Search Engine Optimization for Site Owners and Small Businesses

One of the common questions from those just starting to learn about SEO and SEM is which is the best forum to read and ask questions? This post makes some suggestions and offers some guidance on how to get the most out of forum participation. Also we show how to search the major SEO forums all at once and look at the results of a not too serious test of forum response.

There are seven major SEO and SEM forums and they each have their own characteristics and range of topic headings.

• Cre8asite Forums
• DigitalPoint
• HighRankings
• Search Engine Watch
• SitePoint
• WebProWorld
• WebmasterWorld

To get the most out of any of these forums you should observe these guidelines:

• Before you make your first post spend some time on the forum just observing and getting to know the rules and conventions.

• Use your first post to introduce yourself. Most forums will have a section just for this purpose.

• Before posting a question search the forum to see if it has been asked or answered before. Most forums have a search facility but in general they don’t work well. Try the search engines instead using the site: command. For example |trustrank site:forums.digitalpoint.com| will give you all the pages in the DigitalPoint forum where the word trustrank has been used.

• Make sure you are posting your question in the relevant topic
  area.

• Construct a good post title because that will determine the level and quality of response. Titles such as; Help! How is this possible?, I am confused, What’s the answer to this problem?, etc., etc., will not attract attention from those you would like to hear from. Examples of good titles are; What is the
  ‘supplemental index’ and can I get out of it?, Do you have any tips for using Pay Per Call on AdWords? What steps can I take to improve my AdSense CTR?

• Posts should be short and concise and make sure you write with the intention of getting the audience involved. Leave out extraneous information but include any prior research that you have done to assist potential respondents.

• Don’t forget to post a thank you to those who have gone out of their way to help you.

Sometimes a useful thing to do is search all the major SEO forums at the same time. Here is what you do for the three major search engines:

MSN |trustrank (site:webmasterworld.com OR site:webproworld.com OR site:sitepoint.com OR site:forums.searchenginewatch.com OR site:highrankings.com OR site:forums.digitalpoint.com OR site:cre8asiteforums.com)| here is the result.

Yahoo has a limit of 100 characters in the search box so you will have to use the Advanced Search option. Then just paste this list of sites into the ‘Only search in this domain/site:’ box, cre8asiteforums.com forums.digitalpoint.com highrankings.com forums.searchenginewatch.com sitepoint.com webproworld.com webmasterworld.com. Here is the result.

Google |trustrank (site:webmasterworld.com OR site:webproworld.com OR site:sitepoint.com OR site:forums.searchenginewatch.com OR site:highrankings.com OR site:forums.digitalpoint.com OR site:cre8asiteforums.com)| here is the result.

Now for our not too serious test of forum response. I composed an interesting question with a good title and asked a colleague to register and simultaneously post it on all the forums. A day later my colleague emailed me the responses and I scored them on a scale of 1 to 5, then I computed a total score for each forum. The results were as follows:

Webmasterworld does not have a value for hits because it does not record them. Notice that Searchenginewatch had the most hits in the time frame but zero response.

I am not going to suggest that you select a forum based on the above table but you might want to start at the top and work your way down! All these forums have some very experienced and knowledgeable people, so it’s really just a question of finding the one that you feel most comfortable with. If you are not happy with the first one you try, move on to another.

September 9, 2006

Since writing this post my colleague enjoyed the experiment so much that he repeated it with another question and then emailed me the answers I have accumulated the results in the table below and if he does it again I will just update this table.