Will adding a forum to my site help with SEO?

[Letsurf]

I'm considering adding a forum to my site and building a "community" there. Will the added posts/pages, and content help me get ranked higher?

[Juvv2096]

The foum posts can rank for keywords much like any other page on a website.

My suggestion is to create a forum for your niche, not for SEO rankings.

Forums are meant to be enjoyed just like the WF is.

If you make your forum about being part of the community, the rankings and traffic should take care of itself.

[Letsurf]

thanks for the advice. Have you used any forums for wordpress such as bbpress or simple press? I can't decide between these two.

[awddude]

More content = good.

The downside is a forum can be hard to publicize, make popular, and moderate... and the time it takes to do that can be used more effectively on targeted article writing.

Not necessarily though it depends on the site, and as another member wrote forum posts can rank too.

[awddude]

Originally Posted by Letsurf

thanks for the advice. Have you used any forums for wordpress such as bbpress or simple press? I can't decide between these two.

Sorry I know the frustration when picking a forum, there are a lot of things to consider. Never had one on the WP platform though.

What niche is your forum going to be in?

[drewmcntyre]

I think if you add a forum page to your site and make it popular then you can get traffic for your site.

[Gary Gomez]

I ran a forum using phpBB seo plugin which was fantastic for optimisation but a nightmare to set up, but produced perfect urls.

Its amassive amount of work building a busy community as well so take that in to account.

[Letsurf]

A forum will integrate perfectly into this niche. Actually it's something that this niche is missing but really needs so I think it will work out well. Thanks for all the advice.

[StoneWilson]

Originally Posted by awddude

More content = good.

The downside is a forum can be hard to publicize, make popular, and moderate... and the time it takes to do that can be used more effectively on targeted article writing.

Not necessarily though it depends on the site, and as another member wrote forum posts can rank too.

If you have enough regular visitors, it's ok to build a niche-related forum, otherwise, don't waste your time on that, write more quliaty contents and generate more traffic from FB and Twitter.

[WakondaMarketing]

Creating a forum is not that very beneficial in terms of SEO or ranking a website in the SERPS. But if you just want to build a medium of communication as well as a lasting relationship to all the people that belong in your niche, then building a forum is the best way to go. Not to mention, it could give a decent push to your website's traffic.

[JuicerFan]

Hey there,

You set up a forum that allows sigs as easy as this great forum and I will definitely post there.

Sigs bring the hits. You set it up, Im there posting content like a Boss.

[prcys]

Originally Posted by Letsurf

I'm considering adding a forum to my site and building a "community" there. Will the added posts/pages, and content help me get ranked higher?

Yes forum to the site be helpful to get the more engagement of the visitor to the site , also be helpful to get the more new and authentic content also. And through starting the thread own , on the forum community , you can promote the content also which can be indexed in the forum results also. So these all the benefits you will get from the forum to the site.
But the thing to be careful when make use of the forum , that be sure for not spamming on your community.

[pjman]

Inactive forums are food for Panda these days. Spammers hit them with useless duplicate content all the time. I you have time to moderate and noindex the entire forum, it might add value to your visitors, but not SEO.

[JuicerFan]

Originally Posted by pjman

Inactive forums are food for Panda these days. Spammers hit them with useless duplicate content all the time. I you have time to moderate and noindex the entire forum, it might add value to your visitors, but not SEO.

Hey You said it man.

I was recently reading a poker forum. You know about what happened to Poker in the US recently. It got shut down like Motown.

Anyways I was reading this forum. Aint one of the big ones but it was maybe top 10 Poker forums in the day.

And I see that some spammer had registered and filled like 20 posts with nothing but spam links.

Darn shame.

[masterjani]

You can use MYBB that is free and more productive too.

[rooze]

I have a small niche forum on Yabb with around 16,000 posts - almost 13,000 are indexed in Google and it shows up all over the place for relevant search terms. So yes, it can help with SEO.....but they stick out like a sore thumb if you can't get people to use them and devalue the rest of your website (assuming it's an add-on).

[HorseStall]

It can. In a lot of ways a forum is like a blog, in that it produces new content on a regular basis. Make sure you use a search friendly platform. Keep in mind though forums take effort and attention.

[Venetian]

I have learned (the hard way) that forums are difficult to jump-start and manage. I run a small travel forum that took me very long to establish and get-going and still it gets very little posts.

Most people read and do not participate ....

[WordsofWorth]

I have personally used BBPress and integrated it with WordPress. There were some teething issues, but once set up it runs well and has some nice cross over features with WordPress, such as posts on the front page and users only having to log in once.

It is hard to skin though, and isn't supported that much. A better option is VBulletin, and that connects with WordPress to some degree too, as you can create new forum threads from new blog posts on the fly. That's a better forum.

As for SEO benefits, massive. So long as you have an active community and keep the spammers at bay, you can get great ranking benefits from a forum.

[lovboa]

Just don't make it a .edu extension or else await your inevitable spam fest!

[Letsurf]

Originally Posted by lovboa

Just don't make it a .edu extension or else await your inevitable spam fest!

Do the 2+5=? spam protection protect against automatic seo posting software? Now that I'm starting to mess with blogs and forums I'm starting to understand how much a pain it can be the SEO's spam the hell out of everything. I've never been the type to build crap backlinks with automated software but this gives me a better understanding of the daily challenges legitimate forums go through with regards to spammers.

[Letsurf]

Originally Posted by talks 44

It helps in the sense that you will get more visitors if you have seo your forum, and more pages of your website will be indexed/rank in search engines.

Does anyone know if each post counts as a page to google? Or does each thread? Not sure how google sees and indexes forums...