Lunchtime find : Every so often you come across a site that hasn’t added nofollow to comment links. The independent comments allow you to add links in (check out the comments) BBC magazine websites are a free for all on the forums.

Checking over a few blog posts on the BBC surprisingly I’ve noticed that links don’t have nofollow on, which has led to anchor text links being placed into comments. Some of the BBC blogs add nofollow to links while others don’t.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/fivelivebr……ivin.html#P91629883

The link goes over to the Phones4U home page.

What’s great about the BBC blogs is you have a profile page which links to all the comments you have made. The comment above has been made by Vince (maybe related to the vince update?).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=14285586

Vince has been busy recently targeting “iphone”, “mobile phones” and “phone” all to the Phones4U home page. It’s not clear if this is being done by an agency or Phones4u themselves but they are not the only one at it.

A further look finds this account http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=14129205 in the name of David Cooper, which links over to www.very.co.uk, Phones4u.co.uk and k7computing.com (but that links broke!).

Others include…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=14125842 – seospecialistbirmingham.co.uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=14235298 – seomomo.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=14137534 – bluelightseo.co.uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=14130042 – clarebrace.co.uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=1773493 – openeyemarketing.co.uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=13952511 – david-whitehouse.org

I could go on…. Question is

a) Are these links any good considering they are located in the comments section rather than in the article content?
b) Is this a legitimate way of building links?

My view

a) Yes but they would be better in content.
b) Its a ok way to build links but in the long run not effective.

Anyone else have a view of this type of link building? If so add a comment

The most popular question from clients to SEO’s is How Many Links Do I Have? My answer, it depends.

There’s a little more explanation to it. What seems to work well for me is to show the difference in the number of links different tools report for my Blackpool FC Blog.

There are multiple websites that you can use to get a total on the number of links your website has, I can think of six in total

Google Link Command – 6
Yahoo Site Explorer – (Inlinks, except from domain) – 1,297
Google Webmaster Tools – 197
Majestic SEO – 2,702
Linkscape – 516
Alta Vista – 319

Which is the best site to use to check links? To get a list of them all then Yahoo / Majestic SEO will give you a comprehensive report. If you need to check new links coming it’s very hard to do as you need to compare one month to another.

To get an indication of what is happening with your links you want to track the trend buy keeping a total every 2 / 3 weeks. Track numbers of all of the different tools above as you then get a good indication of the general movement.

Sometimes as an SEO you reach a point when you’ve tried everything to get a site ranking or out of a penalty. If your out of options then a good place to turn is the Webmaster Forums from Google, MSN and Yahoo.

They are great resource to get help from people who really do want to help you even though they have nothing to gain. It seems at the moment that the Bing Webmaster Forums are being used to grab a free link to a site of your choice.

You can add a link into your post or signature and it won’t have a nofollow. For example

http://www.bing.com/community/forums/p/647352/9532720.aspx

Most of the people who are there to help may have a link to their blog or company which is acceptable considering they are helping people. Some are taking a little further.

As expected you always get a viagra link.

http://www.bing.com/community/forums/p/649775/9549831.aspx

And this fella has got an advert in his sig!

http://www.bing.com/community/forums/t/649566.aspx

But, if you give a platform for people to add links in that are not no followed, you will get links to porn sites, it’s inevitable.

http://www.bing.com/community/forums/p/649539/9546835.aspx

I’m guessing the links were not in the post originally and added at a latter date. The wysiwyg editor is secure you can’t stick iframes or JavaScript in but it just means that people will start posting to get a link and not necessarily to help someone.

Hope this hasn’t ousted anyones primary source of links!