DoFollow Blog Finder

What do DoFollow and NoFollow Mean?

As you've learned if you've been with Guru of Search for a while, the two main factors involved in getting a page higher in the search engine rankings are quality content, and quality backlinks to that content. A backlink is a link from another site to your page. The more relevant the content on that page is to yours, and the more of an authority that site is considered on the topic, the more highly valued the link will be by search engines, and the more ranking credit your page will receive.

Comment Backlinks Tagged NoFollow

One way to receive a backlink is simply to post a comment on an article page discussing your topic and place a link back to your page. The problem was - spammers would take advantage of and abuse this tactic by placing links back to their pages all over the Internet, including on pages that were completely off-topic. That would be annoying to website owners trying to maintain the integrity of their pages. So Google came up with a nofollow tag website owners could add to all comment links posted by visitors, that would basically instruct Google not to follow, and therefore not to give credit, to that particular link, and the page it would link to. The intent behind this was to deter spammers from spamming blogs. Did it work? While it may have deterred some, we can probably speak for the masses when we say we still get plenty of spam. Read our article on the misuse of the rel nofollow tag for more.

What About DoFollow Links?

Since the introduction of Google's nofollow tag, legitimate commenters are having a more difficult time getting their pages noticed. However, not all websites or blogs make use of the nofollow tag. There are still plenty of websites that do follow your links (links referred to as dofollow simply lack a nofollow tag, although we've seen several people try to overcome the nofollow tag by appending a dofollow tag - don't bother, there's no such thing). How to find the dofollow blogs, ie. those without a nofollow tag?

DoFollow Blog Finder

There are several competing software applications out there that attempt to find on topic blogs that don't use nofollow tags. We can collectively refer to these as dofollow blog finders. They do what they say they do - they scan the web for blogs and websites relevant to your topic that allow comments. Then then give you all kinds of statistics on the blogs found, including:

• URL (website address) of the blog
• Pagerank (PR) of domain and page (the higher the page's Pagerank, the more link credit, or link juice, your page will receive from your backlink)
• Whether the blog uses a follow or nofollow tag
• Number of comments already posted
• Number of outgoing links on that page (the more outgoing links, the less yours may be worth)
• Date of recent post/ comment
• Title of web page (use this to identify how related a page is to your topic - the more related it is, the more link credit/ link juice you'll receive from your backlink)
• The ability to visit the blogs and post comments within the software
• The ability to auto-fill in repeat information in the comment section (such as name, email address, website URL, etc.)
• Tracking of your posted and approved comments

So who, in our opinion, is the leader of the pack?

Blog Comment Demon vs. Fast Blog Finder vs. Comment Kahuna

Blog Comment Demon (BCD), Fast Blog Finder (FBF), and Comment Kahuna (CK) are currently the industry leaders in dofollow blog finding software. We've tested them all, and our favorite is:

Best DoFollow Blog Finder: Blog Comment Demon

Blog Comment Demon (BCD) contains all of the features listed above, and is therefore our hands down winner. Notable differences from its competitors are its:

• Project management system - you can organize your blog finding projects by keyword phrase, which you can then place in folders and sub-folders. If you're running many microsites (targeted on-topic websites), this helps you manage all your searches.
• Comment post date and approval - the date and time of your comment is recorded, and you can use the "approval scan" button to find out if your comment was approved (published on the site).
• Website title - you'll see the web page title in the list of potentially relevant blog sites - this will quickly help you determine if the page is on topic or not.
• Notes - you can save notes for each blog you comment on. We typically use this to leave the comment text we posted. This is useful in case you want to refer back to your comment later, especially if it doesn't get published.
• Greater search depth - BCD finds a lot more blog results than the competing software we tried.
• Security settings - you have fine grained control over search parameters so you can set the software to safely scan for Pagerank, etc. without upsetting the search engines and potentially getting your IP address temporarily banned.
• Less false positives - if you are finding that a dofollow is really a nofollow and vice versa, you can use the drill feature to drill down into the page and analyze it in more depth, reducing the possibility of false positives.
• Tabbed browsing - you can open multiple blogs in tabs, and browse to the comment section directly to leave your comments.

In Second Place - G-Lock Fast Blog Finder

Fast Blog Finder offers very similar features to Blog Comment Demon. However, it comes in second place because it:

• FBF doesn't quite provide the depth of results the BCD does
• FBF doesn't show the web page title in the search results
• FBF doesn't let you keep notes and therefore track your posted comments.

However, FBF does have one advantage over BCD - and that is the ability to save auto-fill profiles. In other words - you can call up an auto-fill profile for a particular project, and it will auto-fill in, in the comment field, your repeat details - name, email, website, etc. While BCD does offer this feature, it does it on a field-by-field basis, so it takes a while longer to apply.

What About Comment Kahuna, Comment Hut, etc.?

Finally, there is Comment Kahuna, Comment Hut, and all the rest. While some of these are offered for free, and are worth a look, they are not nearly as powerful or offer nearly as many features as BCD and FBF. But don't take our word for it - try them for yourself and see.

Things Not To Do When Leaving Comments

The last thing you want to do when using dofollow blog finder software is become a spammer yourself. Here's a list of no-no's:

• Don't leave your username as keywords. While it helps your link to have its link text reflect the topic, you don't want to piss off blog owners and visitors by putting keywords as your name. That will reduce the referral traffic you get from the link, and may result in your comment not being posted, or being outright deleted.
• Leave a meaningful comment - take some time to see what the blog is talking about, and then chime in with some useful insight. Otherwise, you are wasting your time as well as that of the blog readers.

Post Comments on NoFollow Pages for Referral Traffic

We can't reiterate enough how important it is that you also post comments on nofollow pages. Why? Because people will follow your links. This is known as referral traffic. If you leave a good comment, people are more likely to check out your article/ website. The better your comment, the more of an authority you'll be considered on that particular topic. Finally, in contrast to Google's intention, evidence shows that nofollow links are not completely ignored by search engines. Yahoo, in fact, outright follows them.