I would definitely recommend keeping the comments as "no follow". 

There are lists circulated in marketing circles of blogs that allow "do follow" comments.

If you setup your site this way, you may quickly become a spammer haven.

The same can be said of sites that accept guest posts. Get yourself on a list like that and you'll be inundated with requests from the spammiest of guest "bloggers" who want to slap up a crappy post they're getting paid to write for SEO purposes.

I would definitely recommend keeping the comments as "no follow".

 

There are lists circulated in marketing circles of blogs that allow "do follow" comments.

If you setup your site this way, you may quickly become a spammer haven.

^^Spot on! Plus, with the new Google updates linking out to sites which are potentially spam sites can get your site penalized. So it's best to be safe and choose no-follow on your own blog, unless you know the site you are linking too. 

As KyleAAA also noted, using dofollow links in your comments is a great way to wind up as an SEO target. There are lots of places around the web where people have compiled lists of dofollow blogs for the sole purpose of building links.

KyleAAA said:

If you have a dofollow comments section, you will end up on one of those "100 blogs with dofollow comments" lists and get bombarded by spam comments. You might end up getting a few good comments out of the deal as well, though.

 

As a side note, Google implemented a change several years ago that completely negated the link-juice-keeping effect of nofollow links. There is NO seo advantage to nofollowing links. It used to work but now it doesn't. If you have a comment link, it is going to affect the link juice you keep on the page regardless of whether or not it's nofollow.

Thanks for this info.  I'm new at the whole html and seo thing, so all my links have been nofollow unless they're paid for.  I'm going to have to change this if there's really no difference.  Or just move in a new direction going forward.

Actually, that's the opposite of what you should do. Google frowns on selling dofollow links. All sold links should be nofollow (unless you're okay with the risk and are charging a premium). In general, NON-paid links should be dofollow. The comments section issue is separate, because those are links you can't control. Since linking out to a bad neighborhood is considered bad SEO, you could get in trouble if a commenter links to a bad neighborhood in their signature and it's not nofollowed. What I was attempting to say in my response was that you don't KEEP any extra link juice on your site JUST by nofollowing links. Make sense? I know it's a bit counter-intuitive so feel free to PM me if you want a longer explanation.

If you have a dofollow comments section, you will end up on one of those "100 blogs with dofollow comments" lists and get bombarded by spam comments. You might end up getting a few good comments out of the deal as well, though.

 

As a side note, Google implemented a change several years ago that completely negated the link-juice-keeping effect of nofollow links. There is NO seo advantage to nofollowing links. It used to work but now it doesn't. If you have a comment link, it is going to affect the link juice you keep on the page regardless of whether or not it's nofollow.

Thanks for this info.  I'm new at the whole html and seo thing, so all my links have been nofollow unless they're paid for.  I'm going to have to change this if there's really no difference.  Or just move in a new direction going forward.

TB at BlueCollarWorkman said:

If you guys could back up here -- what actually is "dofollow" and "nofollow"?? What do those mean? Seems like every day there's new blogging stuff to learn!

Every link can have a rel="nofollow" tag added to it.  It basically tells search engines that this isn't a link you condone, so don't give it juice from my site.  By default, Wordpress and other blogging platforms DON'T add this tag, but you can add it manually or setup your CommentLuv to be no-follow.  

Oh I see, man, I had no idea about any of this. Crazy. Ignorance <em>was </em>bliss, lol.

If you guys could back up here -- what actually is "dofollow" and "nofollow"?? What do those mean? Seems like every day there's new blogging stuff to learn!

Every link can have a rel="nofollow" tag added to it.  It basically tells search engines that this isn't a link you condone, so don't give it juice from my site.  By default, Wordpress and other blogging platforms DON'T add this tag, but you can add it manually or setup your CommentLuv to be no-follow.  

If you guys could back up here -- what actually is "dofollow" and "nofollow"?? What do those mean? Seems like every day there's new blogging stuff to learn!

Every link can have a rel="nofollow" tag added to it.  It basically tells search engines that this isn't a link you condone, so don't give it juice from my site.  By default, Wordpress and other blogging platforms DON'T add this tag, but you can add it manually or setup your CommentLuv to be no-follow.  

As a side note, Google implemented a change several years ago that completely negated the link-juice-keeping effect of nofollow links. There is NO seo advantage to nofollowing links. It used to work but now it doesn't. If you have a comment link, it is going to affect the link juice you keep on the page regardless of whether or not it's nofollow.

There are lists circulated in marketing circles of blogs that allow "do follow" comments.

If you setup your site this way, you may quickly become a spammer haven.