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Forum posting is another SEO link building strategies that you may use. It’s a quite an effective ways of getting links since you have more control than directories submissions, as well as other factors. Now let’s look at some benefits and disadvantages of forum link building first, then we will look at how you can get those links. But before we look at the benefits let me stress one thing first, please do not go and spam forums with irrelevant or “garbage” posts. Make sure you read and understand the forum posting before trying to post anything. More in later section. Ok first, the benefits.
Benefits of Forum Link Building
Gathering links from various relevant forum has many benefits and they are:
- Instant approval – no need to wait days or even months to get them listed in web directories
- Always Free -most forums allows 1-4 outgoing links in your signature file. But I will read the rules before posting
- Always allow linking with your inner pages(or deep linking). Unlike web directories submissions, most of them do not allow deep linking unless you pay for a review fee.
Now “why relevant?”, you asked. This is because you may be accused of spam by putting some irrelevant links in your signature. Therefore, I will suggest you add links only from relevant or similar forums. Such as if you are targeting a web design niche, the related forums are something like hosting, internet marketing, web design, computers etc. Ok now, although forum posting has many above mentioned benefits, however, it has some disadvantages as well.
Disadvantages of Forums Link Building
- Not permanent – your links may be removed by the the administrator or forum moderators due to forum rules change or other reasons
- May need certain posts before signature is activated – you may need to have certain posts counts before you can post a link in your signature
- May be accused of spamming by just putting a link in your signature – some moderators, administrators do not like you add a link in your signature. They may be various reasons but they just don’t like you. What can you say about that? If this is the case, go to other forums.
Relevant Forums link building – the actual method
Step 1: Do a search in Google for “your niche” forums, “your niche” discussion boards. Replace “your niche” to something like internet marketing, web design, computer, health, weight loss, etc.
Step 2: Do a back link check using the Yahoo! “linkdomain or link” command, see articles “Does your link count?
Step 3: Read the forum rules and see if they allow a link in their signature. Most forums will not allow linking in the post unless to a respective sources such as government, newspaper articles, wikipedia etc. Make sure you check their rules and see what kind of links that they allow.
Step 4: After you finished with those steps basically you just need to register an account, confirm it and stick a link in your signature file.
The forum codes
Most forum software uses special codes for a clickable hyperlink. They are often called BB code. To post a link the code is something like the following, (click the “quickcode link to see the actual code”)
[quickcode]
[url=http://www.yourdomainhere.com/]your keyword text[/url]
[/quickcode]
Ok, this is the end of forum link building. Next time, I will show you more advanced tips, like web 2.0 properties posting, video marketing and so on so stay tuned!
