Do forums still have any SEO value?

[MargaritaS]

Hi All!

I want to know what people think about having forums on their sites. Do you still find value on these, or are they mostly a waste of resources? Would it be better to use facebook's registration plugin or something along those lines?

Any other thoughts or suggestions on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Margarita

[Francisco_Meza]

If you have the time to run a forum, go for it. If not, then find someone who will or don't do it at all. Also, a more important question would be, what is the purpose of starting a forum? I don' t know what FB's paugin has to do with a forum. Are you trying to get registrations and or subscriptions? Are you trying to create backlinks from the forum to your own site like people do when they try pointing links from their blogs to their homepage hoping it will rank higher?

[MargaritaS]

Thank you for your comment, Dan! Yes, I would love to hear if anyone has any good suggestions as far as platforms go.

-Margarita

[evolvingSEO]

My belief is that forums are great! This Q&A is a great example - I remember hearing that moz's traffic increased quite substantially after adding it.

I think the trick to a forum is getting the right platform. And getting some seed members is important, as well as moderators.

If anyone has good platform to recommend from an SEO standpoint, that'd be great, I don't have any direct experience in that regard.

-Dan