Difference in Forum and Blog for SEO
-
I was pushing my employer to agree to switch to add a blog onto our site and he asked me, what is the difference between the blog and a forum for SEO purposes. Besides the general look and feel and a forum being more community oriented, is a blog better than a forum for seo, and if so, why? It can be vice-versa I just need to fully understand this myself so I can begin to work on one and explain it to my employer. If anyone can provide any insight, it will be much appreciated.
-
I personally like the inbound link aspect of blogs as well as google authorship. You can also use guest bloggers to expand your audience.
-
Forum helps you to collect mails, can be very valuable.
If you want people to register easily, try a Facebook login system + allow a dofollow link on profile. Maybe that the forum just launched by Quicksprout can inspire you.
http://www.quicksprout.com/forum/
Would you have enough time to run a blog + a forum ? If you are usually busy, step away from forum and focus on blog.
-
I would point out these key differences.
1. A blog gives you more control. With a blog, you can target the keywords you want to target. You can edit the content after you've published it. You can time when posts go out. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to come up with good content, but you're in the driver's seat.
2. A forum gives you less control, but you don't have to write all the content. The attractive thing about a forum - for SEO purposes anyway - is user-generated content. This is great because you don't have to do all the heavy lifting that real writing requires. The bad thing about a forum is also user-generated content. All those things you have control over with a blog ... you kinda lose them with a forum. You could exert a lot of control over your forum if you want, but then folks will stop contributing and you won't have a forum. Also, all that heavy lifting you save by not having to create the content may get replaced by the necessity of moderating the content.
3. You can build a blog steadily over time. With a blog, you can go from "Hello World!" to a good following just by disciplined, regular, quality publishing over time. You can start small and build.
4. Nobody likes an empty forum. Unlike a blog, a forum needs to go live with content already in it and conversations already happening. If you're going to launch a forum, I suggest getting some dedicated customers involved in a pre-launch. Seed the forum with a number of conversations before launching it to your full customer base. Otherwise, most people will get stage fright and you will have wasted your launch.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Where do I place my blog
Sorry but this has probably been discussed earlier, but things change all the time. Gonna start blogging about my webside.
Content Development | | helgeolaussen
Where should I place my blog to get most SEO benefits for my main page?
mysite.xx/blog
blog.mysite.xx (on a server with diffrent ip)
An external TDL.0 -
Blog.website.com or website.com/blog
Hello, I have a question, in some moz guidelines you can read website.com/blog is better/more recommended than blog.website.com. But when you look at the domain authority you see no difference. blog.website.com gets exact the same domain authority as website.com. So can somebody explain why website.com/blog is really better than blog.website.com? Or is there no difference? Thank you verry much
Content Development | | mystorenl0 -
Finding blog ideas and syndication
We've had our blog for a little under 2 years now using Magento and we've only created 48 posts. As we're in the furniture industry topics are hard to come by and we've become stuck for ideas. Sure we have researched our audience, checked Q&A's and forums to analyse what questions our audience are asking, but the ideas are limited. It's a difficult industry to find niche articles that our audience would be interested in. Could anyone suggest any ideas on how we could find interesting topics that people would actually want to share and maybe our industry influencers would be interested in featuring on their sites, does syndication still work? Duplicate content is a big 'NO NO' for Google but as long as the third party site features a rel=canonical or link back to our original post, Google wouldn't have any problem with this?
Content Development | | Jseddon920 -
Blog for content
Noob here so be gentle... We have a blog on our homepage that we're using for content/SEO purposes. Does this content rank as highly as it would if it were a simple HTML page as opposed to a blogspot or wordpress from our page? In other words, are we getting as much content cred in this way as we would if blogspot wasn't affiliated? http://greatmats.blogspot.com/
Content Development | | Greatmats0 -
Should my client copy and paste his blog posts onto other professional sites?
I have a client who is an Attorney and participates in a couple of different Q and A legal sites. One of these legal sites is recommending to my client that he copy and paste his blog posts onto his profile page on the Q and A site. I understand my client wanting to copy and paste his blog posts onto these sites, as it will not only get his content in front of a larger audience, but also lend credibility. However, I've always heard that that could cause some duplicate content problems. Will my client's blog likely get penalized by google for copying and pasting his blog posts onto other relevant sites?
Content Development | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Will a comment section on my site help with seo
I have never been a fan of comment pages such as the sun http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/4783642/bruce-willis-appears-on-the-one-show-in-awkward-interview.html but i was told the other day that not only is it good for the reader but it is also good for seo and increase the number of times that google would visit the page and i would like to know if that is true. if you have added a comment section to your articles i would like to know if you have noticed any change.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
What is the best way to get around duplicate content when you are advertising exactly the same content on two different sites?
I am currently trying to improve exposure for an online degrees website but the content for the degree program pages is exactly the same as the company's main website. What would you suggest for getting around the duplicate content issue as a lot of the curriculum content will obviously be the same for each module, etc? Thanks
Content Development | | BeattieGroup0 -
Guest Blogging Question
Hi Everyone, Bit of a serious question here for me, Is it worth doing a guest post on a blog more then 2 times? As an example one blog I guest post on has a homepage PR6 which I have posted 2 times, now they have requested another guest post but im thinking would it just be better to guest post on a different blog? So my question in simple terms is: 5 guest posts on two PR6 websites or 10 guest posts on ten different blogs with PR3
Content Development | | activitysuper0