Forum Commenting

An often overlooked and underused form of offsite SEO which can instantly attract quality traffic to a website and drum up new custom is that of forum commenting.  In essence, forum commentating and participating on active discussion boards can be used by practically anyone as a cost free and direct form of online advertising.  It can seriously help you to promote real awareness of your products and services whilst generating extra sales by targeting unique visitors who are genuinely interested in both popular and niche markets.

When you first sign up to an online forum or internet discussion group, you will be encouraged to add a personalised signature as part of your membership profile and this unique signature text will be posted at the end of each comment you make.  This is an excellent place to include the URL of your website and the offsite SEO advantage of this is that each time you respond to an existing thread or post a new topic, you will automatically be creating a valuable backwards link to your homepage.

In terms of page rank, this method of link building can prove to be exceptionally rewarding as the major search engines tend to crawl and index the most popular forums and message boards on a daily basis.  The more posts you make and the greater the number of relevant forums you participate in, the better your chances of generating high quality leads that will convert to sales and the greater the number of relevant links to your site .

Forum commenting also offers an excellent means of creating new friendships and partnerships with people who have similar interests and it can also provide invaluable feedback on your business ideas whilst minimising the need for other, more costly forms of market research.