In this tutorial, I will show you how to easily turn your WordPress blog from the default NoFollow to a DoFollow blog without the need of a plugin. Why not turn your blog into a DoFollow blog and get more visitors, more traffic and eventualy more recognition in the Online community. Probably you already have seen some blogs displaying the DoFollow image and you wonder how it is done and what it really means. Read my next tutorial for a closer look at DoFollow versus NoFollow.

What are NoFollow and DoFollow?

DoFollow is a term that does not really exist. It is a slang term given to Websites that are not using nofollow. nofollow is a value that can be assigned to the rel attribute of the HTML anchor tag to instruct some search engines not to pass on any influence to an outbound link. The nofollow value was intended to stop comment spam in blogs. Commenting is recognized as a good way to get one way backlinks. But it has been abused and thus the creation of the nofollow value back in 2005.

You might already know that NoFollow blogs do not carry any PR value to other Websites through commenting. If your blog is DoFollow then comments made by your users get Link juice, meaning that your blog passes on the PR value to the commenter.

Should You Set Comment Links To DoFollow?

One way to encourage your readers to comment on your blog is by making your blog DoFollow. If your blog is new and you are trying to increase traffic then you need to turn your blog to a DoFollow blog. When people comment on your content they are adding value to your content. Some consider DoFollow as bribing visitors for comments, while others consider it as rewarding visitors that leave a comment. I tend to agree with the latter, but whatever your opinion is, DoFollow encourages interaction with your readers. One negative side though is that it increases comment moderation duties and an increase of spam comments.

How does NoFollow and DoFollow Look Like?

The only way to know whether a link has been set to NoFollow is to look at the source code of the page. There are several ways to do that depending on the browser you use. To look at the source code, select “source” from your browser´s menu or you could right click on the page to view the source from the context menu. Also, Mozilla Firefox browser has add-ons that highlights a nofollow link on the page without actually looking at the source code.

The attribute that defines a link as NoFollow is rel=“nofollow”. If you remove the rel=“nofollow” attribute, then your link becomes DoFollow. There is no dofollow value. The absence of the nofollow value makes the link a DoFollow.

A typical DoFollow link is like this:

<a href="http://blueoliveonline.com/" title="">Blue Olive Online</a>

A typical NoFollow link is like this:

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://blueoliveonline.com/" title="">BOO</a>

<?php
/**********************************************************************
* @Author: Boutros AbiChedid 
* @Date:   October 9, 2011
* @Website: http://bacsoftwareconsulting.com/
* @Description: Function1: changes the Author's link in the comment  
* section to a 'dofollow' instead of the WordPress default of 'nofollow'
* Function2: changes all links in the comment text to a 'dofollow' 
* instead of the WordPress default of 'nofollow'
* @Tested on: WP version 3.2.1
**********************************************************************/
/**** Section1: Changes the author's link in the comment section to a 
'dofollow' instead of the default WordPress  of 'nofollow' ****/
function dofollow_comment_author_link() {
	$url    = get_comment_author_url();
	$author = get_comment_author();

	if ( empty( $url ) || ('http://' == $url))
		return $author;
	else
		$link = "<a href='$url' rel='external' class='url'>$author</a>";
		return $link;
}
//http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_action
add_action('get_comment_author_link', 'dofollow_comment_author_link');
/* End of Section1 */

/**** Section2: Changes all links in the comment text to a 'dofollow' 
instead of the WordPress default of 'nofollow' ****/
function dofollow_comment_text_link($string) {
	//http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.str-ireplace.php
	$string = str_ireplace('rel="nofollow"', '', $string);
	return $string;
}
//http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_filter
add_filter('comment_text', 'dofollow_comment_text_link');
/* End of Section2 */
?>

Code Explanation Using an Image

The image below shows what does the above code affect in the Comments section of your WordPress blog.

Code References:

• add action()
• str_ireplace()
• add_filter()

<?php 
//Some Code here beetween the opening PHP tag (above) 
//and the closing PHP tag (below)...
?>
<?php 
//Some other Code here ...
?>

References

• Function Reference « WordPress Codex
• nofollow – Wikipedia
• PageRank (PR)
• Dofollow FAQ