Where is the Link Love?

One of the reasons people comment on blogs is for the reciprocal aspect.

Unfortunately, in newer versions of self-hosted WordPress installations, you may not be getting much in the way of reciprocity.

Blog authors crave interaction and feedback on their writings.  I’ve heard it said that reading a good blog post and not leaving a comment is like enjoying a good meal and not leaving a tip.

People like leaving comments because in most cases, they get a link back to their website when they do.  This link exchange aspect is what motivates many people to take the time to interact with blogs.

As a website or blogsite owner, you certainly don’t want to lose your site visitors to external links (links that take your visitor to another site) either.  We should take great care to make sure all external links on our sites open in a new browser window.

There are two issues with the file that newer versions of WordPress use to manage the comments section of your blog.

First, when someone leaves a comment and enters a url, the link doesn’t open in a new window.  This means readers of your blog and your site visitors can be completely removed from your site and become visitors of another site – the website of the person who made the comment.

Second, the url is coded as “nofollow”.  This means, search engines ignore the link – not really helping those who are legitimately interacting with your blog (you can read more about nofollow at Wikipedia).

You can adjust the code in your WordPress installation and make both yourself, and those who take the time to comment on your blog, happy.

The place that controls your comments is a filed called comment-template.php and it can be found in your wp-includes file.  Please be careful when editing these types of files yourself.  A professional could fix this for you in a few minutes or if you want to take a shot at it, Mohan has instructions on his blog.

While you (or your pro) is in there making the change, consider taking out the “nofollow” too.  CommunitySpark has an article about making your blog love link compatible.

Now that you aren’t losing your site visitors, and those who are interacting with your blog are getting link love, consider adding this Link Love Enabled badge to your site and linking it to a blog post about what you did to make your blog link-love friendly!

PS – if you are a Rock Star Media client or member and need help with this, please be sure to let us know.