SEO Step By Step Guide–41. Making the Best Use of Forums

The next area of our interest in getting back links is forum postings. We can promote our website aggressively through forum postings. This is one of the most abused link building strategies. There are thousands of forum posters around us who just go around spamming all possible sites in an indiscriminate way. If you are going to do that either by yourself or by hiring someone, you must hold it right away.

Making spam posts in forums will get you banned from the forums and it will also add to your website’s negative publicity. When you want to get links from forums, you must signup for free accounts in relevant forums and contribute in a positive way. You will be able post links along with your message and you will also be able to add signatures with active links. Posting in forums will get you permanent one-way links. If you become member of forums with good page rank, you will be able to get better results out of your efforts.

Some of the forums will require you to make a certain number of posts before you will be allowed to include active links in your posts and your signatures. Most forums are very strict about spam posts that are made just for the sake of getting back links. When you are posting in forums therefore avoid all types of marketing gimmicks. Do not make your posts in an indiscriminate way. When you are replying in an existing thread, make sure that your post contributes to the thread in a positive way and let your link serve as a good resource.

If you happen to hire someone to do the forum postings, you must make sure that the hired person is given strict guidelines about spamming. They should not make irrelevant replies or start new threads in irrelevant forums. It will not only ruin your online image, it will also be a waste of time because links from irrelevant sources will not add any value to your website.

The next important factor to remember is that you should not use a boilerplate message to be posted in all the forums. This will lead to duplicate content issues which can affect your website in a negative way. Always join only reputed forums because you will also get the advantage of targeted traffic that visit that forum. Reputed forums will get high volume of traffic and there are high chances that part of that traffic visit your website if you provide them with useful information.

You should never allow yourself to be associated with problem sites and problematic forums. This is one of the basics you should remember while trying to promote your brand. This basic requirement can be easily compromised by making spam posts in the forum sites.

Though forum postings can get you a number of good one-way links, you will not be able to use this as a standalone strategy.

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