Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Forum Profile Links
-
Are they really important?
Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time.
I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat.
Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?
-
You can try Ontolo's link building query generator tool:
http://ontolo.com/link-building-query-generator-V2
Citation Labs also has great link building tools for finding prospects:
-
Thanks Keri. I will do so right now.
-
Have you read the Link Building category of the SEOmoz blog? Take a look at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4 and you might also get some more ideas for building quality links (both for forums and in general).
-
I have been actively looking at the option of guest blog. Can you help me with where to start? I need help with finding blogs that allow guest blogs, or how to approach them etc
-
Building links on highly relevant sites would be a good idea if you're willing to put in the time to make a useful post. If the forum allows do-follow links, that will help you a little. As part of a balanced link building strategy, they could be beneficial.
Any site that sells you thousands of links will be using an automated tool. This is considered very spammy because the links have no value, they'll be on trashy sites, and on sites that there will be thousands of other links on as well. The value a service would provide you wouldn't be worth the money.
-
I would not buy any forum-links but as long you provide relevant content and add to the discussions then you will be fine. If you have the resources and time, then perhaps it might be an idea to guest blog instead?
-
Test them on a dummy site if you have the budget, or on some pages that already link to you.
-
You won't get any referral traffic but Forum profile links (the dofollow ones) do pass link juice. Not much, but some.
Although I wouldn't trust mass-outsourcing services, in my experience forum profile links can be used as supplementary to content-based strategies without any risk of penalty.
-
Those services you mention which give out thousands of forum profile links are usually not worth your time or money, you see the same thing with generic directory listings, they are useless. Unless the forum topic is relevant to your website and they are do follow then don't waste your time.
I've found that signing up to 3 or 4 popular forums and being really active in them is a lot more beneficial in the long run.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How does link juice flow through hreflang?
We want to use the hreflang tag on our site (direct users searching for the Spanish version of spanishdict.com to spanishdict.com/traductor). Before doing so, we were wondering how link juice flows through hreflang? Any insight or resources on this would be very helpful. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CuriosityMedia0 -
Should 301-ed links be removed from sitemap?
In an effort to do some housekeeping on our site we are wanting to change the URL format for a couple thousand links on our site. Those links will all been 301 redirected to corresponding links in the new URL format. For example, old URL format: /tag/flowers as well as search/flowerswill be 301-ed to, new URL format: /content/flowers**Question:**Since the old links also exist in our sitemap, should we add the new links to our sitemap in addition to the old links, or replace the old links with new ones in our sitemap? Just want to make sure we don’t lose the ranking we currently have for the old links.Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | shawn811 -
Noindex user profile
I have a social networking site with user- and company profiles. Some profiles have little to no content. One of the users here at moz suggested noindex-ing these profiles. I am still investigating this issue and have some follow up questions: What is the possible gain of no-indexing uninteresting profiles? Especially interested in this since these profiles do bring in long-tail traffic atm. How "irreversable" is introducing a noindex directive? Would everything "return to normal" if I remove te noindex directive? When determining the treshold for having profiles indexed, how should the following items be weighed Sum of number of words on the page (comprised of one or more of the following: full name, city, 0 to N company names, bio, activity) (unique) Profile picture (Nofollowed) Links to user's profiles on social networks or user's own site. Embedded Google Map Thanks!
Technical SEO | | thomasvanderkleij0 -
Forum profile section or signature line as backlink
Hi, Forum profile section or signature line as backlink VS Answering a question and giving a related post URl as the answer is better? I have the above question on which would be better Would a signature or website name in the profile is valuable then a link to your site where information is available? Does Google consider both as spam/blackhat? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Ok to internally link to pages with NOINDEX?
I manage a directory site with hundreds of thousands of indexed pages. I want to remove a significant number of these pages from the index using NOINDEX and have 2 questions about this: 1. Is NOINDEX the most effective way to remove large numbers of pages from Google's index? 2. The IA of our site means that we will have thousands of internal links pointing to these noindexed pages if we make this change. Is it a problem to link to pages with a noindex directive on them? Thanks in advance for all responses.
Technical SEO | | OMGPyrmont0 -
Profile creation
Can somebody suggest me good softwares for : 1. Forum profile Creation 2. Web 2.0 profile creation Thanks, KS__
Technical SEO | | KS__0 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1 -
How to find links to 404 pages?
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember. One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0