Market Your Knowledge: Selecting a Forum

If you have a blog related to a specific field of knowledge, chances are that someone on the internet has a question for you.

By establishing yourself as a helpful member of a message board or forum, you can attract a community of regular readers to your blog. Not only will your knowledge benefit the person who posted the question, you’ll also help others searching for information on the same topic. And every viewer is a potential blog reader, since they already have an interest in the subject that you are writing about.

Selecting a Forum

To find a forum, search the internet for your subject area + forum. For instance, if your blog is dedicated to the art of bonsai, you could search for bonsai forum. There are about 10 forums listed in the first two pages of the search results for that search query.

Review the forums you find based on the following criteria:

How frequently do people post?

How long ago was the last post made? How many posts are made in a day? More active forums generally have a larger user base, so more people will see your posts. (There will also be more people answering questions.)

If you find a less active forum where questions are being posted every couple of days (but aren’t being answered), you could answer questions there and help to breathe some life into the forum.

Does the forum allow signatures?

Many forums don’t allow advertising, but do allow users to add a website link to their signature. (A forum signature is similar to an email signature—it’s a place at the bottom of posts to add your name and/or a hyperlink.) Read the forum guidelines for each site to determine if signatures are allowed.

Some forums require you to post a certain number of times before you can add a signature to posts. If so, great—they care about keeping the forums free of spam. Just be sure to choose a forum that will eventually allow you to market your blog.

Are the pages indexed in search engines?

If posts appear in search results, then people will be able to see your answer (and blog link) when searching for keywords/phrases contained in the post, thus increasing your potential exposure.

To determine if forum posts are indexed by Google:

1. Select a thread title from the forum that contains search keywords. Look for potential long tail key phrases. Choose a thread that is a couple of weeks old. For the bonsai example, I see a post titled Collected Amur Maple.
2. Go to a search engine and search for the post title, limiting your search to the forum’s web domain. For instance, typing site:forum.bonzaitalk.com collected amur maple works for the example.
3. If the post appears in the search results, then the search engine has indexed the page and it will show up in search results.
4. Now try searching for the post subject only. Does the post appear high in the search results? You can test a few key phrases this way to get an idea of whether posts you answer are likely to show up in search results.

Does the forum nofollow signature links?

When a website nofollows a link, it instructs search engine robots not to access the link. If you find a forum that doesn’t nofollow links, the signature link will provide your blog with a backlink for each post.

There are two ways to find out if a forum nofollows links:

Look at the source code.

1. Find a post with a signature link. Copy the website address to the clipboard.
2. Open the source code. In Firefox, the keystroke is Ctrl+U for Windows/Linux and Cmd+U for Mac.
3. Search for the website address in the source code. In Firefox, the keystroke is Ctrl+F for Windows/Linux and Cmd+F for Mac. A toolbar will appear at the bottom of your browser. Paste the website address.
4. Look inside the tag for rel=”nofollow” code. If you see the code, bots won’t follow the link.

Use a Firefox add-on.

1. Download and install the SearchStatus add-on. Restart the browser.
2. Right-click on the logo that looks like an @ symbol on your bottom toolbar.
3. Click Highlight Nofollow Links.
4. Visit the forum and find a post with a signature link. If the link is highlighted in pink, then the link is nofollowed. Here’s an example image, from the Wikipedia page on bonsai:

Choose a couple of forums to participate in based on your evaluation. You may not find a forum that meets all of these criteria, but at a minimum a forum should allow signature links and be fairly active.

Next up, we’ll discuss how you can establish yourself on a forum—without angering the natives.