Using DoFollow to Increase Blog Comments
DoFollow, if you haven't heard of it, is a WordPress plugin that removes the rel="nofollow" from comments on your blog. The rel="nofollow" is placed there because with it, Google does not give any weight to the link. Before nofollow was introduced, spammers would go around to blogs and post comments with their name as the keyword they want to rank for, and the website they run. So with nofollow enabled on most popular blog platforms by default, the incentive to spam comments is not there.
Some people, however, choose to remove the nofollow from comment links, and this is why dofollow was created - to reward people for commenting. My personal feelings are that if your good enough to have a backlink then I will write about you in a post. I don't want to have to fend off all the spammers and people just posting for a measly backlink.
DoFollow Blog Lists
And yes, spamming and DoFollow go hand in hand. There are many DoFollow blog lists out there that highlight the blogs subject for people to get targeted links back to their sites. In fact, even after posting this blog post with the words "DoFollow" in the title my blog will be flagged and there will be an increase in blog comments.
So basically, if you want increased comments just blog about DoFollow - you don't actually need to enable the plugin, the comments will still come.
David,
While I agree that allowing for rel=”dofollow” in comments will increase the number of comments people leave, it’s important to note that this may have some other unwanted side effects.
It is suggested that within Google, pages have a specific “authority” (many articles on this topic are out there). While allowing dofollow links, you are diluting your pages authority to the people commenting that may have unrelated pages. Google will see your external links as websites that you sponsor, and if you keep you external links going to pages that are relevant and of a high quality, your authority increases. It’s a tossup between user interaction, and search engine optimization - I tend to lean to the latter.
Great blog, keep up the posts.