Where do you find which sites are linking to you that are "Do Follow"? Do you use the google keyword "link:" then the URL? If so then I have spent countless months doing pointless postings to directories which are clearly no follow. Many of which claim to be SEO friendly. I am wasting time and seeing no benefits/improvements/changes. The content is there. The websites I compete against are trash, outdated (unfortunately the age helps them) - but regardless the content is trash and outdated and of no use Any thoughts?
Check to see if they are follow before building links using the SEO for firefox plug in. Also, I would try to identify footprints in blogs that allow for do follow links, and then search for the footprint + your keyword to find do follow related blogs to your keyphrase or niche.
@dnoah, That's what I'm doing right now. I need to create backlinks to our new SEO company, so I need to get involved with some SEO forums. However, I need to optimize my time. I need to get involved with forums that give our site a dofollow in my signature or post. I find it by using the SEOMoz toolbar we get with our subscription to SEOMoz.org. It simply hilites all nofollow links on a page in pink. Before the toolbar I did this manually. I would find a forum posting with some comments that had links in them and view the source for that page. I'd search for 'nofollow'. If it was there, then I knew that forum was a nofollow forum. Digital Point is wonderful. They are a dofollow forum, but restrict links to 2 and only to those who have participated in the forums for 10 postings. Thank you, Digital Point. Nathon
Also, FYI, there are some free no follow plugins you can use, including the SEO for Firefox plugin. It will highlight all of the no follow links in red, so you will know without having to view the source code.
I installed a toolbar from SEOBook.com and it also hilited nofollows in red, but the red hilite made them too hard to read.
I want to elaborate this some more now ok so I downloaded a Firefox plugin for SEO. The name alludes me right now. But when you get into specific posts, it does not share the same pagerank that the homepage does obviously. How does it weigh the backlinks?
A piece of advice, stop directory submissions immediately. They simply aren't worth your time. Subscribe to link packets from Angela and Paul(pay for the older ones) and go over to WF and get Terry Kyle's package if there is still room. Profile links, in my experience, give you the quickest boost in SERPS. While you're waiting on those start a blog and a few other Web 2.0 properties. Depending on your competition, that could/should be enough.
The primary difference IMO between the two is that directory links are more durable. Sig links can work in the short term but they tend to decay as the threads become old. Advantages to both, but I like directories because I can build some baseline backlinks and then move on to other things. The guys who blitz with profiles and forum sigs though can get a lot of traction out of that, but it's a lot of effort too.
you can use a dofollow finder tool to look for dofollow sites: http://www.seopositions.net/dofollow/ Code (markup):