Is forum posting better than other SEO off page activities?

[BillEssley]

Why forum posting is better than other SEO off page activities like directory submission, Yahoo answers, social media submission, blog comment, social bookmarking?

What is your experience?

thanks

 

[PTTed]

For starters, I wouldn't call Yahoo Answers, social media submission, blog commenting or social bookmarking to be off page SEO activities. I would call them generally a waste of time. They won't lead to good rankings.

Dofollow links from juicy pages are what leads to good rankings, combined with good on-page and good site-wide SEO practices. That is my experience.

Forum posting can generate traffic for you, and good traffic too if you are posting on a forum where your audience visits a lot. And you can get some good links from forums if people reference your pages as sources of information about what they are talking about, and if those pages that link to your website are pages that acquire PageRank and if the outbound links on that forum are dofollow links. But that is a lot of "if's".

The best reason to post on forums is because your audience is there. There are other much more effective ways to get links that will actually help boost your rankings. And most of those other more effective ways aren't ways that Google would like if they knew what you are doing.

That is my experience.

 

[guptachetan121993]

I don't think that forum posting is the only thing which people should do.
Forum posting , Blog commenting, social media submission is all are the part of building relationship with other bloggers and webmasters.
Every activity has their own value and importance and We can't say that forum posting is best and others are not.

 

[Susan]

It depends on many factors .. for example are they Do-Follow or No-follow .. what is the page rank .. social media submission might be a waste of time (to some extent) in regard to backlinks .. but it can be used to drive traffic and relation .. creating a group on Facebook might be extremely valuable for some businesses while for others it might be a total waste of time .. all depends on the business

 

[royals]

doing forum posting in a smart way is beneficial, If you are just going to throw links in forum without any sense, It wont help at all.

 

[jammiecutts]

Forum posting is better because Forums have good traffic source. People discuss their questions, problems and if you have the solution to their queries then they are more likely to trust your link and will surely visit it.

 

[Archana]

Forum posting is helpful to some extent as it contains huge number of visitors on daily basis. But, other SEO Off page tasks like Guest posting, social bookmarking, PBN, QnA, Blog posting, social media marketing, search engine marketing etc are much more helpful than forum posting. These tasks helps to generate huge traffic on a website instantly. One can get the opportunity to elaborate about a particular business by doing the above mentioned tasks of SEO.

 

[SEOPub]

Here is the truth about forum posting for SEO...

If you honestly believe that forum posting is going to significantly increase your rankings, you have no idea what you are doing.

On a popular forum, it can potentially bring you direct traffic, but even that is not guaranteed.

 

[professorrosado]

I have always been a promoter of "OTO". Not "One Time Offer" but "Organic Traffic Optimization" (this is my term so if you use it give me the credit like a big boy!)

What it means is the effort in strategically placing links where they will bring the most targeted traffic to your site. This effort crosses into SEO but it doesn't depend on SEO for the results.

I believe with social media and other viral capable mediums - available today that were not when SEO became a necessity - we have now a viable alternative to SEO and the SEO mindset.

It will soon be possible to make a website popular with hardly any intentful SEO at all. Quote me on this!

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

That is not true for every line of business. People are still going to Google to search for a new dentist or when they need an accountant. Nobody is searching for that stuff in forums or on Facebook or Twitter.

 

[professorrosado]

professorrosado

Yes, of course you're right. However, your statement is true only because of the present "status quo". At present, there are alternative methods other than SERPs to "find" what you're looking for. In the near future, this provider market will increase and evolve substantially.

In the future, they will not Google (as you now know it) at all. Enough said!

 

[dlane1987]

dlane1987

I think Google are already working on methods to combat this.

 

[professorrosado]

professorrosado

Yes, it's called brainwashing! And together with all their minions who make money with their god, they stay on top. This is nothing more than influencing the marketplace and their using marketers to play along until they dump you in the end. They have now a few goldmines and so we are all led to think there can be no others - well, who could possibly develop something better than Google? I guess no one if they listen to all of you. And what is your interest? Just the benefit you want to get from the scraps of traffic they throw your way.

Being nice to your trick doesn't replace intelligence. No one with half a brain would expect you to think, say or do anything else.

 

[dlane1987]

dlane1987

Well someones just developed a search engine that you have a conversation with so that could be a contender.

 

[SEOPub]

Actually, Google is taking steps to make it even more unlikely that they will ever lose their place in the market. For example, they recently did a test and now went live with AdWord ads in the San Francisco Bay Area for service providers where searchers can actually request a quote right from the SERP. No need to leave Google at all.

http://searchengineland.com/google-home-services-ads-plumbers-locksmiths-san-francisco-beta-226469

If they keep innovating like that, people are going to continue to go to Google for those type of searches. It would be dumb to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. for that kind of search.

 

[professorrosado]

professorrosado

So this confirms that even Google knows it has to adapt or go dodo. It is morphing the search model into a SERVE model. This is the logical next step in SERP evolution. But it is also the realization that all IMers need to come to in that Google will be your #1 competitor very soon. Thanks to all of you who do no more than praise and worship Google and enjoy entertaining their discreet services in your backdoors! (intended)

All this, however, does not prevent any of the other or soon to be social networks from SERVING and many have salient qualities that would lend themselves to a massive popularity more so than Google could ever compete against (we know they've tried and failed).

 

[SEOPub]

I have been hearing this argument for years now that social networks were going to eat into Google's search dominance. It has not come even remotely close to happening yet. Again, people are not searching for a dentist, accountant, lawyer, doctor, or hardware store on Facebook. They are searching in Google and will continue to do so.

Social networks will also never be able to take search volume of people searching for facts, locations, how to do something, etc.

 

[kevinarndale]

Well, its all about how you manage the off page and on page activities in a proper way, Give enough time to each one of them. None of the techniques are waste of time you must be tactical enough to use them

 

[jamesborner]

Yes forum posting is better than other SEO Off page activities. If your post not like a spam. It is a very important activity to create backlink and discussion about your product and service.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

No it is not. Forum posting can be good for direct traffic. For rankings it is fairly useless.

 

[dlane1987]

dlane1987

What makes you say that? I assume you are reffering to the fact that they are nofollow? Matt cutts says that although nofollow links do not pass link juice they are taken into account when ranking pages.
I think this is because dofollow helps boost PR but if you have two pages that have equall PR and one has more nofollow links the second will rank higher.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Matt Cutts did not say that nofollow links are taken into account for ranking pages.

More nofollow links will not make a page rank lower. That is just foolish.

And many forum links are not nofollow. That is not why I said it is useless for rankings. I said it is useless because forum links are pretty low quality. They are a step above junk.

 

[ITMDB]

ITMDB

How does it sort of work? I mean, 10 forum links is equal to 1 good quality link? Or are they worth so little that its not worth it?

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

There is no such formula because there are a ton of variables that go into determining the quality of any link.

I would not waste time building forum links. The benefit will not be worth the time involved.

 

[ITMDB]

ITMDB

So its better to treat them as a little extra rather than make forum posting a main part of your link building schedule?

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

No. I wouldn't do it at all. Unless you feel fairly confident that it will bring direct traffic, skip it. It is a waste of time for improving rankings.

 

[kevinarndale]

kevinarndale

How can someone use Forum posting in order to enhance the keyword rankings instead of direct traffic, cause direct traffic is only useful for the websites who provide E-commerce services. Well its true you can't put keywords in your forum, put is there any possible way?

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

What you just said makes zero sense. Why would direct traffic only be useful for e-commerce?

If you are relying on forum posting for better rankings, you are wasting your time.

 

[kevinarndale]

kevinarndale

I am sorry messed my comment up, was trying to say that is there any possible way to enhance keyword rankings using Forum Postings ?

 

[kevinarndale]

kevinarndale

Yes, but don't you think direct traffic can enhance rankings as well.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Of course not. Google has no idea about the traffic statistics of most sites, so it would be both impossible and stupid for them to use that data.

Not every site is using Google Analytics.

 

[kevinarndale]

kevinarndale

Its not always like that, you can't promote any of your keywords while doing Forum posting. All we can do is create a certain Signature leading to your site, which google caches while crawling these pages, that all.

 

[ridgley]

I believe forum posting, blog commenting, social bookmarking, guest posting and other off-page seo are useful in driving traffic and rank. If it will be done properly. After all most of us doing or done different kinds off-page techniques and before focusing on one off-page techniques. It only differs on what techniques is more effective to get high traffic and rank high. Since we have same aims that is drive more traffic and rank high.

 

[irichard]

I think forum posting is better than other SEO off page activites because I think forums are constantly being updated and Google like sites that update a lot.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Sorry but you are misinformed. Google does not care if a site is updated a lot or not.

 

[cwvps1]

I like going on forums, learning and gathering new information. Of course, it all depends on the forum, how good it is and do moderators fight spam. But I really like the way the browsing through forums and reading threads give me some new ideas and an opportunity to have my say and reach my target audience. If I get some traffic with it, then yey, I'm happy.

 

[rajivsinghi]

Forum posting is the best way to get traffic and relevant people. because it is a platform where so much people can interact with each other at same time they can post their reviews. This is the best practice for SEO because with this we can generate backlinks as well.

 

[Ben Hartsuff]

It all comes down to you asking yourself the question. Is this the best place to spend your time for the return you are going to get out of it? This poses the question what are you trying to get out of it. Without knowing these it is hard to answer the question.

 

[jimi1980]

forum posting is good for generating traffic but these days just traffic or ranking cant not help you achieve the goal that you always wanted these days the idea is to generate more and more leads to your business so you need to work on that, for me guest posting is mu better

 

[adi123]

It varies from business to business which technique is most suitable.All the SEO techniques have their own values.One technique is good enough for direct traffic but has nothing to do with rankings and vice a versa.So it is better to understand your requirement and use the most effective technique for the timely help.