The Benefits of Forum Posting and Online Communities
November 14, 2007 | Author: Rob | Filed under: SEO and Marketing
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Do you belong to any online communities? Web forums are becoming a popular place to network and thats not all!
Joining a community not only puts you in touch with others from your niche but it also is valuable in targeted traffic and links. Many forums allow users to make a signature file which can often contain 1-4 links. Make sure you use anchor text that you are trying to rank for on search engines and post in relevant threads or start your own. Each one of those threads now has a link to your blog; these threads often get page rank as well which certainly helps. Besides the links people often click on signature links to read more of what the author of the post had to say if they like it.
Here are some tips to getting the most out of a forum experience:
1) Look for a large active forum that accepts signature links. If they don’t they are greedy and you should look to greener pastures.
2) Write posts that are helpful. Before you just throw your $0.02 in analyze what the original poster needs and answer it the best you can; this is what gets people clicking on your signature links
3) Participate in the Classifieds looking through suitable candidates for a traffic / link exchange; if you can’t find any write a detailed description about what you do and who you are looking for. Avoid saying certain page rank is needed; open it to everyone in your niche but link with whom you choose.
4) Be sure to write an introduction; forum owners love it especially if it is new and it’s a great way to get “into the community”; break the ice so to speak.
5) Don’t advertise but still promote your site. Don’t start threads with sole purpose of leading people to your blog / site; they won’t come. Instead if someone asks a question that your blog / site can satisfy; answer the question and link to a specific post that can help or just answer and they may click your signature links.
6) Network with others in your niche with similar interests but different skill sets; the net has profit for everyone so collaborate with someone to make both your efforts mores successful.
7) When creating threads make them keyword rich in the title and ensure the keyword is in the top paragraph as well; when replying if you have a choice to put a title in do so. This will help with search engine optimization; forums get a lot of search engine traffic as they are frequently updated.
8) Find another similar forums and repeat.
This is a good guide to getting targeted free traffic while networking with others from your niche. Just today actually I received an email from SitePro News which outlined how communities are king and content is merely part of the equation. If you don’t have a community the next best thing is to be active in one! I may write another thread soon on the benefits of having a community but for now if you aren’t part of any I highly recommend you take some time and find some that appeal to you. You’d be surprised what it can do for you and your business.
I’d like to explain how I got to where I am today just from joining forums. I joined digitalpoint web forum which is arguably one of the largest webmaster forums on the internet. I got into the directory section purchasing a few cheap ones; then also in this forum I found Bloggeries for sale in March; bought that through auction ran my own forum on bloggeries and when Eve was selling her blog my forum was one of the first places she posted. I immediately emailed her and the rest is history.
Look at forums as the social watering hole for people from your niche. If you aren’t there why not!?. The reason I’m typing this now on this blog is because I”m active in forums; my whole online life got seriously jump started after joining. Also you’ll meet people who can help you. I’ve helped people with different things but the help I’ve received is priceless. Look at this blog; great theme but lots of it was hard-coded. I met a gent on my forum that is a wordpress coder… Let’s say what he did in ~30 minutes would of taken me forever in fact I wouldn’t of finished it. I would of ruined it.
To conclude this article if you are currently working / living in isolation online break out of the mold and join a community today; it will change the way you work online and almost certainly your bottom line!
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7 people have left comments
Great article. Fourms and online communities are a very underutilized and underrated way to drive traffic to your site. And you are right, your post should definitley be worthwhile; not just some garbage to get you links up there.
This is all so very true! In my opinion, forums are an essential part of online marketing. I can’t begin to tell you how much traffic has come to blog as a result of my posting on forums. BTW, thanks for recommending digitalpoint. I’ll have to check them out.
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