In the past, having an online forum was a great way to get SEO traffic to your site. Search engines would index new forum entries as their own pages, and a lively debate between contributors would generate good online content with lots of potential long-tail keyword traffic. Forums regarding common questions and problems in a particular field often created their own SEO niche, so a person seeking information on an arcane topic could see several different posts in the top 10 Google results.
Today, there are still some forums that get good placement, and a few of these are even relevant to the world of search engine optimization. A search phrase like “google 30 penalty” will bring up the WebMasterWorld forum among the search results, with some entries from October of 2006. Several other forums are also visible in the search results, from the same time period, so a person could reasonably assume that this topic is a little dated.
If you dig deep enough into just about any topic, you can usually find search engine results for forum entries that go back into the mid-1990s. Aside from seeing the democratic nature of the internet at work, you can also chart the various abuses and anachronisms that have made forums less popular today. On the abuse side, you can see a lot of people posting link spam into forums, and there are even a few offshore SEO outfits that still make money by adding your link to their footer and posting comments into forums of all kinds. Every link that gets added contributes to the forum’s lack of relevancy. On the anachronistic side, forums haven’t had much of a makeover since they were first rendered into HTML. Modern site design practices usually tend toward the “call to action” model, where people expect to see their question answered in eight seconds or less. This may be why Yahoo Answers has broken into the SERPs, since people can choose the best answer for their question after a period of time.
Part of the feasibility question involving forums has to do with moderators. Being a forum moderator can be a full time job, especially if you allow anonymous posting. Automated and semi-automatic (automated post, human CAPCHA entry) postings can destroy a forum’s credibility with off topic posts and links to bad sites. Poor moderation can lead to a loss of visitors, as well as less search engine credibility, since links to casinos don’t usually fit a DIY Home Improvement forum. Even a self-policed forum where abuse is reported by members can have its issues, because negative postings can lead to attention from attorneys. Although the Communications Decency Act protects site owners from liability for third party postings, this will not stop lawyers from trying to get the posts removed.
Should you add an internet forum to your site to get search engine traffic? The answer to this question is going to be based on the type of traffic you expect to get, and how you plan to monetize it. If you can ensure that you have a usable header on every forum page, which makes it easy to turn visitors into customers, then a forum may still be a good way of attracting sales. However, you will still need to find people who are eager to post questions and answers about various topics. Over the past few years, some of our clients have seen their forum traffic dry up. When a posted question does not get any answers after a period of time, then the interested party will go elsewhere for a response. Similarly, if your volunteer gurus get tired of answering questions, or grow weary of the debate and abuse found on many threads, they might choose to spend their time elsewhere. When it comes to forums, a critical mass of people is going to have to invest time and energy in responding to questions and policing the pages for spam, so you should definitely be cognizant of the challenge.
For most people building a new website, a forum is not part of the site design plan. At Web.com Search Agency, we haven’t given much online forum optimization advice in some time, because people just haven’t been asking for it. In many cases blogs have supplanted the need for forum content, because a blog topic can cover a lot of ground previously covered by discussions. Most blogs still allow for comments and responses, so the art of web communication is not totally lost. For people who have older sites, with forums in place, unplugging a forum with several thousand pages could represent a genuine SEO concern, since those postings may have gotten links from outside sources, and they might get some pretty good traffic. By delving into Analytics and Webmaster Tools, you can discover the overall value of the forums before taking any drastic measures.
In the final analysis, internet forums may have served their purpose and been supplanted by more social outlets. People can post a question to Twitter and get a quick response. Search engines have become better at presenting relevant information, so forums are not the first source for getting information. Site and software developers may have corrected many of the problems people were trying to solve, or the forums may have even become successful to the extent that most important questions have already been answered. There will always be search categories where forum posts take up the bulk of the SERPs, but most savvy optimizers will create a page for any search term that gets an appreciable amount of keyword traffic. Over the coming years, it will be interesting to see whether online forums enjoy a technological renaissance or fade into obscurity.
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