Hello everyone. I see some great tutorials here on how to build links for websites and blogs.. but how about forums? I recently started a forum and want to get the name out there. Is there such thing as "link exchanges" for forums? And if so, where do these links go?
Well i would suggest to go for a 1 way links, because you won't send your link juice to that website and next, for your forum links install something to have the page title in the url, instead of ?f=1241 have something like /page-title/ This will give you a seo boost
neat stuff. I'm using vbulletin right now.. is this the "friendly URL"? Do I have to install anything to run it?
Not really sure for vbulletin, but i think you will have to install something additional or at least to change something in the config.
Link building for a direct forum (meaning no other content on the website) is fairly hard. You definitely want lots of one way links. If you have no Pagerank/authority (not necessarily the little green bar), then you want minimal outgoing dofollow links. A great thing to do first, is make sure absolutely all of your links on your forum (including posts) are set to nofollow. This may require a plugin; but I believe all forum systems have this integrated. Secondly, I would pay for some quality blog posts related to the niche of your forum. If your website is fresh, no more than 5-10 are needed. Try to have them spaced out over 2 weeks. In-between these 2 weeks is where you want to be working hard at acquiring social networking links/visits, possibly some Youtube links (yes even nofollow counts), and some one-way links from other websites related to yours. It would also be a fantastic idea to sign up at other forums related to yours, and using the forums properly (*not just to advertise your website*). Link to your website using your signature, but NOT the front page. Link to a profile, a post, anything but the front page. Think about the typical marketer and how they try to achieve high rankings. Googles algorithm is extremely complex, and the only way to beat it is by doing things properly. Somebody might disagree because they have a blackhat method that works "now". But, give it a year and their website(s) won't even rank on Google. My best advice: Think, when a website you're really interested takes off; how did you find out about it? (Boom, traffic source). Also, remember how it was advertised to you. Make sure you examine some websites and see how they took off, and what their backlinks look like. Hope it works out for ya!
Just share your content on social media and let it gain links naturally, that's what Google loves nowadays.