Forums For SEO

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Forums For SEO

By John Scott
http://www.internet-marketing-research.net

<b>A Comprehensive Guide To Forum Administration</b>

Ever since the Webmaster Forum went online, many forum webmasters and site administrators have asked for advice on running a forum. My reply is usually just two words: "Quick Replies". In this article, I'd like to discuss forum administration in more depth. I am by no means the leading authority on the subject, so use the advice I offer at your own peril.

<b>Benefits</b>

The benefits of running a forum in conjunction with a proper website are numerous. Perhaps the biggest benefit is in the ability to put a face on your business - branding. Other benefits include added content, and the additional search engine traffic that comes with it; the good will of members who joined to get quick answers to their questions; and loyalty of members who consider the forum to be a community, of which they are a part. Forums are also great for link building.

<b>Branding</b>

One important principle of branding is the celebrity spokesperson. You do not need Michael Jordan or Britney Spears; you just need one person, high profile and active in the industry you serve, to speak for your organization. When you think of Garage.com, you think of Guy Kawasaki. When you think of Oracle, you think of Larry Ellison. When you think of Microsoft, you think of Bill Gates. These men are not famous athletes or actors; they are the high profile spokesmen of their respective organizations. When you want to provide a stronger brand image for your organization, you need to put a face on it. Forums provide a perfect means of accomplishing this on a small budget. A few examples of this: Brett Tabke and WebmasterWorld, "Head Surfer" Robert Marsh and WebHostingTalk, and Doug Heil's IHelpYou Forums. It's no coincidence that the most successful forums are closely tied to one high profile person.

<b>Search Engine Traffic</b>

One of the best things you can do to achieve high traffic is added content. But adding content pages often requires research and the use of a high paid SEO copywriter. Forums are often the perfect solution. It's absolutely free content.

How much traffic can you get from indexed forum threads? When we disabled session ID's for Google, allowing the Googlebot to index the <a href="http://www.concrete-home.com/discussion/" target="_blank">Concrete Home Forum</a>, the traffic on that site shot up over 400% in the first month. The additional traffic lead to more members posting; more posts meant more traffic; more traffic leading to more posts, and then we're getting even more traffic from the added posts. So it's a not too vicious circle of growing traffic.

An example is <a href="http://www.concrete-home.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=28" target="_blank">this thread</a> dealing with pouring concrete over concrete. I never would have thought to make a page dedicated sole to answering the question, "Can I pour new concrete over old concrete?" But that is the exact search string that brings many new visitors to the site. And that is just one thread. Think of the traffic that can be had if you were to have 10,000 or 20,000 threads indexed!

<b>Consumer Loyalty</b>

We never wanted to get into the web hosting business. I personally know nothing about server administration. However, every place we went for hosting was a huge disappointment, so we leased a server and started <a href="http://www.quality-web-hosting.net/" target="_blank">Quality-Web-Hosting.net</a>. I didn't expect it to take off - promoting our hosting services was never a high priority for me. In fact, to deter people from signing up, we required annual payments instead of monthly. But as soon as we got going, several members of the <a href="http://www.webmaster-forum.net" target="_blank">Webmaster Forum</a> eagerly signed up. Why? Because <a href="http://www.quality-web-hosting.net/" target="_blank">Quality-Web-Hosting.net</a> is seen as community hosting. Forum members are loyal to other members.

<b>Link Building</b>

Say you are a Kawasaki dealership. You want links from other dirt bike, street bike, or ATV related sites. But when you send out emails asking these other sites to link to <a href="http://www.beartoothkawasaki.com/" target="_blank">Beartooth Kawasaki</a>, they reply "No", because you are a competitor, or because they do not buy from you, or because they want to be paid to link to you because you are selling stuff.

Now say you started a <a href="http://www.kawasaki-info.com/talk/" target="_blank">Kawasaki Forum</a>. Anybody interested in Kawasaki bikes, ATV's, Vulcans, ETC, will link to you because you provide a legitimately useful source of information and a place to get answers to questions from professional Kawasaki mechanics.

This is precisely what happened. After starting the forum, I was pleasantly surprised to find many other sites putting up links to that site without my having to ask for the links. And we all know unsolicited links are the best kind!

<b>Drawbacks</b>

Forums are not all fun and games. If you want to operate a successful forum, you must be prepared to commit a <i>huge</i> amount of time to it. Be prepared to deal with some members bickering with other members. You may be asked to solve differences or pick sides in petty disagreements. You will most likely have to brush up on you people skills and read a book or two on diplomacy. In the end, not all forum members will be happy with the way you administrate the forum, and some will leave in a fit of anger. C'est la vie. Do your best, and chances are you'll end up with a community, and not just a forum script.

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