by Ana Hoffman 24 comments

Sunday Coffee with Ana: DoFollow, NoFollow and More



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sunday coffee dofollow topic imageBasically, there are two main free traffic generation strategies: SEO and networking. That’s it.

By networking, I mean blog commenting, guest posting, social media networking, etc.

Today, I want to focus more on SEO; however, we’ll also talk a bit about blog commenting as it applies to SEO.

Posts Mentioned in the Broadcast

Questions:

1. Meta Keywords

There used to be the time when you were able to stuff your meta keywords all you wanted and get a pat on the back from Google for it.

Now this practice is not only obsolete, but frowned upon, to say the least.

I generally leave it empty or mention only the most generic ones like “Traffic Generation“.

Another reason for it: your competitors can easily look your keywords up and see what you are trying to optimize for. It’s best to leave them guessing…

2. Deserves Notice and Woot

Linda from TalkTherapybiz.com and I have recently had a discussion in the comment section about the overall look of her blog and I noticed that you ebook cover doesn’t look enticing enough.

Lo and behold, another commentator steps in and helps her with it!

Obviously, a great way to network and to get noticed – Ben and Josh from http://www.profitblog.com: thank you for helping Linda with her eBook image – you rock!

3. My New Sidebar Banners

I’ve been getting a lot of questions as to who designed them for me and I am happy to spill the beans.

One of my blog commentators!

It all comes down to networking and that can do wonders for you, your brand, blog, business.

His name is Ian Belanger of Ian-Belanger.com – he is currently working on a new site devoted to web design, but for now, that’s a good place to reach him.

Question: do you think the banners are just a touch too big right now or just right? Let me know in comments.

4. My Comment Structure

Alex Whalley from AlexWhalley.com asked what’s going on with my comments, why I send my commentators’ link to internal pages and what’s the point of using KeywordLuv on my blog?

You really know how to ask a simple question, Alex! :)

Your question actually cost me a couple of hours of my time, since I decided to spell out my strategy with my commenting section, how and why I keep it Dofollow, etc.

Considering that Alex went NoFollow due to the recent PR downgrade on his blog, I think this might help him see the issue differently.

See, it pays to have PR0 sometimes – no need to worry about downgrading! :)

Oh, yes, the DoFollow blog post is in queue for this week.

5. Why should you ping your comments?

Brad Harmon from BigFeetMarketing.com (LOVE the brand name, by the way!) was reading my 202 Bite-Sized Tips To Insanely Increase Your Blog Traffic post (and actually got all the way to the bottom of it – bless his heart!).

His question was on tip #175. Ping the comments you leave on other blogs.

What does pinging your comment do?

Just because you leave a comment (hoping for the link, of course), it doesn’t mean search engines will ever or at least for a while discover that link. Pinging your comment URL forces the SE spiders to check it out and index it.

Here’s how it works:

Right after you submit your comment, you’ll see a URL similar to this: http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/list-building-feedback/#comment-22578

Copy that URL and go to any pinging services. I use two: Pingomatic.com and Pingler.net - I use them simply because they are simple and easy to use.

Now just follow their instructions and your comments will be crawled by search engines in no time!

6. Facebook Sidebar Widget

“You think FB widget causes clutter? I do want to have it there for social proof and because I want people to be connected with me there as well. I might move it all the way down.” ~ Jane

Besides that fact that I don’t believe it clutters anything, there’s a good reason behind having a Facebook fan page widget.

1. It provides social proof – if you have enough fans of course, great social media strategy.

2. It’s always good to give your email subscribers specifically an option to become a fan of your page as well as subscribe to your list. That way, if they unsubscribe from your list – oh, no!, you can still stay in touch with them via Facebook.

Traffic Generation Cafe Weekly Lineup

First, bad news.

I will have to postpone our much-anticipated list building week. I am still waiting for guest posts from some “big shot” bloggers. Hope they deliver; otherwise, you are stuck with my advice on the topic. :)

But don’t fret, I’ll have a lot of juicy stuff for you this week.

Monday: Appetite For Traffic? The Secret Is in the Source

This one comes from the one and only Alex Whalley. He’ll talk about how to make the best pizza sauce as well as discuss why blog commenting is better than guest posting. Among other things, of course.

Tuesday: Dofollow vs Nofollow: Is There a Happy Medium?

Make sure you have more than just a couple of minutes for this one. I’ll let you take a look at the way I run things here, at TGC, and what makes me remain a DoFollow blog – while many other bloggers are escaping the sinking ship.

Wednesday: Nicholas Cardot vs Ana Hoffman Twitter Faceoff: Which Side Are You On?

Yes, the much-anticipated sparring match between yours truly and the king of Twitter Nicholas Cardot, the founder of SiteSketch101.com. The topic: let’s settle once and for all, which Twitter strategy works and which needs to be forgotten. Little problem though: last week, Nick was in Kuwait with the US Army, which he is a proud member of, and he hasn’t been able to confirm the date.

Thursday: Blog Comment Traffic Research: Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

Work in progress. With a little luck, it’ll kick Alex Whalley’s Monday post in the rear, because this one is an experiment that Lisa from TheFriendlyBlogger.com and I conducted – with set parameters, Google Analytics, and the whole nine yards just to see if blog commenting can REALLY bring you any traffic.

Friday: Still thinking about it – how’s that for a title?

Marketing Takeaway

Remain DoFollow, control your links, read the posts I have scheduled for the week and… have fun with it! Don’t take SEO seriously… :)

“I’ll praise you, O Lord, among the nations; I’ll sing of You among the peoples. For great is Your love reaching to the heavens…” ~ Psalm 57:9,10


traffic generation cafe comment below

{ 24 comments }

Ben March 2, 2011 at 11:46 am

Thanks for the shout out Ana! Yeah, it was no problem helping Linda, she’s really nice. That’s what blogging should be about anyways, helping other people :)

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:30 pm

I do expect Google to pay less and less attention to comment links. Good thing and bad thing: where does it leave us, average bloggers, as far as link building? Link wheels?

Who know…

Off the check out your new site!

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:31 pm

Not too much new…. yet?

Ian Belanger@Network Marketing Success February 28, 2011 at 10:53 am

Hey Ana,

Thanks for the mention and link in your post today. Really appreciate it. I missed morning coffee yesterday :( Have to catch next weeks.

Great advice on pinging comments, I had no idea, guess I will have to try it.

Thanks again Ana and have a great day!!

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:27 pm

Thank YOU, Ian, and I might have more requests coming your way soon. :)

Robert Dempsey@Internet Marketing Strategies February 28, 2011 at 6:16 am

I like your hair and your picture so I don’t know what anyone is complaining about. If it was some cartoon or something that didn’t look like you that would be another matter. Now to the real commenting.

Perhaps it’s me but I’ve never relied wholly on organic search or Google for my traffic. My strategy includes a lot of targeted networking and commenting along with a healthy dose of SEO. Until I read about PageRank here I had forgotten about it :P

Also, and I’m going to talk about me here, for my blog I have CommentLuv et al installed and have it all dofollow. The only thing I make nofollow is some outbound links (affiliate stuff) and links to certain pages (about, contact). Other than that if link juice goes I guess it goes. My blog isn’t 100% of my marketing or income, only one stream. So with diversity in place I can focus on the overall strategy, community building, and providing massive value to all of my readers and subscribers.

Mavis Nong @ Attraction Marketing February 28, 2011 at 7:11 am

Hey Robert,

I’m with you about not focusing solely on organic search. It’s important to use other effective sources of traffic generation.

Social media is red HOT right now and it offers free “word of mouth” advertising. We still need to get out there and network with others. This exactly how I’m getting a flood of traffic from Facebook! :)

All the best,
Mavis

Robert Dempsey February 28, 2011 at 10:01 am

I’m interested in talking with you more about this Mavis. I’m heading over to your site to learn more. It would be great to hear your experience first hand (say via Skype) sometime with this. I’m close to having an epiphany when it comes to using Facebook and Twitter. I’ve been on both for years and am a huge fan.

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:25 pm

Love seeing this kind of networking on my blog, although makes me feel left out. :( :)

You’d be surprised to know how many emails and comments I get solely talking about my hair, Robert.

Agreed on your points re: SEO. I am sensible with it, do common-sense things, but don’t go overboard. Actually, don’t have time even if I wanted to. :)

Maky February 28, 2011 at 5:02 am

I give it to you, you are the Queen of networking Ana. There are only a handful of bloggers that take time to answer all their comments and looking around, I think they are mostly influenced by you. If I talk to a wall when I comment on a blog, I will not comment on that blog even if it is dofollow to the 3rd order. The only exception is when I see that a lot of commenters are asking questions without getting answers from the blog owner and I have the answer to their questions, I will then step in and help out or when I want to engage with the other commenters. I will understand though when in the future, you can’t meet up with replying all the comments because they are just too much (look what is happening now :) cos you went away for a few days!).

I like your new side banners better. Maybe because it is not generic. And it caught my attention the first day you put them up and that’s what you want, isn’t it? :)

Talking about design, did you create your opt-in form using Aweber forms or did you design it yourself? I had a look at their forms and they were too generic and they say you can edit them, still I’m curious. And pls which software did you use to create you e-book image? I love it.

Thanks for the pinging comments tip, it will be very handy. Though I’m sure you know this already, I find that my comments on your blog are indexed quickly, I guess it is because you update very often and crawlers come by on their own. :)

Alexa ranking: What tip do you have for people in a non-techy niche? Alexa ranking is mostly based on traffic from browsers with Alexa Toolbar installed. In some niches, the only traffic from a browser with Alexa toolbar maybe from the blog/site owner himself! :(

I got to run … my babies are calling.

Keep up the good work.

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:17 pm

I am so with you regarding your commenting remarks, Maky.

A lot of times I won’t comment on a blog simply because the blogger is not returning the comments. My thought is “why waste your breath?” Unless, you are link building of course. :)

Sorry to say I won’t be able to help you as far as your design questions go – I had a designer do it all for me. However, it looks to me like Ian Belanger who I mentioned in the post is more than capable to do it. I loved working with him.

You are right, my blog is crawled daily, so pinging the comments on my blogs is a bit of a waste of time. :)

I’d say not to worry about your Alexa rank. It’s like PR in most cases – everybody know it’s all frivolous, yet everybody pays attention to the numbers.

Just track your traffic through Google Analytics and make sure it grows.

My 3 year-old is peacefully asleep giving me some much needed time to catch up! :)

Maky March 1, 2011 at 1:03 am

Lucky you! I have a 3yr old that is more of a baby than my 3 month old :)

Thanks for the answers but no thanks for making me feel good about my Alexa rank :)

Priya February 28, 2011 at 4:24 am

Hi Ana,

At point #5 you want to say if the comment is showing “waiting for moderation” and still I ping that comment then it will instantly crawled by search engines(Google, Yahoo, Bing etc). Am I correct?

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:10 pm

Technically, the comment is there, it’s just not visible to the reader – you.

Plus, when you ping something, it doesn’t mean that it will be crawled instantly, of course. So by the time, the SE spider gets to the comment, it might actually be approved by then.

Either way, I always do it. Doesn’t take but a second.

Priya February 28, 2011 at 10:52 pm

I got the point here, thanks for explaining it.

Sheila Atwood@landing pages best practices February 27, 2011 at 7:25 pm

Ana,

Thanks for posting your broadcast. I like the color and tone of your new banners. They are not too bright.

I missed the ping your comments tip last time, appreciate the update.

Looking forward to the DoFollow post.

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:04 pm

Thanks, Sheila, and glad you like the new banners. Now I am anxious to see if they actually produce better results. :)

Alex February 27, 2011 at 4:15 pm

Far out! You fall asleep putting your kid down and this is what you miss!?! Sorry I missed the coffee this morning, now I’m really annoyed lol. Between you, Gail @growmap and Satish? @seommotips I am questioning my tactics and I’m also surprised how much people care.
I’ve since learned that commentluv is dofollow (I think, Andy Bailey says it depends on blog settings, but mine are still do follow so beats me!

Definitely looking forward to the posts this week and the ensuing conversation.

Maky February 28, 2011 at 3:02 am

Hi Alex,

Some bloggers do admit to manually editing it to become nofollow once they step on the PR ladder. But as Ana mentioned, she does not care cos she is still down with us mortals at PR0 :) But the question is … Does having a dofollow blog while at PR0 affect how long it will take to become ranked? Maybe Ana will answer that on Tuesday’s post?

Ana February 28, 2011 at 10:01 pm

Lack of PR is not preventing Google from crawling my blog on a daily basis and indexing over 2000 pages by now.

So I still get a lot of Google love in terms of spiders and rankings, plus my readers love me – now can I go wrong? :)

Lou Barba February 27, 2011 at 3:29 pm

Hi Ana,

I missed your broadcast this morning :( I had to blow snow out of my driveway…we had over a foot this week. I think your whole blog looks bigger and I like it that way. I’d get a 3x Giant Print Bible, but I think it would be too heavy too carry around with all thos extra pages. It gets that way at my age and bifocals. I hope you continue to have a blog audit on Friday, that is a great feature. I also hope you get your broadcast technology working better for you. Thanks again!

Lou

Ana February 27, 2011 at 9:59 pm

Thanks for coming by, Lou; maybe next Sunday? :)

Vivek Parmar February 27, 2011 at 3:04 pm

That’s a great podcast, learned a lot about dofollow and nofollow. And much awaited after your weekend trip :)

Ana February 27, 2011 at 9:54 pm

Thanks so much, Vivek – it was great being back and it’s nice to see I can always count on your to support me!

Sorry, Comments are Closed. Stop by My Facebook Page With Your Comment.

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