Is there anything you do for Forum SEO?

[Shawn Gossman1]

I know a forum is hard to manage for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

That's because it's user-contributed, and you can't expect everyone to be SEO experts.

But there are some angles you can choose to enhance the SEO experience on forums.

I'm curious if anyone of you are doing that, and if yes, what techniques are you using?

 

[Henrywrites]

Notifying your forum contributors on the need to write quality and better contents is one of the ways to make your forum stand out. Another way to do this is by ensuring that the forum is always active.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

Yes, but I wouldn’t be shouting it out on someone else’s forum. Over the years, you discover what works and it’s often not the same bland generalizations beloved of those marketers with their enticing pop-ups, email phishing and CTA’s with a sales campaign at the end of it.

As a general rule of thumb, brand and promote yourself or your forum, otherwise entitle your forum as ‘This is just another needle in a haystack forum about whatever.’

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

Let’s give an example of how I went about one aspect of SEO.

I first started writing to promote my resume for work, then writing long-form articles on educational sites linking to my resume. Within a few months I came to realize the now obvious. First, I was spending time writing content for others and second, I was writing to promote my articles and not myself. Among the billions of articles out there, it’s unlikely that ours will go viral and so they become lost in a sea of anonymous ‘others.’

When you type anything into google it’s almost guaranteed the first page will consist of household names. A search for “President Trump speaks” throws up the first five from You Tube, followed by the British BBC, The British Independent, India Times, the US CNN … There’s no mention of the people who wrote these articles or made the videos because they’re less important than the platform they’re using to post their content on.

The idea is that we concentrate on one thing and that’s promoting ourselves and leave google to link our many articles to us which eventually it will do and not the other way around.

As you promote your brand name, google will eventually spot the correlation between the brand name and article(s). My brand name of ‘John V Asia Teacher’ is an example. If you google that I don’t have to promote a host of individual articles, google will find them for me plus images and link my articles to my brand name and my brand name to my articles.

Off the top of my head and it’s early morning yet, but how about:

Hiking R US by Shawn G.
Don’t leave home without us or Knee deep in nature (or something catchy phrase similar).

You’d then use your brand name and slogan on every article, resume, guest-post, high domain sites … Using JSON schema for articles and website, all linking your brand name into a spider’s web. It takes time, but eventually you’ll become known for who you are rather than hoping you’ll be recognized for fifty different article titles. No one remembers titles, people remember names and catchy slogans. Donald Trump – MAGA, Bernie Sanders – Feel the Bern. Obviously to a much lesser extent, but it also worked for me.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

Let’s give an example of how I went about one aspect of SEO.

I first started writing to promote my resume for work, then writing long-form articles on educational sites linking to my resume. Within a few months I came to realize the now obvious. First, I was spending time writing content for others and second, I was writing to promote my articles and not myself. Among the billions of articles out there, it’s unlikely that ours will go viral and so they become lost in a sea of anonymous ‘others.’

When you type anything into google it’s almost guaranteed the first page will consist of household names. A search for “President Trump speaks” throws up the first five from You Tube, followed by the British BBC, The British Independent, India Times, the US CNN … There’s no mention of the people who wrote these articles or made the videos because they’re less important than the platform they’re using to post their content on.

"President trump speaks" would be a very competitive keyword. If I wanted to rank for something similar, I'd go for a more long-tail key phrase. I don't have an example because I'm not political enough to come up with one on Trump.

The idea is that we concentrate on one thing and that’s promoting ourselves and leave google to link our many articles to us which eventually it will do and not the other way around.

As you promote your brand name, google will eventually spot the correlation between the brand name and article(s). My brand name of ‘John V Asia Teacher’ is an example. If you google that I don’t have to promote a host of individual articles, google will find them for me plus images and link my articles to my brand name and my brand name to my articles.

Off the top of my head and it’s early morning yet, but how about:

Hiking R US by Shawn G.
Don’t leave home without us or Knee deep in nature (or something catchy phrase similar).

You’d then use your brand name and slogan on every article, resume, guest-post, high domain sites … Using JSON schema for articles and website, all linking your brand name into a spider’s web. It takes time, but eventually you’ll become known for who you are rather than hoping you’ll be recognized for fifty different article titles. No one remembers titles, people remember names and catchy slogans. Donald Trump – MAGA, Bernie Sanders – Feel the Bern. Obviously to a much lesser extent, but it also worked for me.

I do have a hiking brand. It's called "Hiking with Shawn". I've achieved page one on Google for most of my keywords.

My routine for content distribution is to:

1. Research the keyword (I use Uber Suggest, SEM Rush, Google tools, and Keywords Everywhere)
2. Look at a few different articles competing for the keyword
3. Make an article with an emphasis on being at least 500 to 3,000 words longer than the competing article and with more valuable content
4. I inject SEO practices into the article. I use Yoast to rate it and make changes
5. I use Grammarly to edit the article. I'm actually an official ambassador of Grammarly.
6. Then I schedule for submission.

I routine target the words "Shawnee National Forest" which is my local forest. I'm competing with state and federal government land managers, tourism industries, lodging, and other websites like mine.

I typically win because of my content distribution strategy. I publish a post every single day. I target my main keyword in every phrase I target.

For example, I rank high for "Shawnee National Forest cabins". I also have content for "Shawnee National Forest lodging" and "Shawnee National Forest campgrounds" etc.

Pick a topic that you eventually want to overall rank for and then create consistently about sub-topics of that main topic.

That's how I hustle and I've done well.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

You’ve already done it then, I wasn’t aware of that but it’s certainly a way forward for others, or perhaps something for others to think about?

Another tip I’d give is don’t bother with endless content. Wait for a few months and see which article attracts the most views. Ditch the ones that don’t. For the ones that do, change the odd sentence and images. Google views this as new content and the article gets a fresh lease of life.

I research keywords by typing them into google search, which is probably where the paid for keyword generators get them from.

I don’t focus on competitors. Brand names tend not to be competitive and so I don’t need to compete against myself. I think competing against articles is a hard way to go about it.

As an editor I use myself and paper rater. Free and does the job. Grammarly is not free although it implies it is by stating ‘get Grammarly for free.’ It’s free to download but not to use.

I try to get my content to a minimum of 1K words which the consensus of SEO authorities believe is when google starts to take note.

You get page one with a keyword phrase. I think most people take the use of a single keyword literally and no one is going to rank for one word.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

Another tip I’d give is don’t bother with endless content. Wait for a few months and see which article attracts the most views. Ditch the ones that don’t. For the ones that do, change the odd sentence and images. Google views this as new content and the article gets a fresh lease of life.

So the reasoning behind that was left out, let me touch on that.

I've built an extensive social media following. On FB alone, I have 11,000 followers. Most of them are people locally and from nearby metropolitan cities and states who are looking for hiking and outdoor fun in my local forest.

I create the article, share it on social media and get a viral response.

Most articles are seen 1,000+ times a day. I've had to upgrade my VPS because of the traffic and even get on CloudFlare.

So, there is an intention behind constant activity. I just started daily blogging, it's merely an experience more than anything.

But with blogs, the content is consumed more than a social media post which often lasts 24 hours and then consumers move on.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

So the reasoning behind that was left out, let me touch on that.

I've built an extensive social media following. On FB alone, I have 11,000 followers. Most of them are people locally and from nearby metropolitan cities and states who are looking for hiking and outdoor fun in my local forest.

I create the article, share it on social media and get a viral response.

Most articles are seen 1,000+ times a day. I've had to upgrade my VPS because of the traffic and even get on CloudFlare.

So, there is an intention behind constant activity. I just started daily blogging, it's merely an experience more than anything.

But with blogs, the content is consumed more than a social media post which often lasts 24 hours and then consumers move on.

Yes, I see what you mean. Hard work doing an article a day though.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

Yes, I see what you mean. Hard work doing an article a day though.

Oh, for sure!

But I love writing. I'm a freelance writer. I write for money, and I have quite a few clients. It's a supplemental income, and at its growth rate, I'd like to turn it into an agency within the next couple of years.

I write a daily post for not just one blog but two blogs. Try that out!

You have to have a system in place to do it.

Some people are masters at it, like Seth Godin

https://www.seths.blog/
My system is writing days. I'll spend the whole day writing articles. And editing them as well.

Then I use the WordPress scheduling feature and keep myself a week ahead of schedule. I choose a week because it's easier to move content dates around if I want to push an article to a different time.

I also do this (scheduling content) on social media and YouTube. I post every day on YouTube. I post every day and multiple times a day on social media.

You have to have a system, or it will be overwhelming.

My system allows me to schedule ahead and concentrate on building a community and engagement while being consistent.

Content is King. Consistency is Queen. But the Kingdom that holds it all together is Engagement.

 

[Naiwen]

Nothing except for increasing your activity.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

Nothing except for increasing your activity.

Woah! Where did you come from? Frightened me to death! Looks like you got lost. The forum showcase is further down the thread list.

Oh, for sure!

But I love writing. I'm a freelance writer. I write for money, and I have quite a few clients. It's a supplemental income, and at its growth rate, I'd like to turn it into an agency within the next couple of years.

I write a daily post for not just one blog but two blogs. Try that out!

You have to have a system in place to do it.

Some people are masters at it, like Seth Godin

https://www.seths.blog/
My system is writing days. I'll spend the whole day writing articles. And editing them as well.

Then I use the WordPress scheduling feature and keep myself a week ahead of schedule. I choose a week because it's easier to move content dates around if I want to push an article to a different time.

I also do this (scheduling content) on social media and YouTube. I post every day on YouTube. I post every day and multiple times a day on social media.

You have to have a system, or it will be overwhelming.

My system allows me to schedule ahead and concentrate on building a community and engagement while being consistent.

Content is King. Consistency is Queen. But the Kingdom that holds it all together is Engagement.

I take a slightly different view. Of course we write for an audience, but it’s a double edged sword. If search engines are a vast library and we don’t SEO our work it doesn’t matter if the content is excellent, it doesn’t get found. As you say above, you write the content and then go through a process of SEO until it’s published. You can’t have one without the other.

I believe the October google update is cracking down on spam and concentrating more on what it sees as original quality content. If that happens it will ring the death knell for the old type of forums that relied on numbers.

Personally, I won’t be sorry to see that happen.

I confess I’m a little old fashioned. My background for many years was academic and I’m still more comfortable writing third-person. I’ve never ‘spun’ someone’s article, or plagiarized the content of others without mention the source.

I also admit to finding the ‘new’ way of writing difficult although I do try, but thus far I’ve refrained from using terms such as ‘awesome’ or a series of double spaced line content to cater to a readership with the three second attention spans of goldfish in which every line appears to be clickbait, CTA or email collections.

Neil Patel (SEO) excels at this new age content writing. Here’s a man who can write 2K words and at the end of it have said nothing above very basic level. That’s if you can plough your way through the mass of pop-ups, email requests and calls to action.

People like Mr. Patel are not offering advice, they’re promoting their business and fishing for customers. The October google update specifically concentrates on quality content and spam, without defining the term. I just wonder if the days of this type of content intentionally pitched at a 12th grade level is coming to an end?

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

Nothing except for increasing your activity.

@Naiwen
I did take a quick peak at your history forum and having lived and worked in Northern China for several years I completely agree with you. The level of information in the west about China (and Russia) is based purely on propaganda. There’s a reason that China is booming and it’s not because it adopted western style laissez-faire capitalism and extreme liberalism. Just thought I’d mention that.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

Why Your Forum Isn't Working

At one time keyword stuffing was the way forward. Times change. "Today everyone is a writer - a bad, unedited, unapologetic writer. There's no hiding our collective incompetence anymore" - Emmy Favilla on abandoning old grammar rules. A sign of changing times? It’s said that at the height of her popularity, Kim Kardashian attracted more followers on twitter than people who voted in the US 2016 elections! Hopefully, that’s also a passing trend.

Very few forums now concentrate on topic information, it’s all about the short term aim of attracting posters and the majority of those will be single line posters who quickly disappear, because to be honest they have nothing to say, or are spammers. Yet they stay on the forum members list and are touted as a forums success.

Today numbers don’t count, steady long term active posters do and there’s a distinct shortage of those. That’s because as forums abandon their niche and open up to an anything goes policy to attract posters, the previous posters who joined because of the niche topic are drowned out by a sea of nonsense about how old they are and what their favourite colour is and they too leave. In the end what happens are forums who initially advertised themselves as subject niche forums become near empty active poster ‘community’ forums.

Similarly, attracting advertising revenue is a distant dream for community forums that can barely get off the ground. In other words, Amazon is not looking at your forum with envy and trying to contact you with bags of cash for the privilege of advertising space.

The end result is a collection of forum owners going around in circles and all registering on each other’s forums trying to attract posters to their own forums. Very rarely will they say what their own forum is about (occasionally generalizing) to attract people because often they’re no longer about anything. They abandoned what they were about in the Holy Grail short term search for numbers and it’s what helped to kill the majority of forums.

Personally, I concentrate on the subject, express my views and not try to maintain a neutral stance in an effort to please everyone. In other words, I write for a subject audience, not a community audience, but everyone has different methods and this is just my opinion. Having said all that, these kind of posts don’t attract many replies, so I won’t bore you with more , but optimism and old myths die. Both forums and websites in general are hard work and starting them is the easy part. Without new ideas and skills and a ‘follow the herd’ approach in a competitive environment they just don’t work.

 

[Dilip]

Marketing is an entirely different thing from being able to produce useful content. Both have their own place in a web project.

These days, we need to invest in content heavily, pitch on social media and work on high-quality backlinks.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

Marketing is an entirely different thing from being able to produce useful content. Both have their own place in a web project.

These days, we need to invest in content heavily, pitch on social media and work on high-quality backlinks.

Yet if there’s no useful content, there’s nothing to market and isn’t that the end dream, to make money from it, or at least to cover running costs? Without that content there’s no interest on social media and no high quality backlinks either. Isn’t that what everybody is complaining about? What kind of quality backlinks would you expect from a forum where the hot topic of the week is what someone had for their breakfast? So what you end up with is a community forum without a community, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

 

[Dilip]

I have seen many good projects come and go due to a lack of proper PR. Even though Content is the King, Google has made it clear that it likes big and recommended websites. More backlinks are required and in most cases, they need to be purchased or created.

 

[Dilip]

What kind of quality backlinks would you expect from a forum where the hot topic of the week is what someone had for their breakfast?

While I approve what you have written, what Messi had for breakfast, what George Clooney had for breakfast etc has a million times more value than how to create a mail server.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

While I approve what you have written, what Messi had for breakfast, what George Clooney had for breakfast etc has a million times more value than how to create a mail server.

But not more value than the Covid epidemic, climate change or the Russia/Ukraine conflict. Content that is both relevant and sought after. If you have quality content you wouldn’t need to buy or create backlinks. Additionally, it depends where those backlinks are coming from. No authorative site is going to link to anything that has content of, “what Messi had for breakfast, what George Clooney had for breakfast.”

If google favoured only backlinks, porn sites would be on every first page. Check google’s recent updates and I think you’ll find that google is moving towards content and and that’s been happening for some time.

“The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they've had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn't meet a visitor's expectations won't perform as well” – developers.google.com

 

[Dilip]

Google talks about a lot of things. But spamming stills helps build backlinks.

Movies and celebrity-related content have great value. They are " sought after " content. They have 10 times monetary value when compared to tech content.

Please take a look at today's newspaper headlines. It will be mostly the Qatar world cup or something similar. Surely not a " how to " guide.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

Google talks about a lot of things. But spamming stills helps build backlinks.

Movies and celebrity-related content have great value. They are " sought after " content. They have 10 times monetary value when compared to tech content.

Please take a look at today's newspaper headlines. It will be mostly the Qatar world cup or something similar. Surely not a " how to " guide.

Yes, google talks about a lot of things and has updates. As the biggest search engine in the world and the one most of us rely on, perhaps we should take notice of what it says? In the recent update it specifically says it will crack down on spam and concentrate more on quality content. So, if people are spamming their forum on those of other forums who also have no quality content in the hope they can attract posters who have nothing to say, they also can’t complain if google eventually ignores them.

If someone concentrates on current affairs, which is what movies, celebrities and the World Cup are all part of, they better have a grasp on what’s going on in the world and be able to write an opinion on it. In a month’s time the World cup will be history and something else will come along. It’s not just about ‘how to’, it’s about being able to write about whatever your forum is about and if you can’t do that it’s really a waste of time having a forum.