If you’re just starting out in the publishing and webmastering business of if you’re a seasoned professional, two of the hardest things to accomplish are building solid backlinks to your website and getting more traffic to your website. Many experienced professionals will all agree on one particular activity that will not only accomplish both of the aformentioned necessities, but it will provide you with wealth of information and can be a really fun way to promote your websites. The activity I’m talking about is posting and being active on public discussion forums. While there are numerous forums out there and there are new ones popping up everyday, the purpose of this article is to highlight the best forums for webmasters in regards to building solid backlinks and driving traffic to your site. Below are listed, in my opinion, the top 10 forums for webmasters because they all offer signatures that do not have the “nofollow” tag on the links and they all pass “link juice” because they are well indexed by the search engines. Please note, part of getting a good response from forums includes being a constructive member of the community, so before I list the forums, I’ll give a short list of do’s and don’t regarding behaviour in these online communities.
The Do’s
- Do be friendly, remember the old adage “You can attract more flies with honey”
- Do be helpful and share your knowledge, you’ll be suprised how people take to helpful posters
- Be positive. If you don’t have something good to say, don’t say anything at all.
- Stay on topic with discussions and don’t lead them astray.
- Make friends with people and answer all non-spam PM’s (private messages)
The Dont’s
- Don’t join a forum and immediately start posting links to your site.
- Don’t spam forums with junk posts only to get your links in
- Don’t be negative and/or take things personal
- Don’t send spam PM’s (private messages)
- Don’t offend the moderators or owners of a forum you’re on
Now that we’ve gone through some of the basic Do’s and Dont’s of forum ettiquite, on to the list of my top 10 favorite forums.
Top 10 Discussion Forums
- #1 DigitalPoint - Hands down, DigitalPoint is the best Webmaster Forum out there.
- #2 SitePoint - Sitepoint is another great Webmaster Forum.
- #3 V7 Networks - V7 is a fantastic resource and fun place to post.
- #4 Code4Gold Forums - Allows the biggest signatures.
- #5 Webmaster-Talk - Another new forum but growwing rapidly.
- #6 BloggerTalk - For bloggers, passes “link juice”.
- #7 5StarAffiliatePrograms - One of my personal favorites.
- #8 Warrior Forum - A top notch marketing forum.
- #9 Webmasters Help - Another new forum that shows potential.
- #10 Searchen Forums - This one throws nice “link juice”.
If you’re not taking full advantage of Discussion Forums, you’re missing out on one of the greatest tools for promotion. There’s not a successful webmaster out there who hasn’t, at one time or another, utilized forums as a tool for promotion. If you’re the shy type, the great thing about forums is that nobody really knows who you are, so there’s nothing to be worried about, you don’t have to be Britney Spears to get attention, all you have to do is be yourself and get involved in the discussions. Take the plunge and you’ll be glad you did !!!
Cheers,
Dave
[…] #1 ) Use RSS Syndication and add your RSS feed to Feedburner. #2 ) Submit an article from your blog or website to Netscape #3 ) Submit your site to Technorati and learn to tag your posts. #4 ) Submit your blog to BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog #5 ) Digg (or have someone else) Digg a post from your site #6 ) Submit your site to Stumbleupon #7 ) Post your link into the “Reviews” folder at DigitalPoint Forums #8 ) Add yor site to the Google Webmasters Console #9 ) Submit a photo album to Flickr and add your URL in your Flickr.com profile #10 ) Add your site to a few blog directories like BlogRateDirectory #11) Add Google Adsense to your site #12) If you’re a blogger, submit your articles to Recommend Us #13 ) Post on forums and add your site to your signature. A good list of forums is here Best Forums For Social Networking and Gaining Backlinks […]
Thanks Dave for this very informative post. How about NamePros? Have you tried this site? NamePros allows signatures without nofollow attributes.
I think I’ve signed up an account there but I haven’t started posting yet. I’m still recovering from the holidays :-)
These is why I love your blog so much. Thanks for this post
I didn’t know there were so many good forums. thanks
I find these forums to be good to learn and not just for making links.
why do you think forums are such agood way to promote? I joined a few and never got any traffic from any of them.
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