SEO versus Advertising

[Shawn Gossman]

Forum SEO vs. Forum Advertising: Which is more helpful to your forum?

If you had to choose one over the other, which would you choose, and why?

 

[JWeb]

Back when I had a forum, I would say focusing on advertising helped more. Probably because I saw immediate results from it.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Back when I had a forum, I would say focusing on advertising helped more. Probably because I saw immediate results from it.

I agree.

What kind of forum did you run by the way?

But back on topic, advertising does indeed give you quicker and clearer results. You just need to ensure that you have an achievable goal. Many people buy advertising with no goal and are disappointed when something doesn't happen that is significant.

Everything you do on a forum should have an end goal.

 

[JWeb]

I agree.

What kind of forum did you run by the way?

But back on topic, advertising does indeed give you quicker and clearer results. You just need to ensure that you have an achievable goal. Many people buy advertising with no goal and are disappointed when something doesn't happen that is significant.

Everything you do on a forum should have an end goal.

It was an entertainment forum (games,music,movies) but there was more of an emphasis on music.

Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what was working for advertising.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what was working for advertising.

In the end, what did you find that worked the best for you at the time?

 

[JWeb]

In the end, what did you find that worked the best for you at the time?

At the time I would say advertising. I think if I kept it going, SEO would have made a bigger impact. I started to see an increase in traffic from search results.

 

[B.F]

Both are mandatory one labour and the other is money.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Both are mandatory one labour and the other is money.

I actually know of plenty of forums, many that are big and active, that do not purposely use any form of SEO.

In all honestly, I really don't on here aside from category names and such because I know most of my audience are on other admin and webmaster forums, so I focus on where the audience is rather than SEO.

 

[JWeb]

I actually know of plenty of forums, many that are big and active, that do not purposely use any form of SEO.

In all honestly, I really don't on here aside from category names and such because I know most of my audience are on other admin and webmaster forums, so I focus on where the audience is rather than SEO.

Yeah, I've been part of forums that didn't do anything but focus on content/discussions and still thrived. That could also be a testament to the software,

 

[Cpvr]

I actually know of plenty of forums, many that are big and active, that do not purposely use any form of SEO.

In all honestly, I really don't on here aside from category names and such because I know most of my audience are on other admin and webmaster forums, so I focus on where the audience is rather than SEO.

The key thing about seo is that it aligns with your content. If your content is good and provides valuable information, the search engines will rank said forum high on the list.

Which is why a lot of forum owners may not focus so much on SEO, but at the same time they are. It’s not so much optimizing for the search engines, its creating content that fuels the search engine’s rankings.

It’s also the key reason why Reddit ranks high on Google even besides their partnership.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

The key thing about seo is that it aligns with your content. If your content is good and provides valuable information, the search engines will rank said forum high on the list.

Which is why a lot of forum owners may not focus so much on SEO, but at the same time they are. It’s not so much optimizing for the search engines, its creating content that fuels the search engine’s rankings.

It’s also the key reason why Reddit ranks high on Google even besides their partnership.

I do agree with that.

The ranking factor with Google that has never changed and probably never will change is: High-quality content

Content is the true king like we've always said.

You can create the best content possible and as long as it's being engaged or read, the rest of SEO doesn't really matter unless you're doing bad things.