Turning my forum into dofollow forum?

by SureNot

Posted: 9 years ago 7 replies

Many high ranking forums are dofollow I also want to make mine dofollow one but since I know dofollow links are bad for SEO I am not how this is not affecting high rankings forums?

#dofollow #forum #turning

MikeFriedman

9 years ago

Originally Posted by SureNot

Many high ranking forums are dofollow I also want to make mine dofollow one but since I know dofollow links are bad for SEO I am not how this is not affecting high rankings forums?

Dofollow links are not bad for SEO. What is bad for SEO are those links in your signature. That is bad for SEO.

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SEO-Dave

9 years ago

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

Dofollow links are not bad for SEO. What is bad for SEO are those links in your signature. That is bad for SEO.

The forum links here are nofollow, so as long as the OP isn't joining forums to game Google by link spamming, Google will ignore them.

If the OP is joining multiple forums to add keyword rich anchor text links back to his site, that doesn't look good. Difficult to say how Google automatically deals with these types of keyword rich nofollow links (best case scenario is they ignore them : worst case you look like a link spammer). If I were a manual Google reviewer and found the OP was doing this on dozens of forums I'd not be impressed.

Note: not suggesting the OP is doing this. There's no point having keyword rich anchor text on any of the links you add here, there's no SEO value passed to your site.

The problem with having a dofollow forum/blog is if you don't moderate what your users link to. The owner of the domain is responsible for everything on the domain, if you allow your users to link to bad sites (viagra spam etc...) your site will likely loose it's trust status (could pass no SEO benefit via links).

You either have to moderate all links or not pass SEO benefit through links you haven't moderated.

Although nofollow deletes link benefit I'd rather nofollow unmoderated links (like Warrior Forum does) than run the risk of sending dofollow links to bad sites that are link spamming and run the risk of a penalty for linking to bad sites.

David

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MikeFriedman 9 years ago

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

The forum links here are nofollow, so as long as the OP isn't joining forums to game Google by link spamming, Google will ignore them.

Google has talked out of both ends of their ass about this one. John Mueller himself has said that nofollow links can trigger a penalty, and on other occasions said they are ignored and can't trigger a penalty.

I tend to agree they are ignored. They won't trigger an algorithmic penalty, but would certainly get you screwed from a manual review.
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paulgl

9 years ago

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

The OP is not joining forums.....he's got one.

Forget the forum and any seo thought. It's takes a boat load of work
and publicity to make a forum so popular that it would matter.
Aint gonna happen.

Paul

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