Forum Marketing works well for most businesses because it gives you direct access to a relevant audience, devoted to (and often expert about) the forum topic. Forum link building can provide you with increased Web traffic and quality leads, provided that you choose your forums well. Since forum posting can be time-consuming, because you’re likely dealing with a Web-savvy crowd, it’s especially important to make wise choices to identify special-interest forums best suited to your needs.

Choosing the Most Effective Forums for Link Building

Make a list of likely forums. You can find forums to try by looking at your current traffic referrers. These may be forums that you could pull lots more traffic. Survey your clients, fans and followers—and study any tracking information showing their frequently visited sites and forums. Get suggestions from forum search engines like BoardReader. For the best ROI, choose forums with 1000 members or more and averaging 10 – 15 new posts per day—not including spam postings.

Types of Forums to AVOID

• Forums that don’t allow links
• Forums with lots of spam comments/posts
• Forums run by competitors

How to Get Started on Forum Marketing:

• Try to get in early (register early) on promising new forums to maximize your influence
• Make sure you understand and follow forum rules about promotional content
• Get moderator permission for anything you’re not sure about
• Lurk on forums to check them out before posting
• Introduce yourself with a thoughtful post about why you joined the forum and what you hope to bring to it
• Make yourself valuable to the community, with self-promotion taking a back seat
• Insert your link using HTML or BBCode (bulletin board formatting code used in some forums) in your forum signature. Some of the most important forums don’t allow this type of signature link promotion or else you’ll get banned. Make sure to adhere to any forum guidelines.
• Track your traffic and conversions to see which forums are producing results
• Post insightful and useful comments a couple of times per week to build credibility and enhance your reputation over time

Forum Marketing Tactics to AVOID:

• Don’t place links in the main message thread
• Don’t use paid forum posters, because they don’t typically fit the sub-culture represented on the forum and don’t appear genuine
• Don’t get involved in forum drama or post/respond when you’re angry
• Don’t post marketing messages as a newbie, unless you’ve arranged paid advertising, such as a sticky post, with the admin or forum owner

Make the Most of Your Forum Clicks: Link to a Purpose-built Landing Page

For best results, create a personalized experience for your new forum visitors with a targeted landing page. The page should ideally speak to directly to those who clicked over to the page from the forum. This makes the visitor feel welcome, tells them they’re in the right place and directs them (with a tailored call to action) to your next desired step. By directing the forum traffic to the specific landing page, you can improve your page rank and make sure the new visitors see the appropriate content for them. This could be introductory content about your product or service and it’s basic benefits, could highlight products/services/features or provide exclusive offers that would most appeal to the forum’s users. Spit testing can help you determine the best type of content to link to on your website.

Why Use ClickMeter for Link Tracking
(when promoting links in Forums)?

• Create links simply, quickly and accurately for forum link building and other campaigns
• Track the results of your forum link posting—including conversions
• Easily change the link destination to new landing pages as needed
• Effortlessly monitor the health of your published links
• Track the performance of — and manage — all your posted links from one convenient dashboard
• Protect your PageRank: ClickMeter offers the 301 redirect method for click tracking– a best practice for SEO on Google Search. ClickMeter tracks your clicks, optimizes your PageRank and prevents dilution, preserving the power and value of your links. Other types of tracking and redirects (or URL forwarding) can negatively affect your hard-earned Page Rank.
• Compare campaign performance in real time
• Track commissions, time to conversion and much more
• Identify click fraud
• Developer access to API
• Scales with your business needs
• Sophisticated, customizable reporting and drill down with multiple export formats and a click-distribution world map
• Superior customer service and support
• Free sign-up

To learn more about link tracking, link building and campaign creation, visit  ClickMeter (Link Tracking Service).

Additional Resources:

• Best Free Article Submission Websites
• 7 Ways to Earn Links to Your Site

 

Last Updated: 1st September 2021
Originally Posted: 6th March 2016