Do Follow Blog Links, Are You Fooling Yourself?

John Halderman writes about personal growth and online marketing , helping people take command of their income, personal growth and wellness. He is also on Twitter

Are you one who is carefully selecting the blogs you visit and comment on because they have ‘Do-Follow’ set up? Yes, I know, you get links this way – but are you really contributing to building a solid business and brand? If you are aiming for adding links in order to get better page ranking so that you can feed viewers to your ads, maybe you are gaining a little. But will they ever return? If you don’t make the effort to create value on your site, you will be forever seeking first time viewers because that’s all you will have – is that what you want?

I got started on this topic because of a post on one of the blogs I read pertaining to blogging. Blogger Maki of DoshDosh just put up a post titled, “The Unhealthy Obsession With Do Follow Links” which I suggest you go read right after you are done here. I won’t repeat everything he said here but just say, he poses the question of the validity of restricting yourself to commenting only on blogs with Do Follow set up for the express purpose of getting back links. And with the validity of the short spammy comments that don’t contribute to the conversation.

Now I’m certainly not going to try to put words in Maki’s mouth, you should read his post for yourself, but I can tell you my take on this, which I’m suspecting may not be too far off of his based on what he has said. With this obsession for link building many are fooling themselves into thinking they are actually building something that will last. First, I wonder how long it will take Google to come up with a method that detects and qualifies comments? They have already found ways to lock out other forms of spammy activity – can you say Google Slap!

Secondly, are you aware of how things are shifting within the online marketing world? With all the social networking sites exploding all around us people are showing that people respond to people more than some artificial hype. Is this full circle? We are back to basic word of mouth being the most potent mode of marketing. For years the internet marketing tried to cover over this with all the hype that was developed just to get eyeballs on to a page. However, if you are looking to build a real business with a meaningful brand this kind of focus is short sighted.

I have only been involved online and learning about online marketing for about 3 years but have seen major shifts take place in how it is being done successfully. Even the top ‘gurus’ in the niches most highly susceptible to hype style marketing, ‘Internet Marketing’ and ‘Work From Home’ have shifted to providing tons of quality information for free. It appears that the way forward if you want to build a brand for yourself and your business, is to be real, and provide quality and value.

And certainly one way to bring value to your site or blog and to the readers, is to actually participate in and contribute to discussions that benefit those people. When you put intelligent ideas in your comments readers will be more likely to follow your link to your blog to see what else of value you have to offer. I think, in the end, that a real human following from a comment is of higher value than a Google Bot. It’s real people who ultimately do business with us, are we assisting them with this action or are we hoping to accidentally capture them? Are you involved with what your audience needs and wants? Are you helping them get it? Are you directing them to other useful sources?

Here’s the trick, if you want to get good at something you must immerse yourself in it. And it can be very helpful to align yourself with others who are doing the same. You can actually kind of form a mastermind alliance with others just by who you associate with in your blogging. Follow those who are deeply in tune with and developing that which you are interested in and get involved by making comments on their blogs and making posts on your blog that really contribute to the conversation. And this must be more than, “really cool post man!” . . . ‘Dude’, come on, wake up!

If you are working on building yourself and your sites as your brand, the shallow comments will do you little good, in fact they will more likely knock you down a few points with your readers. You may not have figured this out yet, but if Google can program it’s computers to pinpoint the shams real humans can do it too – and usually quicker. Now if you are operating with a business model that only cares about traffic, any traffic, to get ad clicks, then the shallow, “cool man” comments will get you some mechanical links. Go for it, as long as it lasts.

But realize that at some point more bloggers will set up filters to not allow short comments – it’s only a matter of time. Because what happens on popular blogs is that someone who really cares about the topic and wants to learn more from reading the comments, like the author, must wade through all the trash. Just like the famed ‘Google Smack’ on all the trash site developers, the system, which here on the net is ultimately people, will tire of wading through the trash.

Get a clue from what is going on in the online world of business, people are fast realizing that the best way to build a business and a respectable brand is to be real. Sure we all click on ads and we marketers use ads, I don’t think that will go away, but the trend is towards offering quality and value.

Your blog readers will respect you far more if they see that you are involved with real meaty discussions with others that are adding value to the subject.

If you are afraid that you will loose your blog readers to another blog if you mention it in your posts, you are missing the big picture. You will gain more respect by leading them to other high quality resources, and if you are really contributing – they will have a reason to stay with you, both for your recommendations and your contribution. Short sighted fear will hold you back!

By getting involved in quality interactions with other bloggers you are creating collaboration,and through collaboration everyone wins. You really are tapping into the ‘mastermind’ concept even if not officially set up. When a group of minds get together on a particular subject they are each enhanced by the interaction. Ideas beget ideas and spark more ideas much faster than each individual can alone. And everyone reading this interaction gains more as well.

You can also apply all this too articles as well. Yes it’s great how you can get a nice link from posting an article on an article directory, but what you really want is real live readers that are impressed enough to click on the link at the bottom and go to your page. The article has already pre-qualified them, they are now a better viewer or your page than one that came from a search.

So, I guess the first thing to decide is, what is the business model you want to operate with? Will you continue to chase traffic alone or will you build a brand which becomes viral in it’s own right where people invite people.

John