Forums are communities which have users & members of who share the same interest and passion and are willing to disseminate the issues & discuss information about the topic that interests them, helping each other solve niche-related problems. Now a day’s many organizations have sought to Forum support. It is a medium of one-to-many support, many users can read & share their reviews as well issues. Search engines like Google have never fully disclosed how they rank search results and so there are lots of opinions about SEO out there. A community forum is free to choose the forum to be in a folder or sub-domain. If the content on a sub-domain is on a different web-server and IP address, it would be good to register the sub-domain in the concerned Google Webmaster Tools account. This way, Google knows that the website and forum are one and the same and one can get SEO approval for inbound links to the forum.
SEO Objective for Forum
The SEO objective of Forum is of providing help with a problem frequently encountered by the set group of audience, of directing targeted traffic towards the concerned website and improving the position of one’s’ site on search engine results pages. As a result, the types of content have to be structured around carefully chosen keywords and provide relevant information. The relevancy of titles and the need to address a specific problem encountered by those interested in the concerned area of activity or niche are required for forum posts
Content needs to be published on websites relevant to the topic of the content & they should be in the popular & relevant article directories which are used by the highest number of people interested in the product or issue, in the case of forum posts, one needs to find the forum communities that take the most interest in the specific niche. Always choose an authoritative forum in the niche to post articles, this will not only be able to reach out to more people but will also increase the number of valuable backlinks generated for the concerned website.
Need of Sitemap for Forum
Forums have a very clear tree-like content structure with the relevancy of product type, services and so sitemaps aren’t necessary. Sitemaps are XML files that help search engines find one’s website URLs and can also provide some information about those URLs to help the search engine crawl them more intelligently, so without a sitemap search engines will simply crawl by visiting links it finds on one’s website. Search engine prominence drives traffic, more users, and ultimately more cash. Certainly, it’s easier to grow the concerned forum if people can find it quickly.
Benefits of usage of Smart Homepage and Forum Section Keywords and Metatags
Various search engines including Google still rely on the above factors as guideposts to properly index the Forum pages. It is also a surety factor to make sure that the search robots will index the entire page. This will help to be with Google but also be somewhat promotional. Repetition of keywords and themes is not very helpful. Using every phrase under the sky basically, the Keyword stuffing might be associated with the forum topic on each page also dampens the acceptability by the Google bots.
One should design the Forum article in such a way that speaking to the Google bot might be like as if it were one’s grandmother – clear, concise, and to the point but also comprehensive in your information without being verbose.
A forum post has to be typically much short, which obviously requires the writer of the post to be more concise and straight to the point, quicker, more focused replies are usually more efficient, and they encourage more interactivity which is the desired characteristics from a Forum post.
Forum should include posters, video embeds or Links to Videos & Tutorials
The inclusion of the Tutorial, posters & videos not only make the forum livelier but Google also loves sites that include videos. One has to make sure this doesn’t create a problem of slow page loads on one’s forum is to restrict usage to YouTube and Vimeo, the two most popular video hosting companies also restrict the posters from including massive image files or other things that might slow down the load time of a page. Google bots always measure pages load speed and include it as a key ranking factor. This factor needs to be kept in mind.
Links within a forum are one of the best ways to expose & connect to relevant content and enhance user page views in a legitimate fashion. Internal page links, too, are actually something that Google likes and values.
Comments in Forum
To get organic, high-quality traffic to the website, increasing the page ranking efficiently and positioning one’s site among the top results on search engines it is required to post interesting and relevant comments on authoritative forums. Increased traffic will soon translate into increased Customer experience, sales and your forum posts will also convince other people in your niche that one is a reliable and reputable expert in the concerned area of activity, helping a lot with your branding efforts as well.
Response time in Forum post
The response time in Forum post should not be more than few hours, each response needs to followed & interacted as much as possible. The terms of vocabulary have to be chosen very carefully so that it does not hurt the sentiment & is within the organization policy guidelines.
Creation of Forum Posts basic guidelines:
You need to find a relevant thread in an authoritative forum, create one’s own profile where one ca add the URL of the website or landing page that one is representing or promoting and then start adding one’s own contribution. One can also decide to start their own thread by describing a problem or offering a solution to a problem that is widespread but not yet mentioned in the forum so that then you can engage in conversations with the other forum members. Always remember that whenever one posts a comment, then one’s forum nickname and other account details will be displayed next to comment so that other members can find out more about the one who has posted
The Technical Aspects of Forum Management
- Always have a detailed understanding of web mastery so that the Forum site is not penalized or the ranks bottom in search queries.
- It includes topics such as 404 error message (when a page is missing),
- Proper types of page redirects, the difference between “Nofollow” links standard links, Both of which pages to prevent Google from & can impact a forum’s SEO,
- To drive traffic “Related Pages” widget is a wonderful way
Negative Aspect that should be known & always policed:
Shady services which ask for pay backlinks, lame for-pay directory listings, and other junk might aim at separating forum owners from their authenticity & money. Be aware of choosing a bad domain
Always keep vigilance on:
- Buying links
- Links from bad neighborhoods.
- Malware
Unethical websites might descend on the forum to build massive quantities of backlinks to a content site selling gray market dicey offers. Sometimes annoying people also are plugging social media accounts or blogs that are clearly borderline legal efforts to boost followers and readership could pop up. These insertions could both ruin conversations and one searches engine rankings. Keep a strict vigil & identify them Ban them.
Alternatively, you can set some forum rules that prevent people from posting unless they match certain criteria or enforce social network. Unfortunately, Matt Cutts and his team at Google have more aggressively tried to punish practitioners of the darker side of Search Engine Optimization of late. As a result, forums that have tried to game Google have often seen their ranking plummet overnight when Google tunes its algorithms.
Conclusion – To have a better search ranking of Forum
- Have a friendly theme. This theme has minimal padding around it and will look good at any width.
- Set up the forum on a sub-domain though no one will see the URL, this helps search engines attribute the SEO
- Register this sub-domain in your Google Webmaster Tools account
- Always be careful & make sure that the page in which it is embedded is free of javascript errors.
Photo Credits: Forums.adobe.com
