Have you ever noticed that when you comment on some blogs, the search engines will pick it up as a link to your website, while on other sites it doesn’t?

That is because most blogging sites, such as WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad, all add a “NoFollow” tag to all comments, which instructs search engines to not follow the link when doing their crawls.  

This was intended to be a good way to discourage spam and pointless commenting that doesn’t add anything to the conversation.   There is, however, an easy way for WordPress blogs to remove the “NoFollow” tag from your comments.   Simply install the DoFollow plugin.  

Why would you do this?  Currently, in order to get link credit for a comment, you will typically need to post enough to make the website’s “Top Commentators” section on the blog’s sidebar.  This plugin instead rewards all commentators, including those that only leave a single comment on your website.  

So, what is the downside?  Will you get fewer comments because people are competing for that Top Commentator spot?  Probably not, but its something to consider.   Another thing to consider are the SEO ramifications.  I know I have a few SEO experts that read this site.   Is this SEO suicide?   I’ve often heard it’s better to have more incoming links than outgoing links.  Obviously your domain’s outgoing links will go through the roof with this plugin.   Any thoughts?