Are backlinks from forums worth it? All you need to know in 2021.

Hi, I am Praneeth.

In this blog, you will learn whether are backlinks from forums worth it or not in detail.

Without further ado let’s get started.

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Are backlinks from forums worth it?

Forums are still a great place for building backlinks and driving traffic and authority to your website but you should be careful in terms of your approach to the forums like,

Instead of trying to get lots of backlinks to your website from the forum,

If you try being helpful in the forum addressing people’s queries and solving problems, and citing your website resources only where it makes sense.

Forums are a great place for your website for SEO purposes. 

6 Benefits & drawbacks of building backlinks from forums.

Here is a quick table of the benefits and drawbacks of building backlinks from forums.

S.no.	Benefits.	Drawbacks.
1.	Drive traffic and gain visibility of your blog.	It doesn’t help in increasing rankings
2.	Gain credibility from the users.	It can be a time-consuming process.
3.	You know what your target audience is looking for.	It is against Google’s guidelines.

Let’s understand the benefits and drawbacks in detail.

Benefits of building backlinks from forums. 

let’s see what are the advantages or benefits of building backlinks from forums.

1. Drive traffic and gain visibility of your blog.

Being very selective while choosing which forum you should build backlinks from is the most important thing.

Instead of posting backlinks on a random forum and thread talking about cats and dogs like a spammer.

Do your research and figure out forums related to your niche and industry.

Find out questions of people that are relevant to your niche and answer those in detail in your blog posts or the forums and only link to your resources where it makes sense.

By being very strategic while building backlinks from forums, you can drive lots of targeted and high-quality traffic to your website from the forums.

Even if you don’t place a link among the answers you write,

People would see your name who are interested in that niche among that forum will prefer visiting your website for complete details of the niche or solve their problems in that topic from your blog,

Rather than roaming around on the forum which would increase the visibility and reach of your website or blog.

2. Gain credibility from the users.

When you are naturally trying to be helpful to the audience by answering the queries without spamming with links,

It appears that you are the well-round person in that subject, people would think you to be the expert in the topic,

Which would lead to more of your website searches in Google which would both increase your website rankings with branded searches and bring you quality and loyal traffic to your place.

This will only happen if you don’t overdo the linking in the answers, 

The only link to your resources where it is necessary but try as much as possible to answer the query in the forum itself and be helpful.

This will benefit both you as the writer learning new things and solving problems and driving quality traffic to your side from the forums.

Another benefit of forum link building is that,

You can come across like-minded people of your niche and build relationships which can lead to future business or blog collaborations in guest posts or anything worthwhile in the future.

3. You know what your target audience is looking for.

The benefit of forum link building in the relevant niche is that you have the platform where your target audience is hanging around looking for solutions for their problems and discussing things.

With forums being highly specific to your niche, you can see what’s inside the head of your audience, what are their common problems and issues they are dealing with.

You can find amazing content ideas that you have not thought of from a customer standpoint by being on forums looking for questions where you can answer and build links.

This can be a great place to tap into and find amazing ideas and topics for your blogs which most people ignore and,

You can be the go-to resource for the topic by answering the questions in your blog and redirecting the traffic to your blog from the forum.

• Interestingly, 15% of all the searches in Google are new and never searched before.

You can find new ideas for your blog through forums.

Drawbacks of building backlinks from forums.

Let’s see the drawbacks of building backlinks from forums.

1. It doesn’t help in increasing rankings.

Most of the time the forum backlinks that you get are no-follow.

Forum backlinks add no value in terms of boosting the ranks in Google or passing the link juice or page rank and authority because they are mostly No-followed.

There are a few forums that do allow Do-follow backlinks but make sure to check the link profile of the forum to see if the Forum is authoritative with good links pointing to it or just dead and spammy forum with lots of bad links.

Avoid forums that have a bad link profile because if you get a link from these forums to your website,

It creates a bad reputation for your website as every link is a new connection and also,

Check what type of websites build backlinks from these forums,

If they are mostly bad websites like porn or casino type of websites or the forum is penalized by Google.

Avoid such forums as it can hurt your links profile and your website with a bad reputation and quality on the internet.

2. It can be a time-consuming process.

It is a very time-consuming process to be active on the forums, answering people’s questions in the forums.

It is not a quick process.

You need to search for relevant forums, relevant threads, and questions that people are asking and then answer those questions without spamming with links all across the place.

To be honest, it is a pretty time-consuming process to get things done with building backlinks from forums.

It is easy to spam the forum with lots of highly optimized anchor text links to your website but,

That it is absolutely a wastage of your time and a fear of getting a penalty from Google and it doesn’t either bring any traffic if people only see links in the answers of questions,

It is just a bad user experience and you are making the internet and forums even more bad place to be in where there is a lot of spam present which cause bad UX.

So, to build backlinks from forums without being overly spammy is a time-consuming process.

Though it is not that time consuming compared to whitehat link building methods but it is a time-consuming process in general.

3. It is against Google’s guidelines.

Building backlinks for higher Google rankings alone is against Google’s guidelines and Google does not want you to build links for SEO purposes in that case,

Building backlinks from forums are no exception.

Building backlinks from forums is a part of a link scheme.

These links are considered black hats that are trying to manipulate the search engine algorithm for higher rankings.

This is done without being careful and strategic by spamming the forum with your links all across the place with highly optimized anchor text, Google will catch you and drop you.

Google can get you a manual action penalty for not following its guidelines and violating its rules.

This will cause lower rankings, a drop in website traffic, and visibility from SEO, and in a few cases your website can get deindexed as well due to penalties from Google.

Follow the points to be on the safe side along with building links from the forums.

Important note:

If you are looking at creating backlinks from forums always choose to follow the things below.

• Make sure that you build links on forums that are active with good community support and traffic as most of the forums are dead or replaced by social media.
• Make sure the forum and the thread where you are posting answers are highly relevant to your topic otherwise links would be considered spam leading to the probability of getting a penalty or absolute waste of time.
• Try being more helpful and do lesser linking in your forum posts and be helpful in general to increase chances of getting more traffic and building credibility in the forum.
• Don’t be spammy with links or overly optimize your anchor text of link which is against Google’s guidelines.
• Make sure that the forum is authoritative in the niche where you can constantly post answers without being linking to your resources to build your expertise and gain credibility from the users.
• Above all follow the rules of the forums and don’t get it spammed with your links and dead or replaced by social media, be human in the forums and respect user experience, contribute for the betterment of the forum not just for your solo desires.

You can use Google to find forums related to your industry by searching on Google with your niche keyword and including the word forum in the search to find and select the forums related to your industry.

Read my blog on how to find specific results using google search operators on google.

Ending remarks.

There you go, I have answered everything related to are backlinks from forums worth it.

Do comment on what do you think about backlinks from forums in the comments section below.

Share the blog with your friends if you found this one helpful, sharing is caring.

Read my other blogs,

• Advantages and disadvantages of forums.
• Why not buy backlinks.
• Pros and cons of building backlinks

I will catch you up next time.

Till then, keep learning and keep growing.