Forums are great places to share opinions, connect with members but more importantly promote your business. SEO has generally been looked at as a method that’s difficult and time consuming with many “black hat” tactics being used. But in my opinion there is a relatively easy way to gain some exposure and SEO benefit from forums.
Why forum posts are good:
They help you connect with potential clients/customers – The other people on the forums themselves are likely to have a number of similar interests (one obviously being business).
The new age forum SEO (marketing)
Before I get started, I have a forum client “my local services” who have kindly let me test my seo on their forum. More on that here:
This article is just going to talk about what was done before, and why it has changed (for the better)
In ye good ol’ days, all we use to have to do to get some solid links as an SEO, was to sign up to a couple of niche specific forums and get posting, these forums were barely moderated and you could have some tasty exact match anchors to rocket your site.
Then Penguin hit
Then, in my opinion, more importantly, users hit back.
Spam is the number 1 problem with forums (annoying users/people who don’t know what their talking about come in a close second) but spam is still 1st.
Before, individuals would just scroll past spammers and move on, now their comments are moderated and deleted, this has made forum marketing and forum seo much better, as no longer can you simply put “SEO Location” in your signature and start hitting up 50 threads a day saying “nice post” “thanks” “cool”, which although still happens occasionally, but luckily no where near as much.
This is how forum SEO is done now (or at least how it should be done):
Target users as potential clients/customers FIRST – Post informative answers to threads, stay active, reach out in non spammy methods and even build relationships with the forum mods.
Anchor text no more – Brand name only or even URL. For a few reasons: It’s safer! It looks more natural and it does build brand authority.
Thanks for reading.
Tom.
Why forum posts are good:
They help you connect with potential clients/customers – The other people on the forums themselves are likely to have a number of similar interests (one obviously being business).
The new age forum SEO (marketing)
Before I get started, I have a forum client “my local services” who have kindly let me test my seo on their forum. More on that here:
This article is just going to talk about what was done before, and why it has changed (for the better)
In ye good ol’ days, all we use to have to do to get some solid links as an SEO, was to sign up to a couple of niche specific forums and get posting, these forums were barely moderated and you could have some tasty exact match anchors to rocket your site.
Then Penguin hit
Then, in my opinion, more importantly, users hit back.
Spam is the number 1 problem with forums (annoying users/people who don’t know what their talking about come in a close second) but spam is still 1st.
Before, individuals would just scroll past spammers and move on, now their comments are moderated and deleted, this has made forum marketing and forum seo much better, as no longer can you simply put “SEO Location” in your signature and start hitting up 50 threads a day saying “nice post” “thanks” “cool”, which although still happens occasionally, but luckily no where near as much.
This is how forum SEO is done now (or at least how it should be done):
Target users as potential clients/customers FIRST – Post informative answers to threads, stay active, reach out in non spammy methods and even build relationships with the forum mods.
Anchor text no more – Brand name only or even URL. For a few reasons: It’s safer! It looks more natural and it does build brand authority.
Thanks for reading.
Tom.