This was only partially succesful, comment spam is still a huge problem. Today there is a growing community of search marketers reversing the trend by not only removing the nofollow attribute from their site, but also keeping a list of sites that “dofollow” their links. If a site owner wishes to remove the nofollow attribute the software must be modified, though there are plugins available that make this easy for most blog software.

Link building is one of the holy grails of SEO, so any site that passes link juice to commenters is valuable within the SEO community. This makes getting a link as easy as leaving a comment on a site. Do a search for nofollow or dofollow and you’ll find several sites with lists. The three that I’ve found the most helpful are:

• http://courtneytuttle.com/blogs-that-follow/
• http://www.stephanmiller.com/the-ultimate-dofollow-blog-list/
• http://nicusor.com/do-follow-list/

Just as you might expect, these links don’t have much value. Most of the sites that pass link juice are PR3 or less, and if the site has any popularity at all your link will reside among dozens of others. If you’re going to post comments to earn links the best strategy is to post early and post often. Subscribe to that blog’s feed and try to be within the first few comments on a post, and try to do this for a number of posts. If your comments are informed and helpful, or contribute to the discussion, then you may even earn a few visits.

This blog is follows links. As an SEO I see the value of this, so this is a way to give back to the community. Your comment does have to add something though. If you’re commenting on a post that’s six months old, or your only thought is “nice blog” it will probably not be approved. I’m also not going to approve comments with links to porn, illegal or hate material.