If you have a blog and you accept comments then to all intents and purposes, you are a hand moderator for the search engines. As such, the web relies on you to get it right. In fact, the authority (read ranking) may also depend on it.

What do I mean by hand moderator? Every link that leaves your site is a vote of confidence in the site you are linking to. In fact, when the ‘nofollow’ attribute was first introduced, its aim was to tell search engines that you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, place any confidence in the site being linked to.

If your site links to sites that are of dubious quality, the implication could be that your site is also of dubious quality. If you are going to send a vote of confidence, it has to be to a site that is worthy of that site. Note – you are not saying the site being linked to is fantastic or full of wonderful information – you are saying the site may be worth visiting.

What does this have to do with blogging? Every time someone leaves a comment on your site – they are also gaining a link. Most blogs nofollow comments; there are many that don’t. It seems the nofollow tag is not as universally read as it used to be – even Google is now known to ‘follow’ nofollow tags.

The bottom line, before approving comments on your blog – check the attached link. Spammers are becoming quite sophisticated now to the point they will leave comments that are not only relevant but also add value to the post – the problem is the link will lead to a site that is malware or of dubious content. If necessary, delete the link and leave the comment – just don’t approve comments without first checking.

Remember, the web and your own reputation, depend on how well you moderate those comments.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.