DoFollow Forums
As you may know, Google implemented the nofollow tag a few years ago, but a short time later, others chose to create what is known as Dofollow, which is really nothing more than purposely allowing the “link juice” to pass from one site to another or, at least, not hindering it.
The definition of nofollow:
nofollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.
As a possible incentive or through a lack of desire to block links in forums, some forum owners and moderators have decided to allow backlinks within a forum post or within the signature (aka sig). One reason for having nofollow links and/or not allowing sigs in a forum is to prevent spam.
For this reason, I do not encourage or condone the abuse of these forums. I see it as a perk for actively taking part in the forum. Along with possibly getting some “link juice”, you may get some traffic from readers of your posts, especially from forums related to your links.
What is a good way to check if a link is Nofollow? Download Firefox
Install the Firefox SEOQuake Plugin from the tools page.
I have organized a list of dofollow forums into categories and alphabetized it. It is a permanent page within this site and will continue to be updated.
I just wanna warn spammers – don’t try to abuse these forums. I attend to many of them and if you spam you’ll be banned quicker than you’ll log off the forum.
I think links from forum don’t get the proper link juice anyway.
Is it just me, or is the No-Follow tag a bit silly? I’m not really sure what the point of it is – why stop Google from being able to follow links? Websites that are administered well should be looked after and any links that the admins don’t want should be removed/edited.
That was a great list. I am also a member of most of the webmaster and IM related forums listed.
I was not even aware they were DoFollow except for SitePoint. I registered in those forums for the purpose of learning and being able to help as well in the process.
I recently heard about the “dofollow” forums and they have helped me tenfold, but I agree with Matt Saunders comment, why stop Google????
I have always wondered, though these forms are dofollow, but do these links on forum siggys really help at all? Or rather they might help, but how significant would it be?
I agree that the no-follow is silly. Google is the only one that really cares about it, and hopefully a Microsoft/Yahoo combo will knock the Big ‘G’ back to reality. I am a member of Sitepoint and Digital Point. They are awesome forums for Webmasters the really learn their trade. The do follow is just an added bonus.