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Using Forums To Build Back-links To Your Small Business Website

At Starfire Creative, one of the services that we have added recently is search engine optimization, or SEO, for our website design clients. We have decided to share with you the basics of our own SEO strategies. Today's strategy post is about using forums to build in-bound links, or back-links, to your website.

Back-links are hyperlinks placed on another website which link to your site. The most powerful back-links are one-way, meaning that another website has links pointing to your site, but you don't have a reciprocal link pointing back to theirs. The search engines often see these kinds of links as the most valuable because the website doing the linking is not getting anything in return, so they must be linking to you because they really think the site is valuable.

Using forums is a great way to get high quality one-way back-links to your site. These links can generate direct traffic to your site, as people browsing the forum click your links in addition to raising your search engine ranking.

But you have to be careful when using forums in this way. Do it wrong and you will be branded a spammer and most likely get your forum account closed. Remember that your reputation online is no less important than your reputation offline, so you definitely don't want to be labeled a spammer. But when done correctly, forums can be a very powerful tool in your traffic generation arsenal.

Step 1: Find relevant forums
The key word here is 'relevant'. You want to be sure to find forums related to your niche - the topic of your website or of your business. The easiest way to do this is to go to Google and type in your topic along with the the word 'forum'. Let's say you own a store that sells collectables. You might type this into Google:

coin collecting forum

There are two reasons you want to find forums related to your niche. First, the search engines will usually give more weight to links pointing to your site if they come from sites centered around the same area of expertise as your site. Secondly, you'll get much more direct traffic from a forum where the members are interested in your niche. It's the best of both worlds.

Step 2: Pick the best forums and join them
Now that you have found some forums you need to check them out and choose which ones to join.

Most forums will allow you to view the content without having to join, it's only when you want to start posting that you have to register. If you land on a forum that won't let you view unless you join, forget it and move on.

When looking for a forum to join you want to find ones that are popular, so look for those with a decent number of members. You also need to make sure those members are active. Go into one of the more popular forums categories and scan down the list of threads to see when the last posting was made. This information is usually in the right hand column of the forum threads table. If you see a lot of posts made in the last 24 hours, you've found a forum with lots of active members.

With the content changing this often, the search engines should be all over that forum, which means that your links will get picked up quickly. Search engines tend to love sites with lots of frequently updated, relevant content. This is the type of forum you want to join.

Now there is just one more step before joining. You need to make sure this forum allows you to have a 'signature'. Jump into one of the more popular threads on the forum. Scroll down and look at the posts to see if anyone has a signature showing at the bottom of their post. There will usually be a horizontal line after the body of the post and some text and/or links underneath it. Often people just have a quote or witty saying, but sometimes they will have links as well. Not everyone will have a signature, but try to find some members who do. Signatures are crucial, because this is where you are going to put the links to your site.

When you find a forum that meets the criteria, follow the steps to register and confirm your membership. If you find just three or four forums that's plenty to start with.

Step 3: Setting up your signature
After you login to the forum you should see a link to your user profile or user control panel. Often this will be called 'User CP' or 'User Profile'. In the user profile area you can edit things like your avatar, your bio and preferences. Look for a link that says something like 'Edit signature' and click that. You'll see a text field where you can type in the text you want to appear beneath all your posts. This is where you'll put in a hyperlink to your website.

Forums use a special kind of code to allow members to format their posts. It's called BBCode and it's quite simple to use once you get the hang of it. Copy the examples below and change the URL and text to your URL and some catchy keyword-rich text. Paste the code into you signature box and save it.

Link to your website or blog with this code:

Learn how to start [url=http://www.mycoinblog.com/]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.

You can see in the code above where you need to edit the domain to be your website's domain. In this example, 'Coin Collecting' will be the anchor text for the link. This is where you want to put your keywords. Almost all forums will allow you to have a link in your signature.

If you want to make your signature bold, just add the bold tags around it like this:

[b]Learn how to start [url=http://www.mycoinblog.com/]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.[/b]

Most forums will allow you to bold the text in your signature. If you add the bold code and your signature still doesn't come out in bold then you know the bold formatting is not allowed.

Some forums will also allow you to change the color of the text, although the anchor text will come out as the default link color, usually blue. Here's how you change the text color:

One final tip for creating your signature. Less is more. You don't have to use up all available lines in your signature. Make it short, sweet and to the point. If your signature is too over-the-top, it may make you look like a spammer and you'll be treated that way. We don't want that.

Keep your signature simple and useful, and if you post great content and people are interested they will click on your link.

Step 4: Participate!
The first three steps were all preparation. Now you get to start creating back-links to your site! It's simple, just participate in the forum. Post good content, ask questions. Try to help people out by answering questions. Think of what you would say or do in real life. Be nice, be helpful.

Every post you make will give you a back-link to your site. The higher the quality of your post, the more powerful your backlink will be, at least in Google. Because Google looks at the text surrounding a link to determine the relevancy of a link having good content in your posts is much more valuable than having a post that says something like, "great post, I agree". If you simply participate in the forum and try to be friendly and helpful chances are your content will take care of itself.

That's it. Have fun. And remember, you can change your signature any time you want. You might changing the text a bit from time to time to find out what generates the most clicks through to your site.

If you liked this article, we have a whole set, starting with SEO Strategies To Raise Your Small Business Website's Search Ranking. That article will introduce the strategies and we'll be posting new articles with more details about each strategic move.