Forums: A Self-Fulfilling SEO Friend
Forums have long been thought of as a place where everyone from tech nerds to gaming enthusiasts to even oil traders have frequented at one point in time; but what about the SEO value for these forums. In this insight we’ll be discussing how forums can tremendously help your overall SEO through user-generated content, organic keyword increases, natural backlink acquisition, and more! Read on to learn why setting up a forum may be one of the best moves you can make for your site’s SEO.
User-Generated Content
Forums are usually maintained by moderators and then users will often submit questions, post interesting content pieces, or even submit their own, unique, blog-style posts to the forum. With this user-generated content, you’re opening up your site to start being recognized by search engines for a variety of search queries and keywords. Say for instance you have a forum on your site about classic Porsche automobile parts. Once your forum has some initial traffic, people will most likely start posting discussion threads such as: “Where can I find a brake caliper for a 1982 Porsche 911?”. In time, you’ll begin to rank for variations of that search query and related search terms/keywords. This user-generated content can become quite lucrative as well and have the potential for monetization down the road if your forum becomes popular within your niche community.
Increase in Organic Keywords
The only way you’re going to be able to exponentially increase the number of organic keywords you rank for is through content creation. The reason for this is due to the simple fact that search engines need content to index and relate that content to search queries. When your forum users are posting questions, responding to said questions, creating new topic channels, etc…; they’re opening up the door to have a flood of new keywords come in and help you start ranking for some great long-tail keywords with every single interaction.
Natural Backlink Acquisition
Backlink acquisition is one of the most difficult processes for newer websites just starting out without much domain authority. This is where forums come in to save the day! Due to your forum being a spectacular source of knowledge, many users will naturally link to your website in other sites with potentially high domain authority and page authority. This is a beautiful system at work and will only increase your overall SEO.
DO NOT NOINDEX or NOFOLLOW YOUR FORUM!
For some reason, many sites will noindex and/or nofollow their site’s forums content and links. This will put a serious dent in the SEO capabilities of your forum and subsequently your site. Just treat your forum as another page(s) on your site and you’ll be a-okay.
Forums, Forums, Forums…
Forums are a great tool to use for engagement, increased ASD (average session duration), backlinks, free content, etc… It’s important to monitor your forum periodically to ensure it’s not being overtaken by spambots or nefarious users. Other than that, you should start to see the effects of your forum in a relatively quick amount of time and be wondering why you didn’t start it sooner! If you are thinking about starting a forum or want a complimentary SEO audit, feel free to fill out the form below and we’ll be sure to reply back to you within 24 hours. We look forward to hearing from you soon!