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Link builders on my forum , hurting my site ?

by zorikarineva
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a web forum on vbulletin and have about 1000 users and counting registering just putting some link to some sites on their profile , is that hurting my site ?


I think i have nofollow configured on the whole vbulletin site , does that mean engines are not counting these links ?
#builders #forum #hurting #link #site
  • Profile picture of the author Linda_C
    Originally Posted by zorikarineva View Post

    I have a web forum on vbulletin and have about 1000 users and counting registering just putting some link to some sites on their profile , is that hurting my site ?


    I think i have nofollow configured on the whole vbulletin site , does that mean engines are not counting these links ?
    This is the "other" side of using forums to build profile links. We see all these people on Fiverr and WSO offering "forum profiles" to build backlinks.

    Every one of those forums is owned by a real person (like you) who is wishing for real visitors that use the forum instead of just 1000s of profiles built for seo by people who will never visit or enjoy their forum.
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    • Profile picture of the author darren13
      This is life in the world of IM. They aren't hurting your site but it can be a pain as most of the sign ups wont come back to benefit your site in a any way. You could always start deleting inactive accounts.
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      • Profile picture of the author Linda_C
        Originally Posted by darren13 View Post

        This is life in the world of IM. They aren't hurting your site but it can be a pain as most of the sign ups wont come back to benefit your site in a any way. You could always start deleting inactive accounts.
        True. Of course, then all those people that bought "forum profile links" for seo at Fiverr.com or WSO will holler that the links they paid for didn't "stick". Isn't IM fun? lol
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        • Profile picture of the author iobeek
          Just delete inactive accounts and you are good.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexandre Valois
    I would recommend pruning them and deleting inactive accounts. Even if they are not "hurting" your SEO, you may not want your members to see a community of 500 active members, with thousands of members registered, most with spam names like isdf2842k33.

    Think about your forum's culture and ecosystem. While the presence of spam accounts will not hurt directly, it will have a negative impact on the way people perceive your community.
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  • Profile picture of the author wadeinni
    It really is that plain and simple. If members are dead weight on your community site, get rid of them. Deleting the account won't hurt your site. It's one less useless account to administer. Remember the 80/20 rule works in this situation too. The greater majority of useful posts on your forum will come from a small amount of sincere members, and that nofollow attribute will serve as a deterrent to others who simply want to build backlinks. I would recommend giving dofollow to loyal contributers in your forum though. I don't know if VBulletin have the ability to do that.
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  • Profile picture of the author patrich
    Everyone here is missing the bigger picture of this. Yes it is irritating to run a forum knowing that everyone whom signs up is only there for a link, they are taking advantage of you and your site, so why not take advantage of them in return?

    The popular thing to do these days, is to build forum profiles and then backlink them with scrapebox blasts or more forum profiles, etc. So allow these guys to sign-up, wait a couple of weeks and then 301 the profile page to your forum homepage and reap the backlinks that they built.

    I wish I had people spamming my sites now.
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  • Profile picture of the author jhnbrwn
    well, knowledge gets exceed with sharing, if there are genuine users who really want to know and share knowledge at your provided platform, well and good, but at certain point if you felt that specific profiles are just merely for link building, just redirect it to your own main url, only what you really need is a little bit of monitoring

    i wish we shouldnt be that much busy

    regards
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  • Profile picture of the author IcedSEO-CEO
    Banned
    You could always set autodelete inactive accounts after 120 days or so but basically they are not hurting your site, the ones that will hurt your site are the ones that will post overused PLR contents on your site (I hate those ones) and they are mainly into the signature links, these ones could hurt your site if you are using SEO for traffic but if you are using other means of traffic that doesn't depend on search engines then you will still be ok
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  • Profile picture of the author waterburn
    IcedSEO-CEO has a good idea. Most forum software will let you automatically delete inactive accounts. Or you can do it manually. In any case, it's just dead weight and your site may look spammy if you allow these things to happen. I actually modified my forums database and set the "website" field to be null or an empty string... Then nobody can post their URLs.
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