How to add NoFollow to old posts efficiently: NoOldSpamLinks Plugin Review
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One of the hotly-debated topics amongst bloggers that write sponsored posts is the deletion of sponsored posts once the agreed period for posting has expired. Advertisers will be happy to know that most bloggers don’t delete - they consider the posts to be something they cared enough to write, paid or not, and want to leave it there. Many of us also do excellent jobs writing the posts for maximum SEO benefit, which helps not only the advertiser but us as well - we come up in those searches as well, and a well-written, relevant post has long-tail traffic benefits for the blogger.
I fell into blog-monetization by accident - in late 2005, I didn’t even know what pagerank was when I was approached by a well-respected poker blogger who was working for a well-known poker site, asking to buy advertising space on my poker blog. I was blown away, very flattered, and couldn’t believe someone wanted to pay money to place as ad on my little blog. I didn’t question why, just grabbed the money and ran, and it wasn’t until several months later that I discovered what pagerank was all about and that mine was PR 5.
Fast forward a year or so and I begin writing paid reviews. However, the paid reviews generally paid less than the ads I was selling, and the companies selling them had varying time frames for leaving a post live. Sounded good to me, because that meant I wouldn’t be cannibalizing my existing advertisers. The prices on most sponsored posts are laughably low - can anyone reasonably expect a lifetime backlink for $5 or $10? Combine that with Google’s monopolistic policies, and one can see why it behooves a blogger to remove sponsored posts when their period of performance has expired.
Making it happen is another matter. A daily or weekly discipline is needed to go back to the archives and take expired posts down. For me, posts would sit for several months, usually until some event occurred that made me angry at the brokers and I would do a dozen or two in one fell swoop.
I began to wonder if there was a plugin that could automate the process. But, I also saw that as I grew more experienced with writing these posts, the paid posts generated as much and more traffic than standard posts over the long haul. So, I began to think about going into the posts and adding the nofollow attribute to the links. That led me to Lucia’s NoOldSpamLinks Plugin.
This plugin allows you to do several things: First, you can add a Blacklist of domains for which links become NoFollow after 10 days. For instance, let’s say you link to someplace you don’t necessarily want to be passing link equity - Google, for instance. They can and do manipulate their own pagerank manually, so why bother giving them any of yours? It can be tedious to keep up with adding the NoFollow attribute to every link, so you can add it to the Blacklist and watch it go NoFollow 10 days later.
You can also set up a category that will always NoFollow after a set period of days. For instance, you may have a specific category for all sponsored posts, and the broker you use requires posts to stay live for 30 days. You might set that category to go NoFollow after 45 days, just to be safe. Then, you don’t have to remove a post that you’re proud to have written, and is generating traffic for your blog, but you retain your link equity for current and future advertisers.
Yes, it is a “What have you done for me lately?” mentatility. But, when you pay for a tank of gas, does that mean you get to keep refilling your tank every month for free? Of course not. What’s fair is fair.
Finally, there is an option to make a category always DoFollow. For instance, I have advertisers that purchase package deals on my poker blog, pre-paying for 6 months ad placement plus a paid post. In this case, I guarantee the post to stay live for the life of the blog. If that blog were on Wordpress, I could create a category and assign it to always DoFollow, so it remained live and passing link equity forever.
Lucia recommends using this plugin in conjunction with her Hide Sponsored Categories Plugin. I understand the rationale, but I haven’t had the opportunity to work with the Plugin yet. Not sure if I will do so any time soon, since I have a number of blogs to install and optimize with the NoOldSpamLinks plugin.
This plugin is great if you’re serious about retaining your link equity for those advertisers willing to pay for it over the long term. The only suggestion I’d make is to change the name - I don’t sell spam links so I’m not getting rid of spam links. I’m protecting my link equity. Just a subtle but distinct difference in perspective.
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I have a dumb question. If I add in a no-follow tag, can the posts still be found in the search engines? (I hope that makes sense.)