Forum + Blog

[Shole]

I saw a lot of people doing this, adding a blog to their forum and I always wondered if that was a good idea. Usually the blogs were just left there and had hardly any good content, not to mention there was no discussion sparked out of those blog posts.
But when I thought about it a bit better, blog posts can be enriched more with keywords compared to the forum posts, so that should drive some traffic to your site right?

Then again is it good for SEO? If you lets say have an active forum and add a blog to it but don't keep it in the best shape wouldn't that damage your site more than it would help it?

 

[Ron Killian]

Don't see how it could damage, but if you don't take care of it, it probably won't help.

Most people use a blog as another tool to generate traffic or network with other bloggers. Some people put them off their main site as another way to push traffic or new customers to their main offering.

As for SEO, depends on what you put in to it. Just putting up a blog and adding some posts won't get you much search engine traffic by itself. Needs to be worked like any website.

 

[ulterios]

I am and have been a member of a countless amount of forums. All the forums that I have been a part of in one way or another either had added a blog or had plans too. The ones that had it were using it as an SEO tool of sorts in that they are using their blog posts to attract people to come to their site by way of blog post, then become an active member.

They are using it as another way to draw people in and to generate more traffic. They post some articles that either related to their site, their key audience or other things that they want to draw people in for. Based on what I have been told, it's kind of a 50/50 thing as far as achieving what they want it to. I think that you have to be able and willing to keep it updated if you are going to have one and have it draw relevant traffic in though.

 

[SEOPub]

Really, SEO-wise there is no advantage to adding a blog. You can do the same things with posts in the forum that you would do with the blog.

 

[Harry P]

Harry P

SEOPub is right, we can SEO for a forum post or blog post and we are the same thing for search engines.

 

[SenseiSteve]

I tend to agree with SEOPub. I've seen this both ways - some forums with decent blogs and others with blogs that died out years ago. Honestly, I don't even look for a blog on a forum. If I do find one, it's mostly by mistake.

 

[Shole]

Shole

This is my point, wouldn't it be a bit useless to have a blog on a forum? It's usually not even seen, not to mention visited or read.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Yes. It is useless. I think some forums do it because they buy into that "Google loves blogs" nonsense, which is totally untrue.

 

[AndiLim]

Actually it really does work but the this is you don't want your site to be tagged as spam then afterward get banned. If were you just be careful.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

That made zero sense.