Sure does.

If you install the Mozbar to your browser as well, it comes with an option to highlight follow and no-follow links on the page.

You can find Chrome and Firefox downloads for it here.

Hi George

Sounds like you'll be using the 2.0s for the right reasons, which is great.

Here's a list of 25 2.0's sorted by PR:

wordpress.com - pr9
tumblr.com - pr8
typepad.com - pr8
weebly.com - pr8
blogger.com - pr8
tripod.com - pr8
posterous.com - pr7
jimdo.com - pr7
yola.com - pr7
squidoo.com - pr7
multiply.com - pr7
angelfire.com - pr7
officelive.com - pr7
rediff.com - pr7
wikidot.com - pr7
webs.com - pr7
webnode.com - pr7
salon.com - pr7
edublogs.org - pr6
webspawner.com - pr6
soup.io - pr6
ucoz.com - pr6
travelblog.org - pr6
gather.com - pr6
springnote.com - pr6

I really can't vouch for how easy they are to use or which have the best features etc. as I rarely ever use 2.0s.  But hopefully you should find some useful ones here.

So long as you create the content with the purpose of educating and/or entertaining a genuine audience, I think you'll do great - although don't rule out writing some of those posts for guest blogs or perhaps even your own blog.

It's by no means essential.

I've worked on a number of international sites and you quickly realise that while a website is setup with a geographical TLD and is fully served for that language's audience, the server is located in the US - where so much hosting is.  Regardless, this has not stopped the site's ability to rank.

Similarly, evidence of links from a different country working can unfortunately be found in places like SAPE - the russian link network.  I've seen countless of websites rank #1, #2 with links from these websites in Russia, Uzbekistan and so on - Google wouldn't be targeting these links if they didn't work.

However, my mindset has always been to acquire links from places that are going to send the most targeted and relevant traffic to your site.  In the scenario you've given, this would most likely mean trying to earn as many Japanese backlinks as possible.  Links from other places may increase organic visibility, but more often than not referring traffic from links you've earned can be far more qualified and convert more often - so I would aim to get them via links from the country.

Just my £0.02

Hey there

In terms of a link building tactic, I wouldn't recommend spending too much time on this.  If done sparingly and on relevant sites with good content/discussion, it could give you a slight ranking increase - but the effect is likely to be small and attempting to scale it could look quite spammy.

I would much rather approach forum posting as a relationship and a traffic builder.  If you can engage on forum communities, help out people where you can and really add worth there with help, tutorials, resources etc., you could very well build positive enforcement for your brand, as well as driving qualified traffic to your site that already trusts you, thus may be more likely to convert.

If you can do that, I think forum posting can be great.  As a side-effect, having a few forum links won't be so bad.  But don't approach it with the mindset of building links - build the relationships first and a few sparingly used links to your site can be a nice added benefit.

If you go and forum post just to build link, you'll see little to no value whatsoever.

Hope this helps.

Hi Amelia

I can't help directly with the Mozbar issue, but I can provide an alternative in the meantime:

http://www.impersonal.me

That site lets you carry out non-personalised, geo-specific searches for your keywords.  There's a UK setting on there by default (plus others).

One of my top tools and has been on my favourites bar for years now.

Hope it helps