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Forum Profile Links
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Are they really important?
Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time.
I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat.
Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?
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You can try Ontolo's link building query generator tool:
http://ontolo.com/link-building-query-generator-V2
Citation Labs also has great link building tools for finding prospects:
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Thanks Keri. I will do so right now.
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Have you read the Link Building category of the SEOmoz blog? Take a look at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4 and you might also get some more ideas for building quality links (both for forums and in general).
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I have been actively looking at the option of guest blog. Can you help me with where to start? I need help with finding blogs that allow guest blogs, or how to approach them etc
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Building links on highly relevant sites would be a good idea if you're willing to put in the time to make a useful post. If the forum allows do-follow links, that will help you a little. As part of a balanced link building strategy, they could be beneficial.
Any site that sells you thousands of links will be using an automated tool. This is considered very spammy because the links have no value, they'll be on trashy sites, and on sites that there will be thousands of other links on as well. The value a service would provide you wouldn't be worth the money.
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I would not buy any forum-links but as long you provide relevant content and add to the discussions then you will be fine. If you have the resources and time, then perhaps it might be an idea to guest blog instead?
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Test them on a dummy site if you have the budget, or on some pages that already link to you.
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You won't get any referral traffic but Forum profile links (the dofollow ones) do pass link juice. Not much, but some.
Although I wouldn't trust mass-outsourcing services, in my experience forum profile links can be used as supplementary to content-based strategies without any risk of penalty.
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Those services you mention which give out thousands of forum profile links are usually not worth your time or money, you see the same thing with generic directory listings, they are useless. Unless the forum topic is relevant to your website and they are do follow then don't waste your time.
I've found that signing up to 3 or 4 popular forums and being really active in them is a lot more beneficial in the long run.
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