12 replies to this topic

[excel30]

Hi,

I have new website, still being developed but hopefully ready to start promoting soon.

Is it worth starting with a blog or forum from the beginning or should I add these things when my site starts picking up a more than a few vistors?

From a serps point of view, what benefits does a Forum provide?
(In looking for a good basic easy to use forum where should I look to get one)

Will a blog benefit me in the serps in any way, directly or indirectly?

Thanks

[janell]

IMHO - blogs are fine for whenever. Just know that it won't bring you many return visitors unless you update it close to daily. Forums on the other hand, I would say it's better to wait to use them until you have an established traffic base. Otherwise it will be empty and it will reflect badly on your site, even though your site is brand new.

I'm asking myself these same questions - one thing you might consider if you do want to start up a forum right off the bat is to only have 1-2 topics that people can post in at first, i.e. Introduce Yourself, What more do you want out of this site, etc. That might be a more acceptable way to start a forum, but I'm still thinking on that one.

Janell

[Mort]

...as long as what you provide is relevant and worthwhile, you are doing a service to visitors of your web site.

If it is simply copying what already is out there on other sites just to garner more traffic, then consider other areas to focus your efforts.

[Jill]

Is it worth starting with a blog or forum from the beginning or should I add these things when my site starts picking up a more than a few vistors?

Nothing worse than a dead forum. No sense having one of those unless you have people to populate it.

And same with a blog. Be sure you have the time to write in it if you decide to start one. (Although, do what I say not what I do on this one!)

[excel30]

I've had someone meail me today asking "am I going to add a forum to the site?"

However I have no idea where to start when looking to add a forum, can anyone give me any pointers?

Will a forum help my site in ther serps with all the content and new pages being created?

What else should I take into account?

The reason I think its important is that if a forum does help my site move up in the SERPS, then I can spend more time on my site and in teh forum and not so much trying to attract vistors to my site via links.

With a decent forum etc Ill collect the natural links in the long run.7

I just don't know where to start setting up a forum.

Thanks in advance.

[rohgan03]

janell: is right. start with a forum with just 1 or 2 topic. something v simple that you know ppl wil particpate in. Nothing looks worse thana dead forum.

To start you would need a forum software. You can either get a free one or a paid one. I use invisionboard (paid, its the same as that used on this forum). phpbb is a popular free one.

No forums dont bring any SE ranking benefit. They do get more pages indexed....your users are generating pages for you ... as these pages get indexed, they bring in some traffic.

hard part is to get a large enough user base on the forum and putting in the effort to anwer user questions.

[excel30]

Thanks for the info.

So the thousands of forum pages on highrankings.com give it zero benefit in any search engine?

[Michael Martinez]

Thanks for the info.

So the thousands of forum pages on highrankings.com give it zero benefit in any search engine?

Highrankings' thousands of forum pages give it considerable visibility and reach into search indexes.

Only an active forum will achieve that kind of visibility. Community building takes time and dedication. You cannot just create a forum and watch it grow. You have to nurture it.

When the time comes, you'll get lots of search engine referrals from your indexed discussions.

But don't hope for or seek a quick way to make that happen.

[Jill]

Neither forums nor blogs are some sort of magic help in the SERPs that people seem to think they are.

Having real content on your site that is helpful and/or interesting to others does help in the serps. You can certainly get that kind of content through a forum or a blog, but you still have to WORK AT IT.

You can get good content on your site via a newsletter, or articles, or lots of ways as well. Nothing magical about any specific means to deliver that content, just that you HAVE content.

[excel30]

Hi,

You can certainly get that kind of content through a forum or a blog

That answers my question,

I know about the hard work part, trust me, but I just wanted confirmation that the hard work that would go into making a decent forum would also be recognised by the search engines.

[Jill]

Sure, good content is good content, regardless of the medium you use to post it.

Of course, not every forum is crawler friendly right out of the box. Many have to have some programming done to them. Same with blog software.

We have other threads here on both good forum and blog software which you should be able to find with a quick search.

[janell]

Of course, not every forum is crawler friendly right out of the box.  Many have to have some programming done to them. Same with blog software.

Ok, I have to apologize first for asking this question, but I really have been back and read those threads and they all said that now all the major forums are seo friendly out of the box. So....is that not the case? I'm thinking of the 3 major ones - phpbb, invision, and vbulletin - is one of them better than the others, out of the box?

Janell

[Michael Martinez]

Ok, I have to apologize first for asking this question, but I really have been back and read those threads and they all said that now all the major forums are seo friendly out of the box.  So....is that not the case?  I'm thinking of the 3 major ones - phpbb, invision, and vbulletin - is one of them better than the others, out of the box?

Janell

"SEO friendly" means they will generate static HTML "archive" pages that can be crawled. It's a "fix" for a search engine problem that came too late, because now the search engines crawl dynamic forum threads just fine.

A few years ago that wasn't the case.