Link Building Techniques – Forum Marketing

My blog post last week on link building techniques touched briefly on each of the techniques available. I going to focus on one technique this week - Forum Marketing. Before I get into using forum marketing, we have to have the health-warning that  :

1. Not all links are the same
2. Getting one link at a time is not a waste of time, its the compound effect over time that is powerful. If you can get a lot of links too quickly it's likely not worth it 
3. The concept of "€œnofollow"€ still has an effect in forum marketing and comments on blogs "€“ Google won"€™t rate these links as highly but do not write off engaging on sites that use the nofollow technique. These links will help with your social score which from recent blog posts is becoming slightly more important in search and will continue to do so.

1. The concept of "€œnofollow"€ still has an effect in forum marketing and comments on blogs - Google won't rate these links as highly.

Forum Marketing Best Practice

Things to consider:

• Don"€™t participate if you cannot add value / entertain
• Do you have good content to share / link back to on your site
• How can you monitor / track your activity (social monitoring + Analytics is the answer)
• Be human and don"€™t pretend to be someone you are not! It will hurt in the long run believe me!

The concept to just use forums for link building is really bad. Using forums as a communications tool with your marketplace is great. This dictates how forums are used as a tactic in SEO.

Benefits of Forum Marketing (in order)

1. Brand exposure
2. Socially Active (now a key success factor in search etc)
3. Inbound links

Forum Marketing Process

Step 1: Find up-to-date & relevant forum discussions

Tools exist to help you find & rank each of these discussions. I recommend trying a few of them and then deciding on one and sticking to it. The free and easy way to do it is to use relevant keywords in Google Search & select "€œDiscussions"€ within the filters on the left hand side. This will return just forums with the keywords you enter. Other tools include:

• Radian 6
• Post Rank
• UberVu
• TrackUR

Step 2 : Participate in the discussion

Get involved with forum discussion by commenting / answering within the forum thread, if & where relevant link to pages on your website (or your network). A good example of getting a link would be just from your profile"€™s "€œSignature"€ on forums, that way if its not relevant to post a link within your response then you will have one in your signature. Be creative when in these forums, start conversations around exciting or controversial subjects that you know will spark conversations.

Step 3 : Repeat

You should ensure you get updates from threads you participate in to make sure you keep involved where relevant. Do this daily and ensure you use tools to help you find

Step 4 : Track your effort

Use Social monitoring tools & Analytics to track your effectiveness. Consider the following metrics:

• Inbound Links (Webmaster tools / OpenSiteExplorer / MajesticSEO)
• Social Mentions (Radian 6 etc)
• Visits (check bounce / time on site as part of it)
• Sign Ups
• Sales
• Brand searches
• Tweets / Likes

In short forum marketing can be an extremely powerful tool when incorporated into the marketing mix, it requires effort & time but due to the multiple effects it has on your business it is nearly always worth it!

Please share your forum marketing stories / comments below!