEY then repay you by telling Google and Co to ignore you!

Why do they do this?

Firstly, blogs offering no-follow links are of limited SEO value, so they attract less SPAM comments because spammers realise the links not of much use to them.

Secondly, many people (but not everyone), believe that by linking properly to your blog from theirs, they are ‘likely’ to actually lower their own search engine rankings.

Do follow

Starting now, when you comment on Jimsmarketingblog.com, the link it gives you will be a ‘do-follow’ link.  It will tell Google and all the other search engines to follow you to your website or blog!

This means you will get a small “thank you” from me every time you comment here!

When I told some people earlier that I was about to do this, they all said the same thing:

Why?  Why risk damaging your own search engine rankings and potentially attracting loads of spam – just to give these high-quality links to people?

My answer is simple.

Firstly, I’m not an Internet Marketer, so I am genuinely not that bothered about what Google does to my page rank.  I prefer to use advanced marketing strategies to promote jimsmarketingblog.com; and this means putting people, community and ideas first!  You see, after 22 years in professional marketing, I know that if I pump as much value into this blog as possible, people will keep coming back and they will continue to recommend it to their friends!

Secondly, I have put some pretty good anti-spam software on the blog, to catch the surge in comment spam everyone tells me I am about to receive. One side effect of this, is that your first ever comment here will not have a do-follow link.  Don’t worry though – all your other comments will!

My commitment to you & your business

I really want to make this work.  The only way I will remove the do-follow links, is if the quality of the comments drop because of spammers.  I honestly don’t care about pissing-off Google, so long as I can keep on top of the spam.  I won’t allow the comments section here to turn into spam city, otherwise it totally defeats the whole point; which is to make jimsmarketingblog.com as valuable to you and your business as I possibly can.

Your feedback please!

I would really appreciate your comments and feedback regarding what I am trying to do here.  Am I crazy to even try?  Please let me know, as I read and value every comment.

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