Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Forum Profile Links
-
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?
-
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:
-
Thanks Keri. I will do so right now.
-
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).
-
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
-
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.
-
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?
-
Test them on a dummy site if you have the budget, or on some pages that already link to you.
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
Should we Nofollow Social Links?
I've been asked the question of whether if we should nofollow all of our social links, would this be a wise thing to do? I'm not exactly getting a clear answer from search results and thought you guys would be best to ask 🙂 Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
How does link juice flow through hreflang?
We want to use the hreflang tag on our site (direct users searching for the Spanish version of spanishdict.com to spanishdict.com/traductor). Before doing so, we were wondering how link juice flows through hreflang? Any insight or resources on this would be very helpful. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CuriosityMedia0 -
Should 301-ed links be removed from sitemap?
In an effort to do some housekeeping on our site we are wanting to change the URL format for a couple thousand links on our site. Those links will all been 301 redirected to corresponding links in the new URL format. For example, old URL format: /tag/flowers as well as search/flowerswill be 301-ed to, new URL format: /content/flowers**Question:**Since the old links also exist in our sitemap, should we add the new links to our sitemap in addition to the old links, or replace the old links with new ones in our sitemap? Just want to make sure we don’t lose the ranking we currently have for the old links.Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | shawn811 -
Links under Meta Description when performing a search
Doing research for clients, I have came across seeing sites displaying hyperlinks underneath their own meta description. keywords that I have googled that result with hyperlinks displaying under meta descriptions: Google'd: iacquire (brand) bmw wheels (Beyern Wheels, position 1) aftermarket bmw wheels (MMR Wheels, position 2) These companys have hyperlinks underneath their descriptions. Anyone have any ideas why this happens or how it happens?
Technical SEO | | frnprz0 -
How to fix broken links?
Hi, I use WordPress CMS with Yoast SEO plugin. I have just found out that my 403 errors increased dramatically. It seems that all my tags below of each post are being broken for some reason. When i click on the tags i get the following massage: **403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules. ** I assume it has something to do with the configuration within Yoast SEO plugin. Dose anyone know how should i fix that? Thanks, Raviv evsGujA
Technical SEO | | Indiatravelz0 -
What is link Schemes?
Hello Friends, Today I am reading about link schemes on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 there are a several ways how to avoid Google penalties and also talk about the low quality links. But I can't understand about "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" Is there he talked about low page rank, Alexa or something else?
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Self-referencing links
I personally think that self-referencing links are silly. It's blatantly easy for Google to tell and my instinct says that the link juice for this would simply evaporate rather than passing back to itself. Does anyone have information backing me up from an authoritative source? I can't find any info about this linked to Matt Cutts, Rand or any of those I look up to.
Technical SEO | | IPROdigital0 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1