Forum posting for SEO is overrated?

[broadcast-monitors]

IMO... forum posting just for the purpose of SEO is not a very good use of time. For the same amount of time, you might as well comment on dofollow blogs, write good content, or write linkbait content.

Forum posts are usually considered very low importance by the search engines (especially because it's also a spam technique)... your forum profile might become a PR3 page, but that's after spending a lot of time posting on forums. It's just not really worth it.


But if you're going to do forum posting anyways, I provide some tips here:
http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/...sting-seo.html

[MaddenGods]

I agree you could easily spend the time it takes for registration, activation, signature editing and then the actual post writting a half decent article, or other better off SEO activities

[full house]

Originally Posted by MaddenGods

I agree you could easily spend the time it takes for registration, activation, signature editing and then the actual post writting a half decent article, or other better off SEO activities

But does are done just 1 time. Its not a waste of time cause its also other way to get your site index.

[MrNiceGuy007]

a link on a topical forum is very good actually, and if you are a respected member you can gain trust and other forum members will follow your link, it's like a mini social site. so good forum posting campaign can be ideal not the types that do hit and run techniques

[LinkPopularity]

well, yes and no, strictly speaking about link-value and so seo, indeed most links don't have that much value ... but ... if you make a high value topic and it beomes a popular trad and people link to it, it in fact become a very high value link

anyway, I love it that in general forum links have low value ... it keeps the spammers away

[yenerich]

Originally Posted by broadcast-monitors

IMO... forum posting just for the purpose of SEO is not a very good use of time. For the same amount of time, you might as well comment on dofollow blogs, write good content, or write linkbait content.

Forum posts are usually considered very low importance by the search engines (especially because it's also a spam technique)... your forum profile might become a PR3 page, but that's after spending a lot of time posting on forums. It's just not really worth it.


But if you're going to do forum posting anyways, I provide some tips here:
http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/...sting-seo.html

Forums posting is not about PR but getting backlinks, good anchors, etc.

[Bobo99]

Forum sigs help with SERPS because you can get good anchor text in them

[broadcast-monitors]

But right now google places a lot less weight on anchor text than it used to.

e.g. the googlebomb "miserable failure" is not in Goog top 10 (while it is for MSN and Yahoo I think). Good anchor text helps but excessive anchor text (like google bombing) probably won't help since it's unnatural and looks like SERP manipulation.

[broadcast-monitors]

See this article:
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001783.shtml

Google's Depreciation of Anchor Text

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Granted, forum posting might do better in the future if Google shifts it algorithms more towards off-page factors (links). But, I doubt it will ever be a strong SEO tool. Individual posts aren't worth a lot because spammers use this technique and therefore search engines shouldn't give single forum posts much weight (they probably do a "if a link is hard to get, then it's worth more" heuristic). Your forum profile can become a high quality (and it's hard to get because you have to make a lot of posts)... but for all that time spent posting, you should be able to get much better backlinks via other methods.

[wachapori]

Well, signature links on posts from very popular forums can help your site to be indexed super-fast, sometimes the threads appear on Google in less than 30 minutes, and googlebot also visits the links on your signature very fast......

[RinaLasnier]

true, it can help a lot on boosting your traffic depending on your topic and the forum you are in.

[lloyd.velarde@gmail.]

I think that it has importance even though it is not that much, we still gain benefits and and still help our site to gain traffic, help site's to get index and a lot more!

[grishamist]

Forums can boost your site by means of signature link, gaining friends related to your site and it's all on the usage of forums.

[Webcont247365]

Forums are one of the best ways to get backlinks.

[Pates]

Forum posting does NOTHING for SEO. Treat it as a way to get referred traffic and that's it. It's never been good for SEO. Common misconception.

[nixwebo]

I will not take sides on this, but I can tell you this. I have a site that ranks #1 in google over a site with the same name as my keywords. I do not even have these keywords on the site, not anywhere on the site. I only have used it in my signature files on a couple of forums.

So think what you want, I don't plan on changing your mind. Forum SEO does work.

I also find it very interesting that everybody who is denouncing this method is using it in their own signature as they are saying "don't do this" it doesn't work. Even the guy who started this thread is using contextual links in his sig....I don't understand why you would all do this if it doesn't work.

[EmailRevealer]

From my experience I have found signature links to be valuable as a back link and also for direct traffic from other forum members.

[axedbydax]

whether forum posting is good for seo or not..forum posting will do a lot of good for everyone. You can learn, meet friends and help others in forums. besides if you say google is not giving any weight on forum posts, well nobody knows what will be the next thing that google will not be considering...or maybe tomorrow forum post will be the best place to get a link....unless you are working with google and you will know what will be their next move...lol

[EmailRevealer]

I don't know but when I look at my google backlinks I can see some forum posts there. I see a lot of them on Yahoo and MNS.

[yenerich]

Also you can learn a lot of SEO in the forums.
Its not only getting bakclinks, but reading and writing.