Forum

[stryfer]

hi guys.

i'm just wondering is there any use of searching for forums with high page ranks, cos i've come across a few .edu forums with page ranks as high as 7, but the individual pages where i can leave a signature are all "unranked".

so i'm just quite confused as to whether or not to bother with the page rank in cases like these.

i know a backlink is good, but a backlink from a high PR is better. so i'm just wondering. would be great to hear a few experts' thoughts on this.


cheers,
Brian

 

[tbrim20]

Here's how to do it...

Go to Google and select "Advanced Search" options and set it up to search only the forum url.

Then you can use Mark's site statistics tool which displays PR as well as other stuff. Then you can run a search and sort the results by PR to find the highest PR threads.

But be careful because many forums don't take too kindly to newbies (or anyone for that matter) resurrecting old threads. So make sure they are one the new side.

Cheers,

-Tom

 

[stryfer]

hi Tom,

thanks for the reply,

so i'll take it from your reply that there ARE forum pages we can leave comments on with high PR's then...?

cheers,
brian

 

[stryfer]

also, how do you set it up to only search through the forum's url?

 

[michellerana]

also, how do you set it up to only search through the forum's url?

Type in google.com and click the "advanced search link" beside the search box and fill in the box that says "Search within a site or domain:" under "Need more tools?",

 

[tbrim20]

hi Tom,

thanks for the reply,

so i'll take it from your reply that there ARE forum pages we can leave comments on with high PR's then...?

cheers,
brian

Of course there are. But also consider that many forum posts gain popularity/PR after the fact. So you might comment on a thread that is PR0 today but next month might be PR3.

But yes, I've found many current high PR forum threads to comment on.

 

[billie275]

Hi
So I was trying to do this also, but couldn't figure out what exactly to fill in to the box that says "search within a site or domain"?
thanks
billie

 

[michellerana]

You could write .edu or .gov on the box beside "Search within a site or domain:"

 

[jmpruitt]

Also, PR does not mean much anymore. Remember your goal is traffic. Google is the only search engine that cares at all about PR, and they don't give it as much weight as they used to. I have a PR1 site outranking PR7 sites with 5 times the age. And I never have paid attention to PR when I do my link building. I have low pr, no pr, no follow, do follow, it doesnt matter. A link is a link, and if you can get it , and it is relevant for your site, take it.

Google is only one way to get it. yes you can get a lot from them, but you should not focus your entire business on one place. Seo should be an important part of your link building, but it should NEVER be the entire purpose of it. You are killing yourself and your chances of success if you do.

I see many people who will talk all day about how you want to own your domain rather than using free sites so that you have an asset that you control, yet these same people teach to give total control of your traffic to one source.

If you can get good traffic through that forum, and build a reputation with the members, then use it. dont worry about the PR.

I get over 100 visitors/ week from Affilorama, which is part of why I come here so often, and this is only one forum that I use. If google gives me a little extra love for the links I have here, then I will take it, but if they decided to deindex affilorama tomorrow, and discredit all my links, I would still come back every day.

 

[gullsinn]

posting on forums to get back links is totally useless
forums give us Good traffic nothing else

 

[jmpruitt]

That depends on the forum actually gullsinn. For example, all the bcklinks here show up in your backlinks with google and yahoo. however, since they are urls they dont do a lot for seo, but they do count as backlinks.

Also, some forums do have seo friendly backlinks. I have one forum that has helped me get some really high rankings by posting links there.

 

[sheepfarmer]

I was looking at Traffic Travis last night and it appears that most all of my backlinks from this forum are nofollow. Even so, it is still a backlink.

 

[jmpruitt]

One thing that you have to realize is that the no follow tag and PR are both Google inventions and they are the only ones that pay any attention to them at all. even they don't totally pay attention to it.

forums are great for a lot of reasons and it isnt just about traffic, although it is great for that as well. I get direct traffic, personal branding for my sites and my name within a niche, and more. not only are you building a reputation with potential customers, but you will also be noticed by other business owners (and product owners) who use that niche forum as well. I have gotten several JV offers, email swaps, invitations to product launches that i didnt really meat their criteria for, free products, clients for my business related services, and more from hanging out on forums in other niches. I even had a fairly popular product owner in a specifc niche market promote my blog to his list, because of the relationship we built up on a forum. Not only did I get a boost to my traffic, they were all proven buyers...

but it takes a lot of time to do, and isn't effective to do it if you have a lot of niches and several forums in each one. like for me, although I have 10 websites, and adding 5 more with the jetpacks, I am really only in 3 markets. each of my sites are highly targeted to subniches within those markets. of course, with the jetpacks, I will be going into some new ones, but I specifically chose ones that are easily cross promoted with the niches that I am already in.

I wouldnt outsource it, but as your business grows and you dive into several niches, I would hire someone just to keep up with the niche forums. that way i can focus on the business ones like affilorama,

 

[robinjackman]

Forum posting is best for generate back links.

 

[sonitin]

I started putting up on forums recently, I think the purpose for forums should not be backlinking at all. That is the last tangible benefit from them. The real benefit is networking and building a rapport for yourself like James said. Its also a good place to get exposure.

 

[Emily Armstrong]

Don't you folk have a Facebook or possibly a YouTube follower world wide web page? My family and I looked for 1 on Zynga and YouTube but unfortunately could not recognize one. I’d want to turn into a fan!

 

[michellerana]

You could keep in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter for daily affiliate marketing tips:

http://www.facebook.com/affilorama
http://www.twitter.com/affilorama

 

[newstart]

I have found that forum posts whether "follow" or "no follow" are helpful in creating backlinks. In some cases Google will acknowledge no follow back links. However, the other major search engines of Yahoo and Bing do follow "no-follow" links providing greater SERPS along with a higher ranking.

Since Google is slowly losing a little of its market share to Yahoo and Bing this places Bing and Yahoo in a stronger position. Though I do not believe it will occur over night; we may see a time when Google is not the dominant search engine. If that ever happens it would be nice to be in the advantageous position of ranking well no matter the search engine used.

As Jim Pruitt has stated many times forums are great for producing website traffic. Many times we are so fixated on backlinks we forget why we want the backlinks in the first place. We are working to get traffic. Therefore, forum produce traffic. That meets our goal straight on.

As to the initial thread regarding no page rank edu forum sites. Often a forum page with a zero rank today will have a future page rank of one through six or so several months down the road. By making a post today your backlink's value increases over time.

Margene Smith

 

[andy.twit961]

Hi All,

Nice discussion guys..On balance, i am totally agree with jmpruitt. Forum posting is similar to blog posting but you do it on forums instead. You need to make sure that you have a forum signature with your keyword in it linking back to your website. This can usually be done by going to your user area on the forum. To get the most out of forum posting I highly recommend posting at least 10-20 messages a day and make them relevant and useful comments.

 

[rose1]

Hi,

Thanks for the info.
What about pinging the profile urls. Is it good for seo?

Link removed by moderator

 

[newstart]

Yes pinging is a benefit especially with no rank sites. If you don't ping your comment page on no rank sites it is likely to take months before the backlink is recognized. On higher ranked sites it is still helpful however higher ranked sites are crawled more frequently so the benefit is not as pronounced.

Margene

 

[jmpruitt]

Pinging just lets search engines know that you are there. Honestly, when I join forums, I am not even thinking about SEO. Some of my best forums are never even indexed by search bots. I get a TON of traffic from the AB and AJP forums here, and that is where I spend most of my time. But, Google doesnt even accnowledge that those links exist.

Why would you waste time on them then? Because those forums are fulll of proven buyers in the niche, and THOSE are people I want on my email lists.

 

[emailclicker]

Hello guys,

I found your post while doing a search in google and found the info you had to be interesting so i decided to join this forum. Thanks for sharing this page rank info.

 

[michellerana]

Welcome to Affilorama, Emailclicker! :)

I hope you'll find valuable information on our forum. Check out the free lessons on Marketing Ideas.

All the best!

 

[johnsonmick76]

Forums are great place to learn. No matter how good are you in SEO, you should always be looking in the corners of good forums and learn. For me, link building is not only motive but learn more than what I have learned so far.

 

[camilla]

Can someone please explain what "pinging" is? thanks!

 

[jmpruitt]

Can someone please explain what "pinging" is? thanks!

Hey Camilla, pinging is a way to send a message to the search bots to notify them when you have fresh or updated content on your website.

Some website systems (like WordPress) automatically ping the search engines to let them know that there is new content on your site. Wordpress actually will Overping (ping them too often) if you are not careful. There are plugins that you can use to limit this effect, so you won't be ignored by the bots when you add fresh content.

However, if you are using a desktop application (such as XsitePRo, Dreamweaver, or Kompozer) , or for building links on other sites like article directories and web 2.0 sites, you sometimes need to Ping them to let the search bots know that the links exist.

Pinging doesn't really HAVE to be done. Usually the bots will find your content eventually if you are posting it on quality sites. However, pinging will get them to notice it faster, and the faster they index your links, the faster you will get credit for them and your rankings will improve.

If you are doing massive link building though, it isn't feasible to ping every post you do. Generally, if you use social media to share your guest posts, articles, and videos with your social circles, pinging isn't really necessary since the search bots look at these sites regularly to find new content being shared. Simply tweeting your posts, sharing them on Google+ or liking them on Facebook will often get the search bots crawling your pages within minutes of them going live.

I don't ping anything myself, and I still find most of my content being indexed within minutes of posting. However, some people who are building links on low quality sites that don't see the search bots as often need to ping the links, otherwise it could take weeks or even months before Google finds them.

 

[easyrider]

On Wordpress you can turn the pinging off by going into quick edit and deselecting the option of allowing pings. What I do is make sure that I only save my updated post once with the pinging option selected.

 

[yoginisharma77]

Forum is a great way to communicate with people from all around the world and share knowledge and experience.

 

[ryuchi]

Great post! My first time to hear about this Mark's Tool though. Any other tool we can use to sort the search results by PR?

 

[jmpruitt]

You can use SEO Quake which is a FireFox Addon to see the PR , #of links, and a lot of other data about pages that you find in search results. It will also show that information in a toolbar on the pages themselves when you view them.

 

[mooresanyo]

I have one question. So does pinging help index a new website fast?

 

[babycatering]

I have one question. So does pinging help index a new website fast?

Yes a little bit pinging means for example your are letting search engine bots know that you have posted this artical and you want it to be indexed in google so pinging means you invite bots to visit your site :D

 

[chrislee552003]

I focus on high page rank back links and forums and blogs that are associated with my business. I do Income tax so I link in Income Tax and financial blogs etc

 

[camilla]

Ok, so I am thinking of buying some banner space on a page 3 rank site. The banners appear in rotation but will Google recognize these links as permanent links?

 

[camilla]

Thanks James for the response re Pinging, very clear now.

 

[coff777]

Had to create an account just so I could ask this question... What is Mark's site statistics mentioned above in the Mar 31, 2010 comment, the first one on this page.

I tried Googling it, but nothing came up.

Thanks!

 

[newstart]

If you are using Firefox or Chrome you can upload SEO Quake. SEO Quake is a free software that will provide information on a multitude of data perameters for individual online pages.

Margene

 

[jmpruitt]

coff777,

Mark Ling, who owns this site, has created a toolbar that you can install in your browser (firefox) to check various stats on your websites. you can learn more about it here http://www.affilorama.com/seo-toolbar

 

[jayadenares.matt]

Backlinks are very much important for any SEO service. There are lot of ways to have high PR backlinks. I would like to say here, in link building quality and relevancy is most important.So we should always try to get backlinks only form relevant websites. Use all link building techniques and place links only on do follow,high PR and relevant websites. and the one that is valuable an d i m also using for last couple of months is via site *Link removed by moderator* which provides high PR back links in a very short span you must try this .

 

[Michael12]

I thought of a really cool idea. If you want to link to your website from high ranking forum - go to high PR forums and post that you have a problem with your site (no matter what) and place your link. Others will try to check your site and you'll receive a link from a high PR page :)