Using Forums to Build Backlinks....Are You Doing It?

If you spend a lot of time online, then you may or may not frequent different forums. Chances are the forums are related to your own personal interests but don't necessarily correspond with your web properties. Let me ask you a question, although, I probably already know the answer:

Do you use your forum signature as a means of generating backlinks? What about traffic?

Chances are you've been thinking since the forum isn't related to the topic of your web site that there's no point. Well, sadly, you are wrong. You probably spend time seeking out the forums that are related to your niche to do forum posting, if you use this method at all. If you do that, then, surely you have wasted a lot of time and lost a lot of opportunities to promote your web site.

Let me explain something to you to make things a bit clear. And I'm sure it's been said once or twice, or many times over, but a lot of people still don't seem to "get it."

How many times have you heard or seen this statement being made?

Google will penalize my site if I have backlinks coming from unrelated sites.

If you believe that, then your web site will probably never see its full potential. The people who are feeding you this crap know otherwise. So, why do they tell you to build links only in your niche?

I think the answer is kind of simple.

They are likely your competitors and don't want you to avail the full advantage of what backlink sources are available to you. If they aren't, then they don't know any better...

Think about the black-hatters for a minute. They use software to generate hundreds of thousands of backlinks. Do you think they are all within their niche?

No. Of course not.

A lot of times they have sites shooting to the top of the search engines, even if only for a few days, but they are cashing in on it. If they weren't, why else would they do it?

Another scenario:

Some reporter threw a shoe at George Bush. It made the national news. Heck, it made world news. The story was posted all over the internet in probably a million and one places. Think about all those authority sites that got links because of it. Every blog, every news site, every article site...every site that published the story linked back to it. Those authority sites got major points for those backlinks regardless of if they were related or not.

Let me try to put this in perspective a little better for you.

If you have a site about acai berries, obviously, your web site is geared more toward the health niche. What if a bunch of fashion sites started linking to you? The search engines would love it, and you'd be getting exposure to a whole new crowd of people.

What if you have a site about hair products? Some web site about computers does a cover of one your articles. Computers....hair products? Totally unrelated.

Yes, it is true that the two are not related. But what about the people visiting these sites? Just because they are on a computer site doesn't mean they don't have an interest in hair products. Again, think about it:

A woman is shopping for a computer for her child who is about to go to college. They are visiting a computer blog to read some recommendations on computers. Since it is a blog, the blog owner has a section where they post random stuff that they find interesting or whatever (this is the case with a lot of blogs). The woman sees something about a new hair product on the blog, in the sidebar. So, she goes to have a look at it. Then, she clicks the link back to your site.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Backlinks are good regardless of the relativity to your niche. Google looks at backlinks as a sign of importance. If there are various sites linking to you, Google will think, "Wow, they must really be producing some good content for a site like that to link back to them."

The point of this extremely long post is that you should be taking advantage of every opportunity to get a backlink for your web site that you can. And, since you're here in a forum...."use what you have to get what you want." Relevance DOES NOT matter when it concerns backlinks. Quite frankly, I think that limiting your promotion efforts to within your niche limits your traffic and profit potential. Keep in mind that people have varying interests and just because they are on a forum about cooking doesn't mean they don't like cars (you get my point).

And since we're on the topic of forums, there are tons of them out there, some more popular than others. But, the fact of the matter is that they are there, so you should use them (wisely, that is).

 

You said it right. Relevancy is not so important. This is just plain myth. I have got links to my webpages from totally unrelated sites and seen my rankings go up.

 

I think that 1 relevant backlink counts for several non-relevant. I've seen sites with a total of 25 relevant backlinks appear on the first pages of Google and getting a PR=5, so relevancy must be important. But indeed, that does not mean that less relevant links are completely useless.

 

I only use signature links on forums I would normally go on, I don't go out of my way for signature links. My reason being a lot of times it takes google longer to index forums.

 

you can attain stable ranking with the help of relevant links. It doesn't mean that less relevant links are useless but they contribute less to your achievements.

 

right it doesn't matter whether link is from ur niche related site or not. Just keep building backlinks and see how your rankings go up.

 

When you have a link from an unrelated site, it signifies that your site was important enough for someone to go outside of their own niche to link to you, however.

Think about it. Google expects links from your own niche. Who wouldn't? But, when you have them coming from various places, it makes your site seem more important...

 

Yes, I am. As you can see there are several links in my signature which are promoting my health and weight loss related website. The way I see it is that a link is a link and as long as you are getting links in a whitehat manner then those links are going to help your site SEO wise.

 

Totally irrelevant links can harm your ranking. Say, if your site is particularly on "Insurance" subject, you can look around for sites on other themes like loans, credit cards etc. to build up links for your site. The thing is, it all depends on your ability to place links in a way so that they give natural look to the visitors (crawlers as well). And this is what you can easily do if you've some command on the topic.

 

Well, quite naturally you wouldn't go out of your way to build links using forum signatures. But, if you're already there, then you should put your signature to good use. And if you practice any type of link building for your web site(s), then using forums would be a wise method of choice. That's all I'm saying.

Exactly. A link is just that, a link! And, yes, definitely go the whitehat route.

 

I agree with the whitehat method for building links. Every time I even stepped into the gray area I get slapped by Google.

 

Hmm..
Seo experts said clearly that backlinks from related websites are not so important for the moment , but they will be in the future ..

You must have backlinks from non related websites to make things more natural, that's all.
Toon.

 

We can only guess!! No one knows what is in the Google well guarded secret ranking algorithm.

Remember that they are well over 200 signals in that algorithm! Backlinks is just one of them! maybe the most important but we still don't know the other signals! Do it naturally.

I do agree with you though. Every single backlink counts! Even nofollow ! ! ! !

 

yes I put links into the sigs of most forums a I visit.
not sure if they actually help me in page rank put every so often I do get a little bit of traffic

 

Has anyone noticed that when you change your signature it changes it in all your previous posts? Or am I imagining this...??

 

Haha, yea. I noticed it just a couple of weeks ago.

 

good post, a lot of people think you have to stay in the niche, not true. There is no way google checks every site and says if its related or not. Just a myth that needs to be put to truth.

 

you me be doing it if your on digital point :-D

 

what i mean to say is ... its good to put it on forums it will give you linkjuice -- but the best linkjuice in forums comes with context relevency

 

Good post. I always strive for relevancy when link building, as it is an efficient way of gaining interested visitors. However sometimes you can exhaust the opportunities for relevant links. Then you can side step a little. For example a site about weight loss can look for links on exercise and nutrition sites. It probably doesn't make much difference from an SEO perspective than unrelated links, except for the fact that the more relevant the link, then more likely the visitor is to click on it. Maybe Google takes this into account when calculating a the value of a link?

That said, I can't see any reason to turn down a link from a totally irrelevant site, but I wouldn't personally spend time actively looking for them. But yes, even on DP which is nothing to do with my niche (hypnotherapy) I am happy to add my link.

Mind you if you think outside the box, you can probably find some sort of connection with a lot more sites than you realise. For example there are many people on this site who want to make money on the internet. That's why I have added a link to my affiliate programme - perfectly relevant! I have also added a link to my relaxing hypnosis sessions - don't stressed out webmasters need some time out to relax every now and then?!