Celebrate Life: Site updates; Dofollow, CommentLuv, & KeywordLuv installed

Do follow badge redheart

Celebrate Life, like many of my sites have been do follow since they were created. A simple way to know which sites are dofollow is by installing and addon. To make the process a bit easier, for those hunting for dofollow blogs, I’ve added a badge to my right-hand sidebar. Clicking the icon links to the post I wrote about dofollow

Comment Luv

CommentLuv

CommentLuv is another wordpress plugin that’s been on all my sites since they were created. To increase the awareness, I also added a CommentLuv badge; CommentLuv enabled blogs allow users to link back to one of their posts when they leave a comment.

Here at Celebrate Life, you have the option of linking to one of your last ten posts. It’s an excellent plugin; my only wish is that more bloggers would use it on their sites. It doesn’t stop me from commenting on those who don’t use it, I feel CommentLuv is another way to reward your readers, and if they linked posts has an interesting title — perhaps encourage others that visit your site to stop by theirs site also — pure win!

Keyword comic

Keyword Luv

Earlier today, I installed keyword luv on Celebrate Life. I’ve been using this plugin since it was released in 2008, Stephen Cronin is the creator of the keywordluv WordPress Plugin. When it was released, I used it on several of my old sites. I’m not thrilled with people simply using keywords on my sites. Personal identity goes a long way in social networking, because of that, I normally won’t approve a comment that’s just keywords.

What’s great about Keyword Luv? It allows a person to leave their name and keyword; the only thing that will be linked is the keyword. Keyword Luv makes this possible by linking anything you add after the @ sign.

If I left a comment and signed my name as…

Opal @ Healthy Eating

The only words that would be linked are Healthy Eating.

Using appropriate keywords, is something I practiced even before I knew what ‘keywords’ were. In my mind, It looked more attractive when I used an accurate description when linking to a post or page.

Fast forward a few years later, and I learned the way I had been linking was the ‘correct way’… well if you want to try to bring more traffic to your site via search engines.

Will Keyword Luv increase website spam?

One of the arguments I’ve seen against Keyword Luv, and other WordPress addons that rewards its readers, is that you’ll receive in increase in spam. While this is true…  a knowledgeable website owner will have anti-spam plugins installed so this is a non issue. How much spam have you seen on this site? None, my anti-spam plug ins does a great job of blocking spam. Although Celebrate Life is small, I do receive a lot of spam because of what’s available here; Dofollow, CommentLuv, and now KeywordLuv.

Moving forward…

I don’t write too much about technology, but I’ll try to inject some of it here on Celebrate Life (now and again). There will be a few more changes to Celebrate Life, in the upcoming weeks, one of those changes will be a new WordPress theme.

I’d love to write more about keywords, but I’ll have to wrap up this post.

My daughter’s will awaken soon, and I really need to prepare breakfast; strawberry pancakes, hyperborean, and pineapple, blueberry, peach smoothie (we love delicious and healthy smoothies) is on the menu, and yes it’s all made from scratch.

For those itching to use keywords, by all means do so… just remember to include a name, and the keywords desired after the @ symbol.

Of course… the comment can’t be spam.  😉 There are sites that don’t monitor their comments. And it’s apparent, by the amount of spam that some of those sites receive. Well guess what, Celebrate Life isn’t one of them, I read all comments. As I posted before, spam never gets published — and on the off chance that it bypasses those filters, I will delete spam comments.

Celebrate Life: Do follow; site statistics

Spam

If your site is dofollow, one of side effects you might encounter, is the increase in spam.

Here at Celebrate Life several comments, never get published.  I use a few anti-spam Word Press plugins on my sites.

The chance of a spammers comments actually slipping through my anti-spam trap is very slim, and since I actually read each comment, I’d delete those that were published.

What is dofollow?

 

<a href="http://www.imcelebratinglife.com/" target="_blank" rel="dofollow">Celebrate Life</a>

 

Above, I’ve included the code that makes a link ‘dofollow‘ .

Making links dofollow enables search engines to follow whatever link your site has linked to, which can be helpful since the special markup language used tells search engines they can follow a link.

Not as important for those who aren’t looking for traffic, or ways to increase their page rank, but dofollow links are (normally) welcome by those who are trying to achieve that, as long it’s the right type of links…

That’s the main reason you’ll see dofollow on my sites, I like to reward my readers and do it in a few ways; Dofollow, Top commentators plug in, and CommentLuv.

If you’re a WordPress user, there are numerous plugins available to make this automated. I use NoFollow free on this site.

Normal link – No follow

<a href="http://www.imcelebratinglife.com/" target="_blank">Celebrate Life</a>

Since Nofollow is the default code, it’ll be found on the majority of sites a person visits. With nofollow sites, search engines won’t follow places you’ve linked to on your site, and why would they? You haven’t given them the ‘ok’ to follow the links you’ve linked too. Remember a special code is needed if you want search engines bots to follow them.

Do follow badge redheart

Do follow or nofollow, which one should I use?

Both types of links are good. However, dofollow links give the most benefits since it brings human traffic and SEO (search engine optimization) traffic to your site, SEO improves your sites online presence in search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.,). Nofollow links only bring human traffic.

People linking to your site within their posts are one way to bring traffic to your site, another way is to leave thoughtful comments with a link back to your site, so people know where to visit.

On commenting…

It takes time to comment, and so you don’t see me doing too much of that. However when I do, I stay on topic, and add to the conversation.  If you’re the copy/paste commentator, sorry that doesn’t fly here at Celebrate Life, and I’ll delete your comment. What I’m interested in is real conversation. It doesn’t bother me if people are commenting just to get a link back to their site; leave a real message, be part of the conversation.

Celebrate Life Bounce Rate 04 05 12

Site Performance

Although I haven’t been active on Celebrate Life, the basic principles that I use elsewhere were applied here. Why? I didn’t want too much of a headache to deal with, once I came out of hibernation.

Web stats at Celebrate Life are continuing to improve, my bounce rate is still low, 12.75%, and the amount of new visitors is increasing. I’ve had Google Analytics installed on this site since its creation, but it’s something I haven’t actively tracked until now.

Online success isn’t foreign to me, and it’s something I’ve been successful with on my business sites. Granted, the type of ‘success’ I’m striving for here, will be different, but the way I’ll achieve it, will be similar.

Photo Source: Vince Lamb