Today, I’d like to educate you about building inbound links with forum comments.
First and foremost, if you have any type of website you need targeted traffic. You needs lots of people visiting your website on a daily basis. Without traffic, you won’t get leads and you won’t make money. PERIOD.
Reasons to Build Inbound Links
One way to get more traffic is to build inbound links. This is simply when one website links to another relevant website. Some of the common ways to build inbound links to your website include blog comments, guest posting, article directories, social media, YouTube videos, etc. Basically, you can visit one of these platforms, create a piece of content and have it link back to your own website. Some people even purchase inbound links, such as text links or directory links.
Additionally, there are TWO reasons to build inbound links. The first benefit is search engine optimization, also known as SEO. The more QUALITY links you have pointing to your website, typically the higher your website will rank in the search engines. Of course, quality is everything with inbound links. One link from an authority website is substantially better than thousands of low quality inbound links from spammy websites. As you build up more inbound links, your website can rank higher in the search engines, which results in additional traffic.
The second reason to build inbound links is for traffic. Even if a link does not help your website much with SEO, it can still send you a TON of targeted traffic each month.
My mindset about building inbound links is to focus on getting more traffic first. If I get a SEO benefit from it, great. If not, no big deal!
I figure there is no way for me to manipulate or trick the search engines, so why even try it? That’s why I don’t try any “black hat” link building strategies.
What is a Online Forum?
Now that you understand the benefits of building inbound links, I’d like to talk about a simple strategy anyone can do to get more website traffic. That strategy is leaving quality comments in relevant internet forums.
You might be wondering, what is a forum? Here’s a definition I found online:
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. ~ Wikiepedia
I know this might be hard to believe for some young readers, but social media is a fairly new concept. Prior to the popularity of Facebook, many people built communities online via internet forums. People would ask questions, reply to question and be a valuable member in the community.
Think of a forum as a website around a specific topic, where the content is created by hundreds, even thousands, of participants asking questions, leaving feedback, etc. While forums are not as common, or as popular, as they used to be, they are still around and going strong.
And, if you can find an “active” form in your niche, it can be a very good source of traffic to your website. You can find forums in your niche by going to Google and typing in your “your niche + forum” and seeing what comes up.
Building Links with Forum Comments
Building links with forum comments is actually quite easy to do. In a nutshell, you find 1-3 popular online forums in the same niche as your website or target market. For example, if your blog is about weight loss, you can find a weight loss forum. If your website is about making money online, you can find a make money online forum. If your website is about MLM, you can join a MLM Forum.
What you do is join as a free member with the forum. You create a profile, which includes your photo, a link to your website and a little bit about you. You then start posting questions, sharing ideas and leaving replies to other people’s content.
Keep in mind, you don’t spam the forum. You actually read the content and reply with a thoughtful, valuable response. When you do that, your profile signature gets attached to your comment by default. Each comment you leave has your URL/website in it, which results in one more link pointing to your website.
What I recommend you do is leave 2 forum comments per day, five days per week. If you did that all 52 weeks of the year, you would leave 520 comments and have 520 links pointing back to your website. If just 1 in 10 of those links got clicked on once per day, you would have 52 visitors to your website each day, just from that forum. That equals more than 1,500 visitors per month!
The real benefit of building inbound links with forum comments is that you can generate passive traffic. You can leave a comment one time and potentially get traffic for months, even years to come from it. The more popular the forum, the more traffic you will get!
Please make sure that you read the rules of the forum you are participating in. Each forum allows different things. Whatever you do, abide by the rules, so your comments don’t get flagged and you don’t get banned from the forum.
Another rule of thumb is to ALWAYS provide value. Take your time with each comment and make sure it is thoughtful, helpful and relevant. The better the comments you leave, the higher the likelihood someone will click on your forum signature and visit your website.
My final tip is to leave comments consistently. It’s not something you want to do one time and stop. Make it a goal to set aside five to ten minutes each day to visit the forum and leave two comments. It might take a month or two to build up some traction and start seeing traffic, but if you stick with it, you will get a nice steady flow of traffic to your website in the months and years to come.
Testimonial
Here’s a testimonial I shared with my MLM Team about the power of leaving comments in online forums.
I leave comments in a popular online forum I enjoy about making money online. For the past 60-days, I have spent about 15-20 minutes per day (max) visiting that community, leaving comments, posting articles and liking posts. I have a little checklist I follow telling me what I should do each day in the forum.
There are nearly 1.4 million members in that community. When I first started those 60-days, my ranking was near the 1 million mark (the higher the number the worse your ranking).
In just 60-days I went from approximately a rank of 1 million to number 55. That means I am the 55th most active person in that community, just by investing 15-20 minutes a day, seven days a week. What’s crazy is a 15-20 minute commitment is nothing, and out of 1.4 million people, only 55 people were willing to do that.
What I didn’t include in that testimonial is that I have received a FLOOD of traffic from that forum to my different websites. And keep in mind, I didn’t pitch my business or website in the forum. Instead, I used attraction marketing, provided valuable content, and as a result, people naturally wanted to check out my websites!
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, building inbound links with forum comments is a smart marketing strategy for someone who has extra time, but no marketing budget. If you can find a popular forum, leave 2-3 quality comments daily, five to six days per week, for one year, you can build up a lot of passive traffic. Best of all, it’s free and not overly difficult to do.
What are your thoughts about building inbound links with forum comments? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you.
Chuck Holmes
20+ Year Network Marketing Professional
Top Earner & Top Recruiter
Email: mrchuckholmes@gmail.com
P.S. Learn how to grow a successful network marketing business. Secret tips, training, and practical ideas. Free training delivered by email.
That is a good testimonial, it’s impressive to me how the numbers grew in just 60 days. This is definitely something that a new or even seasoned person can do to grow their business. If you think about how much one single person Googles something daily and clicks on the forum trying to get their answers, imagine the results you could have if they were to “share” the information with others on a Social Media platform. By taking advantage of this tactic alone could increase your business dramatically. This is great advice!
Yes. The key with forum comments and blog comments is to do it consistently. It always starts out slow, but over a period of time, when you have hundreds of links out there, you will get traffic to your website. Sadly, most people just try it for a few days, or even a week or two, and then stop. Being persistent and consistent with your forum comments is vital to your success.
Yes, this article says it all. I just want to share my experience with my previous job. I had a client, one of her goals is to increase the traffic on her website. What I did, I recommended her to use the strategy as what Charles did. We tried to visit some popular forums relevant to her website and leaving quality comments. And yes, using that strategy is very EFFECTIVE.
That’s awesome, Donna. How many comments did you leave? Did you focus on one forum or several?