What is SEO and how does it affect my forum?
The first point we should cover is to explain exactly what
SEO is and why it is important to your forum. The practise
of search engine optimization involves making sure that your
web site or community ranks well for the important keywords
used by your users to find your web site. The best way to explain
this is to provide you with an example:
An Internet user is looking for information about cars. Not
just any type of car, a Ford Mustang. They are keen to engage
with like minded people, exchange ideas and perhaps exchange
pictures. So, the user decides to use their favourite search
engine and types in the words “Ford Mustang Forum” these are
the Keywords relating to their search. , the search engine
provides the results of their search, a list of web sites that
are Ford Mustang Forum related. More often than not, a web
user will click on one of the first three sites at the top
of the search results.
So, if you have not already guessed it by now. SEO affects
your forum in one very important way; the better optimized you
are for your keywords, the more people will visit your site.
Best of all, traffic through search engines is very targeted
traffic, if your site has been found as a result of a search
engine search, it has most likely been completed by someone
that is interested in the topic offered via your web site.
We Recommend the SEO Book by Aaron Wall
More users usually means a busier community
Now that you know what impact SEO can have on your community,
let’s take a look at the affect of attracting lots of highly
target users to your forum. It stands to reason that a forum
is successful based upon the following criteria:
- How busy it, how many posts per day
- Whether the forum provides the information that is being
searched for, or the confidence that someone within the community
could answer a question
Of course there are other important criteria such as look
and feel, or whether or not it is a friendly and welcoming
forum. However, for the purposes of this page, we are discussing
SEO in relation to our forums.
To be able to meet the above criteria, the most important
ingredient is people who are interested in your topic and want
to get involved. A forum that is optimized and can be found
via the search engines has a greater chance of attracting those
types of people. So it is fair to say, the success of your
forum largely depends on how well it is optimized for the search
engines.
How
do I know which keywords my customers use?
There are a number of tools available that can help you with
this. However, one of the easiest ways is to think about what
words you would use if you were searching for a site. It is
also a very good idea to check a site that you consider to be
competitive, establish which keywords they are using. If your
hosting company provides a C Panel as part of their service,
spend some time checking through the traffic logs. This is often
an interesting way to find out which search phrases were used
to find your site.
How do I optimize my forum?
There’s a number of ways to optimize your forum for
the search engines. The first thing you should do is read our
basic SEO
for vBulletin and Basic
SEO for HTML pages; these provide you with the basic knowledge
required. We also recommend that you take the time to understand
how search engines work.
As you get more into it, it is worth visiting web master related
forums yourself. vBulletin and other popular forum software
have their own unique quirks, there are a number of simple
hacks or mods that can be applied that will have a positive
impact on your search engine rankings. These usually involve
changing the session ID’s or page titles so that they are more
descriptive for search engine spiders.
OK, you convinced me, what else?
So by now, you should have a good appreciation of the fact
that search engine traffic is free and that it is a way to
attract like minded people to your community. The more like
minded people that visit your community, the more potential
there is for people to post and become regular users. A forum
or a community is a very sticky environment, if a user becomes
a regular contributor; it is likely they will become loyal
members for some time.
The hardest part about SEO is that we all have to start some
where; it is also something that we have to constantly do,
almost to the point that it becomes second nature. Some factors
are in our control and some are not, unfortunately this is
the nature of the beast. The good news is that the search engines
love popular forums. The objective of the search engines is
to provide the most relevant results as possible, if you’re
lucky enough to have lots of new and informative posts, it
won’t be long before you start climbing the search engine rankings.
I’m more worried about SEO than ever now!
The objective of this page was to provide you with information
about SEO and how it can have an affect on your forum. If you’ve
never thought about SEO before, we hope that it has given you
food for thought. There’s an old saying in webmaster circles:
“Even if you have the most beautiful web site in the world,
it is completely worthless without visitors”
The statement above applies more so to forum or community based
sites. Instead of worrying about SEO, it is best to embrace
it and try to understand it. If the success of your forum depends
on its users and SEO is a good way to attract interested potential
users, then surely it is time well spent? |
