Talk the Talk: How Joining Online Forum can be Beneficial for Your Business SEO Strategy

I have to admit, I am not the overly extroverted type of a person, but I know people would not believe me if I said I am an introverted person because of my cheerful demeanour. However, what people don’t know about me is the fact that I take time to get used to certain situation of social interactions. As a person who works at a creative agency that provides SEO services for businesses, I always join forums to get more information or just to socialise – just like why I joined Anime or Manga forums. However, while I might try to blend in with the others, talking about the stuff we like or stuff that we would like to know. However, here comes my short attention span. I always get excited at first and communicate like every day on a forum, only to get bored later and not keep up with the conversation anymore. Then I found something interesting. Later on, I just found out how helpful a forum for SEO was. Forum is actually important for business SEO. After knowing the truth, I spent days proving it and yes, it is true! How? Keep reading to find out!

Many people in the SEO world agree that forum has its way to benefit a business using forum as one of their digital marketing efforts for the following reasons:

Clicks. When you are offering advice for people on a forum and it is a good one especially if you add a link for more information for them, people will appreciate it more and trust that your information is helpful. This can help you generate some clicks.

Reputation. There is a difference between receiving advice from spammers and getting advice from people who actually care. Even though you are joining a forum for a purpose to grow your business, you still have to put your audience first before your search engine rankings. Spammers give random and baseless advice that has no resource or links at all. However, when you are there with a purpose but also attentive to your audience’s needs, not only will you get clicks, but you will also boost your reputations on that forum, which can lead to brand awareness and recognition.

Backlink profile. Google favours websites that have both nofollow and dofollow links because it is more authentic that way. While this effort is not directly beneficial for you in terms of PageRank SEO, this method still helps you improve your subject authority.

Those benefits I have mentioned above actually got me thinking; is this true? When it comes to forum, there are two things to consider; whether you should create your own forum, or participate on relevant forums to your industry.  It turns out, you can get SEO values by creating your own forum, because a forum lets you talk ‘directly’ to your audience with as much transparency as you can, as well as provide better customer service on even just one single forum. Aside from creating your own forum, participating in discussions on other forums that are still relevant to your business industry is also beneficial in its own ways, especially when it comes to boosting your profile and increase brand awareness. However, there are several things you need to be careful with when participating in discussions or creating your own forum discussion:

• Do not only focus on your business purpose, be more helpful while gaining what you need
• Unless you are really into talking about it and wanting to discuss about it personally, do not participate in irrelevant discussions to your industry; otherwise, you will be treated as spammers
• Well, it is obvious; do not spam
• Make sure you contribute positively and give positive vibes in the discussion
• Be transparent and honest

Having a business is not about how much you can gain, but it is more about how valuable your business is. Just like the saying goes; “If you chase money first, you never get your passions, but if you chase your passions first, money will follow.” The point is when it comes to forum discussions, you don’t solely think about the profit you will gain from this. Think of it as a way to help your audience find the meaning of your product and business so that they can solve their problems. Once you understand this, everything else will follow.