When you join a forum should your user name be a keyword

I started using an important keyword to me as my user name when I join a forum does this make sense?

My hope is that the spidering of the fourm site will use my anchor text name with with my url home page. Most forums within my niche do not allow signature links.

Thoughts?

 

It sounds like a good strategy. It would depend on the forum though. It would need to have links that search engines give credit for, otherwise it would only be good for a bit of direct traffic. If it has any kind of indexable links, your username may at least make the page seem more relevant to your topic.

 

I do it for all sorts of things although it works better for blog pages and lens pages.

 

I have noticed in webmaster tools >> Statistics >> What Googlebot sees >> In external links to your site.

There is a link that says "Visit tattoos's homepage!" I guess that is a link with a keyword, the benefit will of course depend if the forum sets links to the users profile and homepage as nofollow or not.

Cheers
James

 

Bear in mind that what I am about to say is not being said in my capacity as a SitePoint Forums Advisor or SEO.com forum administrator.

The short answer to your question is no. Your username should reflect who you are (or who your company is if you're registering under your companys' name). It should not be used for SEO purposes. Not only will it attract the (wrong kind of) attention of the forum staff, but if you were to target another keyword via your username later on, you'd still be stuck using the username you registered with. Some forums (such as SitePoint) do allow members one username change (in SitePoint's case all you get is one), but these are usually such low priorities for the administrators that it's usually not worth it.

Not only that, but SEO keyword usernames tend to make people (myself especially - again, strictly in my capacity as a forum contributer) question the legitimacy, intentions and integrity of the forum poster in question. How can I take someone seriously if the first thing I see from them is an SEO keyword? Is the member a fluff poster or someone whose only contributions are to his own site's search rankings rather than the community? Why should I (as a user) trust someone if their name is a keyword?

Give people a reason to trust you. Choose a username that you can "brand" so people will recognize you wherever you go online. If you contribute quality relevant and meaningful content and don't act like a jerk, chances are very good that you'll get those incoming links you want - and those will be a lot better than the garbage that appears in a forum signature or user profile. (Yes, I called forum signatures garbage - even my own sig links are garbage. After all, they're not worth much if anything at all to the search engines in the first place.)

 

Quote - I started using an important keyword to me as my user name when I join a forum does this make sense?

My hope is that the spidering of the fourm site will use my anchor text name with with my url home page. Most forums within my niche do not allow signature links.

Thoughts? - end quote

This is a great approach - IF your link-links directly to your homepage, it is a "dofollow" link and the forum is directly related to your niche. It's not as great if the link is not a dofollow link and is even worth less if the forum you are on is not related to your niche.

If I were you, I'd read what Dan said because it's what he said that really matters.

 

Good post, Cheers.

I agree with the majority of your post, especially that you should not choose a user name for SEO purposes (Ask the user "Cheap Viagra".. it doesn't work).

If your name (or alias) is not available, choose a user name that you think best represents your online/offline persona, or just one you think is OK and available.

I do not know if the username you choose would benefit SEO in any way, but I don't think it will hurt.
When available I use tattoos (or alternatives) as a username on all forums I frequent, and have been doing so long before I ever built a website.

As for questioning the "legitimacy, intentions and integrity" of someone based on their username, I understand why someone may have suspicions, But I cannot agree with that logic.
I have always been taught, You can never judge a book by its cover, and never trust anyone with anything more than you are prepared to lose.

Cheers
James

 

You can do that on the signature.

 

Yes it is useful but some forums will not allow to add keyword rich text.

 

Hey I named my son Cheap Viagra...

 

I don't think so.

The best thing is to write about your topic, with your keywords included, and that should do the trick. It would be somehow stupid if we all had our keywords as our usernames.

 

yes! That is a good strategy. One I had a PR4 and a lot of the anchor text was View liamizdabest's Homepage
That wasn't the reason it was PR4 but it was there. It helps a little. Doesn't hurt