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Create a forum to boost your web rank

Dal123

Dal123

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 23, 2008
903
0
England
I'm giving serious thought of creating a forum, and possibly a seperate domain blog also. The main goal is to boost my websites:p.
If I was to resist the temptation of saving money by buying a decent hosting package (vidahost looks really good:cool:, 123reg.co.uk are poor:mad:) and buy seperate hosting packages, create the sites, then go to my friends houses and upload the sites with links to my site, then maintain the forums and blogs, would this count as external links and boost me up on google?
Even if it does not I will probably do it as the intriguing content will draw visitors to my site.
 
Dal123 said:
I'm giving serious thought of creating a forum, and possibly a seperate domain blog also. The main goal is to boost my websites:p.
If I was to resist the temptation of saving money by buying a decent hosting package (vidahost looks really good:cool:, 123reg.co.uk are poor:mad:) and buy seperate hosting packages, create the sites, then go to my friends houses and upload the sites with links to my site, then maintain the forums and blogs, would this count as external links and boost me up on google?
Even if it does not I will probably do it as the intriguing content will draw visitors to my site.
Click to expand...

Well, it might work better than spamming links to your concrete business on forums that set rel="nofollow" on signature links...
 
al2o3cr said:
Well, it might work better than spamming links to your concrete business on forums that set rel="nofollow" on signature links...
Click to expand...
It's hardly spamming, you read any article out there they tell you to promote your site by adding a signatured link. You clicked on my link :p. One more visitor :p.
 
So do you guys recon I should only purchase one hosting option, then design my forum (which will have some cool stuff on there and hopefully bring in few people and maybe even adsense) then upload it from a pals house under a different hosting account it will be stronger than uploading and hosting from same account at my house?
 
Dal123 said:
So do you guys recon I should only purchase one hosting option, then design my forum (which will have some cool stuff on there and hopefully bring in few people and maybe even adsense) then upload it from a pals house under a different hosting account?
Click to expand...
Can I ask, why do you need multiple hosting accounts for this?

Also, choosing which forum software you want to use is a pretty big decision for this.

And as people have said, if the forum isn't active, I'd say it would probably do more harm than good in many ways

In regards to your website, yeah, you need to get a better design done. That and, I can't see a forum is at all relevant to the type of site that you run, but regardless, good luck.
 
Thanks, the reason I am saying different hosting accounts is someone said that uploading different websites and putting links from these would not carry much weight as google will see they are from the same ip address (me). Whereas if I was to upload from diffrerent friends houses, creating new hosting accounts, google would see them as genuine external links. Or would this not work??
So I am exploring the possibility of uploading from different accounts, sending links from what looks like to google that they are genuine external sites.
 
If I were you, I would instead focus my energy on generating links from other web sites that are actually other web sites.

For example, offering such [ compelling / helpful / shocking / etc ] content that people link to you without you asking for link.

Start brainstorming along those lines and I think you'll be much better off in the long run. There are soooo many lifeless forum boards around already!
 
The thing is; people will not want to link to my current website. I am offering a service and I have competitors.
If I create a forum (and there are no forums on the web at the moment in my subject area), people will view the forum. Though I'm not sure exactly how many as my line of work is a bit specialist and there's not too many in the line of work.
Can't see many linking to my current site, and not many would want to link to a website providing services (I don't think).
Thanks for the advice.:)
 
Dal123 said:
The thing is; people will not want to link to my current website. I am offering a service and I have competitors.
If I create a forum (and there are no forums on the web at the moment in my subject area), people will view the forum. Though I'm not sure exactly how many as my line of work is a bit specialist and there's not too many in the line of work.
Can't see many linking to my current site, and not many would want to link to a website providing services (I don't think).
Thanks for the advice.:)
Click to expand...

Getting a forum up and running is hard work. You need to constantly post on it in order to encourage others to post. You can just open up a new forum and say "Here I am, post away!". People need something to reply too or at least a feeling that they are not wasting their time by registering and posting there.
 
So you're saying that people who offer servies don't have sites worth linking to? That makes no sense.

You offer a service, so people who have used your service would want to link to your page saying "hey these guys are good use them!" or "here is our partner that usually does the work for our contracting"

Ask companies and people you've worked for in the past to see if they want to be "partners" and exchange links for services, that way if people are looking for construction sorta things, and find someone who offers a partner/complimentary service they like and they have you recommended then you get more hits.

I think you are thinking far too narrow.

Why would someone want to go to a forum about your service? WHat would be some possible things you'd have to talk about in it? The only peopel I could see being interested would be, again, people who offer complimentary construction related services, or people IN your business looking for suggestions on quotes or new material... but that's probably sorta a slim market since they are your competitors. .... I'd try other directions.
 
ktbubster said:
So you're saying that people who offer servies don't have sites worth linking to? That makes no sense.

You offer a service, so people who have used your service would want to link to your page saying "hey these guys are good use them!" or "here is our partner that usually does the work for our contracting"

Ask companies and people you've worked for in the past to see if they want to be "partners" and exchange links for services, that way if people are looking for construction sorta things, and find someone who offers a partner/complimentary service they like and they have you recommended then you get more hits.

I think you are thinking far too narrow.

Why would someone want to go to a forum about your service? WHat would be some possible things you'd have to talk about in it? The only peopel I could see being interested would be, again, people who offer complimentary construction related services, or people IN your business looking for suggestions on quotes or new material... but that's probably sorta a slim market since they are your competitors. .... I'd try other directions.
Click to expand...

Most people in construction don't update, change their links etc often at all. It usually gets designed and stays like that for a long time. They don't want to pay for a designer to put a link just to make me happy.
I can see what you're saying about the forum, it will be guys in the business looking in the forum for work, new products etc.
I think you may be overlooking something; the people who've used us before don't really want to many to know most of the time as they're main-contractors; and they're earning money out of us. So they don't want to broadcast us, as others will approach us directly and cut them out of the equation. So that kind of rules out that logic.
Like you say though, those in the forum would be an even slimmer market - so that's a good point to take on board. The only reason I'm considering a forum is that it has not been done yet, and could be valuable resource to aquiring traffic, and specialist people in the game where I could register them with myself and employ some valuable experienced people that are hard to find.
Just trying to think from different angles.
 
It sounds like you are expecting your website to do your work for you. From your description you would be better off doing old-fashioned face to face networking than worrying about your Google ranking.

You seem to be assuming that unless you are in the first few links presented on Google then you won't get traffic, which is what of course Google would like you to believe. The last few searches that I've done, the best result has been a page or two down the listing.
 
Dal123 said:
I think you may be overlooking something; the people who've used us before don't really want to many to know most of the time as they're main-contractors; and they're earning money out of us. So they don't want to broadcast us, as others will approach us directly and cut them out of the equation. So that kind of rules out that logic.
Like you say though, those in the forum would be an even slimmer market - so that's a good point to take on board. The only reason I'm considering a forum is that it has not been done yet, and could be valuable resource to aquiring traffic, and specialist people in the game where I could register them with myself and employ some valuable experienced people that are hard to find.
Just trying to think from different angles.
Click to expand...

If the logic of your first paragraph is valid, then it applies to your second paragraph as well. Who would make useful and informative posts in the forum other than the contractors, sock-puppets?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
 
designguy79 said:
If I were you, I would instead focus my energy on generating links from other web sites that are actually other web sites.
Click to expand...

I agree. Hosting and maintaining a forum isn't a guarantee of better page ranking, and your time will most certainly be better spent with higher-quality SEO and other off site link building than with an online community. There's a lot of time and effort involved in having a forum, not to mention the SEO for this as a whole separate project just to get traffic.

Being in the top two or three pages of Google is reasonable, and with a good return traffic-wise, for non-prime keywords - and there are easier ways of doing it.
 
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