Earlier last month, I had posted an article titled 10 High-PR High-Traffic FREE article submission sites which was highly appreciated by a lot of readers. While article submission is a great way to improve traffic as well as backlinks, having active presence in certain forums guarantee all these benefits plus a lot more. In this post, I would like to pick top 10 forums that have high Google page ranks, active subscriber base and relevant topics to help boost your blog’s visibility.

How can forums help your blog?

As you all know most forums have sections and discussion threads that talk about a certain domain and related topics. By signing up and leading a reasonably active life in these forums, you can avail the following benefits for your blog or website.

  • Backlink building: A huge number of backlinks can be built in very few days depending on how active you are. This will eventually result in better page ranking of your blog in mid term and hence more organic visitors as well
  • Increased Traffic: Posting your queries or answers on forums can result in an increased traffic to your blog in short term or instantly
  • Long term readership: Many of your forum friends may become regular readers of your blog in the long term. Forums could also act as socializing places
  • Brand building: Forums can be excellent places to consistently accentuate your brand

So, how are the above benefits achieved?
All the above mentioned benefits can be achieved by having a good signature for your account profile with every forum that you sign up. Most forums support profile signatures and your signature, by default, will be added to each post that you make in the forums. And most forum signatures can have 2 or 3 URLs in it in addition to other text. The text could be your site/blog name, tagline and or the services you offer and most importantly the signature URLs point (backlinks) to your home page, your services or prominent post/offer etc. So you should really spend some time to design your signature and it is a good idea to change your signature every few weeks or so (or as and when relevant links need to be incorporated into the signature)

In addition, most forums support the upload of your profile photo and/or avatars. Avatar can be a great little space to promote your brand by putting your logo or brand image.

Other benefits of forums

Ad revenue sharing: Several forums actually share their ad income with forum posters. For example, Digital Point is monetized via Google AdSense and if you provide your client ID with your profile, every time your forum thread is viewed your Google AdSense ads are displayed on the thread. The resultant income from clicks and/or impressions will be yours.

Sell/Buy services directly: Forums can be great places to sell your services (Themes, logos, plugins, traffic, ad space, links, content writing etc) directly to potential buyers. You can also buy services directly from the vendors. Sometimes it can also fetch you part time jobs.

Free review services etc: You can get your blog, themes etc reviewed free at relevant forum areas. This will also result in some temporary traffic to your blog.

Get new topics to blog about: You will definitely get a number of topics and ideas from these forums that can be inspiration for your next post(s).

The Ten Forums

The following are my list of ten forums that deal with technology and webmaster resources.

Microsoft Forums, Page Rank: 7, Alexa Rank: 13
CNET Forums, Page Rank: 7, Alexa Rank: 126
Digital Point (DP) Forums, Page Rank: 7, Alexa Rank: 2,110
SitePoint Forums, Page Rank: 7, Alexa Rank: 3,058
MySQL Forums, Page Rank: 7, Alexa Rank: 3,169
SubmitExpress Forums, Page Rank: 5, Alexa Rank: 37,907
V7N Forums, Page Rank: 5, Alexa Rank: 45,884
Web Design Forum, Page Rank: 4, Alexa Rank: 191,228
Webmaster Talk, Page Rank: 3, Alexa Rank: 38,383
Search Engine round table, Page Rank: 3, Alexa Rank: 67,862

My personal favorites in the above list are DP and Site Point forums. There are number of other highly active forums that deal with various topics such as music, gaming, financial etc but I have not considered them as we would like to focus only on web and technology related forums that are more relevant to blogs and bloggers. Also, please note that the forum’s page rank doesn’t mean anything to the post (and hence the backlinks) that you are creating in most cases but backlinks will be definitely valid and counted for search ranking purposes.

Tips

  • Have a catchy signature and avatar – More forum posters and visitors will visit your blog if you have a neat avatar and signature
  • Socialize - Develop some friends around in various threads and some could turn out to be your long term readers
  • Always utilize the maximum allowed number of URLs for your signatures without making it look ugly
  • Check New posts – Most forums have a link to check new posts in the forum. Use these new posts and participate in those thread discussions for maximum visibility and instant traffic.
  • Utilize general threads – There will be threads like self introduction, list your blog etc in most forums that needs to be utilized as much as possible
  • Be casual and to the point – Write the same way you write in your blog
  • Be regular – The more you post, the more backlinks you get. Being regular, will also
  • Do not spam – There are chances of getting banned if you spam the forums. Don’t be in a hurry while building your backlinks. Be relevant to the topic and participate in healthy discussions. Also, avoid creating controversies and using foul language in order not to get banned

I hope that the above-mentioned tips are useful to you. Please do not forget to bookmark and share this post and also let me know if you have some good tips or related links to pass on.