🔍 SEO Insights Can You Actually Rank High On Searches?

[Nomad]

Well, you might say when you optimize your website for search engines through on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO, and publish high-quality and unique content, you might get decent search traffic. Well, there is nothing wrong on this thought. But can you actually rank higher in SERP by competing with big sites? Quora is a discussion board, can your forum beat Quora? Can you beat sites like Forbes, Investopedia, etc. with your own finance niche website? Well, you can of course rank on micro niches but there is no point of being one of one. You need to rank high on high traffic keywords.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think it's harder with a forum, which is why I think most forum owners should focus more energy on other means of marketing such as through social media, paid advertising, and even places like Quora and Reddit.

But when it comes to search, blog posts and media tends to get more attention than forum posts.

SEO is just so hard to do on a platform where everyone is posting and not abiding by SEO tactics.

 

[Tracy]

You need to rank high on high traffic keywords.

To clarify... you need to rank high on niche specific keywords. I really don't expect my site to rank high for someone looking how to prepare king salmon on the grill. By the same token I don't expect a niche site dealing with cooking to rank high on a search on how to set the back focus on a refractor telescope when using a flattener/reducer.
I have seen sites that are a niche specific use some of the catchy "buzz words" that are popular in searches in their off-topic areas, apparently hoping to suck some traffic in.

But can you actually rank higher in SERP by competing with big sites?

As to this.. most definitely you can with a little work and forethought on your content creation. And by work I don't mean any special SEO tricks or stuff like that. Normally I'd do a Google search, but for this type stuff I use a TOR browser since it does not keep any history and right now it and Google are not playing well together. These are some fairly common terms in the niche for searches. Nothing special done on the site other than hosting them. With PIPP the location of the download was relayed in a few other niche sites, and that generated traffic.

And pay special attention... the links that get the good results are not forum posts in the above... they are where the forum site was extended by use of specific add-ons. Unluckily, the days of a forum only style site (which is what at least one set of developers and their supporters still push their script as) are going the way of many extinct species. Reality shows us that a script needs to offer more than a simple posting experience to gain traffic and/or users.
Those that are still living in the fantasy that a forum only site can be successful are not really dealing well with current reality. Only in a very rare exception will that be possible. You now have to offer much more than a simple place that revolves around a forum/discussion structure.

 

[Nomad]

I understand you need top target keywords related to your niche. For instance, if your website is game niche, you need to target game related keywords and not sports related keywords. However, SEO game has become very competitive, you might not be able to rank for generic keywords, for instance, your site might not show up even on the top 10 pages of your target keyword is "health" however, you might be able to rank better with specific niches like intermittent fasting, herbal healing, etc.

 

[Tracy]

Small sites are rarely going to be able to compete with a generic word like health, telescope, camera against large sites. That's just a simple reality.
But when you get into more niche specificity, your ranking is going to depend on the quality of the content that contains the word/phrase. Search engines have gotten smart enough now to recognize SEO fluff. The days of spamming buzz words (which are now referred to as keywords) across different pages on a site are long over with.
TOR DuckDuckGO search on the very generic phrase apertura 72mm gave a hit on the 6'th position for my site. The main ones that ranked higher was the place that actually sells the item.

 

[Heatman]

Generally, it is easier for blogs to rank higher on Google when compared to forums and it simply because when it comes to blog management, everything that is being carried out on the platform usually follow SEO tactics and this plays a very big role in helping such platforms to rank higher on Google. But the same thing cannot really be said about how things are done in forums.