6 replies to this topic

[vertigo]

Hey everyone,
I'm a newbie to the SEO world. Hopefully someone can help me with my SEO tactics. I've read all the SEO instructions for beginners and have started doing a bit here and there.

Just to better explain my current situation I'll use an example domain., say ww w.pies .com (hopefully that doesn't create a hyperlink)

I have gone to about 50 relevant forums about pies and made entries in them.

For about 20 of these forums I have replied to existing posts with original info, and have put a keyword rich hyperlink to my website in my signature.

For the other 30 forums I have posted new entries, all of which use the same info (dup content) and with my keyword rich hyperlink in the signature. All 30 of these new posts have the same title, e.g. 'Pies - how to bake an apple pie'.



After 2 weeks most (not all) of the links have been recognised by google. I have found that if I do a search on the title above (Pies - how to bake an apple pie), the posts I created will be listed first in google, not my website. Why would this be the case?
More importantly, how would I make sure that my site gets listed at the top of google for this search term?

I hope that makes sense!

[Randy]

Welcome vertigo !

First, be very, very careful with what you're doing by posting on forums like that. Many forums, like this one, will consider such posting to be spam and remove them. Possibly banning you from being able to make any further posts.

Second, posting links on fora is not something that's going to gain you much ground with the search engines. Because of the way forum software is built the more time that passes the deeper a spider must crawl to even see the links. Thus lessening their value as time goes on. You'll want to have a read through our Link Building section of this forum for some better ideas on how to build link popularity.

As to your question...

What is have seen is exactly what should happen. After all, your site is probably new, probably hasn't had many or any links pointing at it before and probably hasn't yet gained the Trust of the search engines. For well-established forums the exact opposite is true. They have a built in advantage on many fronts.

[Jill]

Forum links are mostly useless these days. Don't waste your time and the forum administrator's bandwidth.

[vertigo]

Forum links are mostly useless these days. Don't waste your time and the forum administrator's bandwidth.

So how do I gain the trust of a search engine? As far as I understand that's just a matter of being on the internet for 9-12 months. If that's correct, would I be best buying a few domains, getting them listed in google, then waiting 9-12 months before working on the site?

[chrishirst]

As far as I understand that's just a matter of being on the internet for 9-12 months

If only it were that simple!

If that's correct, would I be best buying a few domains, getting them listed in google, then waiting 9-12 months before working on the site?

It's not, and the exact opposite of your suggestion is the best way.

Have one really good site that you work on, create content for, good unique content that is, not the "copied a million times" downloaded articles style content, and get decent links. again that's decent ones, not the usual "link exchange with anybody & everybody", hundreds of forum sig or dozens of crappy directory type of links.

[Big Bill]

Forum links are mostly useless these days. Don't waste your time and the forum administrator's bandwidth.

Unless, of course, you actually contribute something useful to the ongoing conversation. In my experience this results in increased traffic when the regulars promptly descend on your site to see who the new guy is. If you comment non-committedly just to get your sig link in, it won't do you, or your client if you have one, or the forum it appears in, any good at all. Which I'm sure is what Jilly meant to say (and why she treasures my brief cameos here so much :-) :-)

BB

[Jill]

Absolutely, Bill. The traffic you may get directly from a forum link is great stuff. Just don't count on it helping your search engine rankings.

And yes, I do treasure your appearances here...