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There is no such thing as a perfect SEO forum. Every forum has a personality that is driven by its creator and moderator community. Generally speaking, a good SEO forum is more open and tolerant of varying points of view. Forums that actively ban people for speaking contrary positions are not good forums. Forums that ban people for being abusive and disruptive are good forums.
A good SEO forum does not present itself as the best or only reliable source of information on search engine optimization. In fact, there are no SEO forums which can be wholly trusted to provide accurate and reliable information. If you post a thread in a forum asking a question, a majority of replies may be posted by people who don't know what they are talking about. A good SEO forum advocates a healthy dose of skepticism for any point of view regardless of how sound or well-supported that point of view may be. You could have all the facts on your side and still be misinterpreting them as much as everyone else.
Search engine optimization theory is an ever-evolving discipline. The better SEO forums are flexible in their thinking. They may advocate one set of ideas one year and a different set of ideas the next. A good SEO forum is neither fickle nor driven by the winds of SEO conventional wisdom. Rather, a good SEO forum acknowledges shifts in strategic performance that cannot be explained away by simplistic adherence to popular ideas.
Good SEO forums have moderators who are neither intolerant nor condescending toward those points of view they disagree with. Derision, condescension, flaming, flame-baiting, and other unprofessional behaviors reveal measures of insecurity and inadequacy that should be regarded as red flags. Do you really want to be swayed by someone whose only recourse for winning an argument is editing out another person's posts, banning that person, or otherwise using unfair advantage to silence a disagreeing voice?
Usually, when people ask for help, they provide far too little information. A good forum community will prompt new visitors for additional information, often by providing examples of how to explain things without violating forum rules.
Good SEO forums avoid Cryptic Response Syndrome. The UNIX programming community tends to be the worst about providing useless, uninformative cryptic responses to people who are just learning basic skills. These types of unprofessional, unhelpful (and often abusive and condescending) answers clutter a great many forums for all industries. If you run a search on a good SEO forum, the odds of your finding a cryptic, uninformative answer to any question are generally low.
General speaking, the more active posting you see in a forum, the less likely any particular post is to be of substantive value. Highly popular SEO forums draw many inquiries from desperate Web site operators who rarely take the time to read through past discussions.
Also, the more followups you see to a simple, common inquiry, the less likely many of them will be truly useful. Many people use SEO forums to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of search engine optimization. But the less experienced SEOs reveal how much they don't know by saying virtually nothing of value. They tend to post "me too" followups without adding any substantive information. Even personal experience anecdotes are better than simply reiterating points made by previous participants.
The more arguments you see between moderators and posters, the less likely the moderators maintain any professional decorum or fair-mindedness. It's one thing to disagree with someone for 20 posts in a thread. It's quite another to become rude and condescending simply because you cannot persuade the other person to change their point of view. If the moderators behave that badly, what you can expect from the people who form the core group of their community?
If the moderators and forum regulars almost universally advocate building linkage and PageRank when attempting to help people, it is safe to assume the helpers don't know any more than the people in distress. SEOs who think in terms of PageRank and link building are very naive and have not learned much about search engine optimization. Such advisors are the blind leading the blind on a tour through the land of sunshine and gleaming pretty objects.
If a forum does not allow people to link to their own Web sites, even after establishing some sort of track record of participating in meaningful discussions, it can be assumed the forum operator has no real desire to be helpful to people. Inadequate SEOs do bombard forums with 1-time posts for the sake of worthless link drops. Good moderation sees to it that such posts are deleted quickly. Hence, there is no reason linkage-specific not to allow people to link to their own Web sites when they are asking for help. Some Web sites, naturally, may not be appropriate for mentioning in public forums.
If the forum operator charges for access to the forums, that is a major red flag. There are absolutely no SEO forums on the World Wide Web that are worth paying for access to. Absolutely none. These people are no better informed than operators of many free forums. Their communities are no more experienced and successful than many communities at free access forums. If you are required to pay for access to an SEO forum, move on.
Bad SEO forums wallow in Cryptic Response Syndrome. Their senior members are too lazy and uninvolved to actively help people. While it is true that many new forum members don't bother to read archives, a good forum community will tolerate the continuous arrival of people who lack basic technical skills. Elitist forums, and there are several in the SEO community, generally don't provide help to anyone but their own elite community members.
The more advertising you see on a forum, the less likely you are to see professional, well-informed, diverse opinion.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of SEO forums on the World Wide Web. We cannot possibly review them all. The following forums are suggested because they generally fit into the guidelines above for Good SEO Forums. Some of these forums match those guidelines better than others. Many of the forum community members participate in multiple forums. They may speak highly of forums which, when compared to our Bad SEO Forums guidelines, should be topping out the list. Individual experience and perspective vary. You have to judge for yourself where you think you will benefit the most. These forums are selected because they generally have more useful information than useless nonsense.
Michael Martinez has been participating in SEO forums since 1998. His contributions to the SEO community are numerous. Learn more about Michael's SEO services at SEO Consulting Web site.