[JohnHerrigel]

Thanks Greg! Not sure if there is a thread about it but last week Matt Cutts at Google said that Google no longer cares and has not been caring about the No-follow tag for page rank sculpting for the last year, ie Google has been and continues to follow all links, regardless of the no-follow tag!

A good report of it from Bruce Clays SEO site here.

All the best,
John

[jamesww]

Originally Posted by JohnHerrigel

Thanks Greg! Not sure if there is a thread about it but last week Matt Cutts at Google said that Google no longer cares and has not been caring about the No-follow tag for page rank sculpting for the last year, ie Google has been and continues to follow all links, regardless of the no-follow tag!

A good report of it from Bruce Clays SEO site here.

All the best,
John

I think you need to go back and read Matt's whole post. He says that they follow the links but they do not pass link juice nor do they pass anchor text if no follow. The change is that a no follow link still bleeds your page rank but it does not pass page rank to the site it links to. This in turn makes no follow much less appealing as a way to hoard page rank. I think it is a great move by Google as it will open the web back up as it had been closed a little.

[William Bay]

"Do Follow" is generous Greg,
But here's a few hitches:
1. You only have a page rank of 1, so that's not a tremendous amount of juice you are offering other people.
2. More comments actually dilute your keyword density.
3. You are basically telling Google that you vouch for every person that leaves a comment now, so if a link farm came in and left a comment, you could potentially be penalized by Google for linking to a shady site.

"Do Follow" works fine when you trust the sites, other than that, I would stick on "no follow" especially for your comments.

[home_slice]

Originally Posted by William Bay

"Do Follow" is generous Greg,
But here's a few hitches:
1. You only have a page rank of 1, so that's not a tremendous amount of juice you are offering other people.
2. More comments actually dilute your keyword density.
3. You are basically telling Google that you vouch for every person that leaves a comment now, so if a link farm came in and left a comment, you could potentially be penalized by Google for linking to a shady site.

"Do Follow" works fine when you trust the sites, other than that, I would stick on "no follow" especially for your comments.

Get on board! It's the dofollow movement!!!

[home_slice]

Originally Posted by William Bay

"Do Follow" is generous Greg,
But here's a few hitches:
1. You only have a page rank of 1, so that's not a tremendous amount of juice you are offering other people.
2. More comments actually dilute your keyword density.
3. You are basically telling Google that you vouch for every person that leaves a comment now, so if a link farm came in and left a comment, you could potentially be penalized by Google for linking to a shady site.

"Do Follow" works fine when you trust the sites, other than that, I would stick on "no follow" especially for your comments.

Get on board! It's the dofollow movement!!!

It doesn't take more than a minute to check out the commentors website. Many of the comments I receive, the ones that askimet lets through, they are rarely non-related to my site. I've obtained a PR2 blog with high page ranking in under 8 months using dofollow comments.

[Business with Greg]

I do pick and choose which sites I will allow to be linked too. Every comment still requires approval by me.

Balancing SEO and the appearance of being busy is a tough choice to make.

I know what you mean on PR. I have not focused on it.

[bogart]

Originally Posted by Business with Greg

I do pick and choose which sites I will allow to be linked too. Every comment still requires approval by me.

Balancing SEO and the appearance of being busy is a tough choice to make.

I know what you mean on PR. I have not focused on it.

I think that the dofollow is a good idea. Many people don't know it but you still loose pagerank for no-follow outbound links.

Here's an interesting post about it on Matt Cutts blog
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

[TheyCanSeeYou]

Because the domain name is keyword heavy, the blog will still show up on the first page of G. Frankly, it's a nice gesture and a good way to get people talking. It hardly matters if it's follow, no follow at this point. We market to people, not robots.

[Smuck]

Originally Posted by TheyCanSeeYou

...We market to people, not robots.

You might consider spending a little more time "marketing to robots" as I searched for "Em Wallace Chicago IL real estate" and I could not find a website for you.

The National Association of Realtors has done a study recently and concluded as many as 90% of new home buyers are starting their search online. You'll need to have a internet presence to have any chance at capturing these people.

You will need to "market to robots" to market to people.

[Business with Greg]

I think what he is trying to say is in our business the purpose of our website can vary. In my case I am not using the site to get business. I do care about search engines but it is secondary to making my blog appear busy. I directly market by going out into the field rather than sitting behind a desk refreshing my stats and getting excited over the next search phrase someone puts into google to find my blog.

My blog is a useful tool for my referral agents and customers. I make my articles simplistic for the short attention span readers. I go out every week on the same day and visit every real estate brokerage in 2 cities. When an agent talks about a poor credit client I direct them to the blog and tell them to share the credit repair article.

When they talk about a closed deal that is heading toward foreclosure I do the same thing and tell them to inform their customer about the HARP program and the Home Affordable Modification Program.

It is a visual tool that they can visit and re-visit. It essentially stops a lot of the repeat calls asking the same questions over and over on items I do not make money for informing people about. I encourage them to read and call me with questions.