Posting on Forums for SEO benefit
-
Hi
Is it beneficial to participate on forums in our market place to help become an authority in Googles eyes?
I assume even if we don't get links it still useful in terms of co-citation...
Thanks
-
already doing FB, just looking for more opportunities.
-
I'd spend my time in FB discussions instead - forums are spam havens, and FB is safe nofollowed links where you can build your brand awareness safely since this is what you want to do.
Even if a forum looks OK today, word could get out and the next thing you know 200 spammers posted viagra and casino links below you.
-
LOL, I was gonna respond
"One Word, Don't"
Yours is much better
-
Hi
The plan is to join relevant forums and post useful answers to questions and try to help out users. We have good knowledge in our market place. Not to worried about links just getting our name out there....
-
In a word: no.
There's a rough sort of hierarchy for where links come from. Up near the top, you've got mainstream news websites, reputable blogs and so on. Somewhere near the bottom, along with the likes of free, spammy directories, SEO press release sites and article directories are forum links.
They've been devalued substantially. Even on pages that show a decent PA/DA (just the way the Moz algo works), forum links carry very little strength. If you're using them to build an SEO benefit, then you're wasting your time.
Now, forums that are close to your market/niche and have an active community can be a great way to build potential leads - providing that you become part of the community yourself and are not there to just drop your link and go. I'd certainly look at the possibility of that, should you have relevant forums in your industry.
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
-
Craft CMS SEO Resources
I'm just starting out in freelance SEO & I've taken on a client who is using Craft CMS (version 2.0ish) for their site. I am not even close to being competent enough to manually code via Twig, but I had the main developer install the SEOmatic plugin for me. My question from here is - are there any resources or tips I should be aware of starting out? I just started by updating meta title/descriptions via "New Template Meta(s)" but I'm a bit concerned i'm doing the "template path" thing right - I haven't seen any visible changes in browser, and the SERP preview I'm getting is giving me a broken link. But i'm doing a fresh Moz crawl right now to see if the changes took place or not. so 1. Am I on the right track? 2. How long does it typically take for changes to start to show? 3. Is there anything I should be aware of? any follow up questions just let me know, I'll be following this thread!
Technical SEO | | dig_ad_austin0 -
Is blog.example.com ok for seo benefits?
our blog is currently setup as blog.example.com is this OK for seo benefits for the main domain example.com? is there any benefit specifically for the domain level by having the blog set-up as example.com/blog? would it be worth the effort to do this on a large blog? thanks
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
SEO of Social Media Pages
I have noticed something odd about how Google ranks social media pages, and was hoping someone would have a good explanation. When I search for a particular name in Google, the first two results are Twitter pages of two people who share the same name. #1 is an older account with more Tweets, but it has fewer followers, no external backlinks, and the URL is unrelated to the name #2 is a newer account, but it has more followers, a few external backlinks, and the name itself is in the URL. It has fewer overall Tweets, but has Tweeted more frequently over the past several months. #2 is also happens to be in the same City as I am. Given my understanding of Google's ranking factors, I would not have expected #1 to outrank #2. In fact, I would not have expected #1 to even be on the first page. What could be causing #1 to rank so highly? Does it make sense that the age of the account or the number of Tweets would affect SEO at all? Really, I am just trying to understand what are the main factors that determine the ranking of social media profile pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | timsegraves0 -
One-Pager and SEO
We're building a page that is going to feature over 31 people as difference makers in their field. We're unveiling one a day for an entire month. The very early mockup of the page has name, pic, some bio info, and a link to open up a new window with the full bio. I would love to have all of the bio content for all of the people on the page (and indexable), but I'm not sure how to do that while still being able to hide the full bios until they are expanded. Anybody have any tips that are SEO-friendly and/or examples of a page that is built like this and ranks well. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | spackle0 -
Switching forum software - 301 redirects?
Hi everyone I'm working on a successful Wordpress site that also has a forum attached. The forum currently uses YAF forum software, which requires Windows hosting. The site owner wants to switch to Linux hosting. This is not a problem for WP, but it does mean that we'll need to transfer the forum to Xenforo or something similar that runs on Linux. We're OK with the technical side of this, but we're worried about the SEO implications. The URL for every forum post (more than 50,000 of them) is going to change during this transfer. It seems completely impractical to 301 each of those, so should I just 301 the URLs that have inbound links? Also, what is google's algo going to think when we suddenly have ~50,000 404s? Many thanks in advance! J
Technical SEO | | van280 -
All in One SEO weirdness
For some reason, I'm getting extra words in my title tags. For example, I wrote "Washing Machine Widgets | Acme Widgets, Inc. | Acme Widgets Inc. Anyone have any idea why I'm getting the extra " | Acme Widgets Inc."? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | PGD20110 -
SEO Benefit/Liability of changing URLs of a 2 year old site
I sell RV Parts online. Our organization is called The ROUTE 66 RV Network, so we brand everything around ROUTE 66. When we launched our store 2 years ago, we launched it with the domain: parts66.com We have a PR of 2, and we have been doing an SEO linkbuilding campaign ever since it has been around. Our primary keyword that we are trying to rank for is RV PARTS We also own the domain: rvparts66.com My question is: Is there a significant benefit to switching our URL to RVPARTS66.COM? Does having our primary keyword a part of our URL give us an SEO benefit? If so, what is the best way to keep any credit we have built for our original domain? We are in the process of a complete site overhaul which will launch in a couple weeks, so if there is ever a time to switch domains, the time is now. Thanks! jc
Technical SEO | | steve-2886180 -
Redirect links add seo value?
Does anyone know if urls on the 'Websites' part of a LinkedIn public profile create any SEO value (meaning, does page rank flow)? The links looks like this: <a href="/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Espeechpad%2Ecom%2Fpage%2Fspeech-to-text&urlhash=Xk3F" target="_blank" title="New window will open" name="overviewsite">speech to texta>
Technical SEO | | scanlin0