Forum will increase traffic and PR - True or False?

Hi -

I am considering adding a phpbb forum to my main website, because I think there is need for a community in my field AND because I am hoping that it will help bring traffic to the site.

I wonder if anyone has any comments on the validity of my thinking, which is as follows:

SEO aside, the forum will be useful and relevant, so there will be traffic just because of the content. That is a given, and I am increasing convinced in the 'build a good site and the search engines will treat you well' concept. However, it never hurts to do a little seo

Every page of the forum will have a link to the homepage of the site (not just the forum homepage) which will help the PR on the index page of my main site, though perhaps not so much. If I an understanding the PR thing properly, those deeper internal pages of the forum will likely have lower PR than the homepage, and they have quite a few links on them. Still, there will be a small amount of PR passed on to the homepage and with every single page of the forum linking the homepage, it could make some difference.

The bb will be modded so that search engines will index internal pages. With a decent amount of discussion going on, the forum should introduce huge quantities of phrases and keyword combinations that I could never have accomplished in my ordinary site.

Since I am fairly certain that the forum will gain momentum over time, I am wondering if anyone can help me understand how the forum will affect PR and SEO, and if there are any pitfalls or warnings that I should consider - or any other input!

thanks,
Dave

Darrin should be the most qualified person to give you any comments on that.

Darrin, where are you when people need you?

I have implemented a phpBB forum (v 2.0.4) to do just what you are talking about and when I was researching it, I read somewhere that the current version has a problem with Google due to the session cookie that is needed...this should be fixed in the update whenever that comes out, but right now, I *believe* that Google can not actually crawl the forum.

The backend (and frontend) of this forum has been modied so much that it's hard to tel if it's still phpbb - in fact in the near future I will write my own bb as there are things we want to do that phpbb can't!!

Starting a forum is a brave move.. There are literally thousands of installations out there with literally 3 posts in total, all beinf from the moderator who set the forum up.

If you have less than about 5,000 UNIQUE visits a day then I would forget about it. It would be an embarrasment to make an installaton and 3 months later have very few posts.

A man's gotta sleep sometime!

The other forum I started has a small but loyal user base, which is slowly but steadily growing. It's not nearly as active as this forum, but is certainly active enough to be a useful destination for many people (www.lipomaforum.com). Also, the googlebot has been crawliing the board frequently but the individual cached pages have not even been indexed yet so that increase in traffic has not even been seen. So, I believe that I have a good sense of what it takes to get a forum moving.

I'm confident that I can get momentum for the new forum. I get inquiries and messages from people every day, and most of them inquiries are questions that could be great posts on a forum.

The phbbb mod for google friendliness has turned out to be pretty easy so thats not a problem either. I was able to get all the posts indexed on my test forum (www.dotfart.com which has very little activity but is a great place to work on the mods to the boards.

So, with that out of the way, any opionions about the original question?

Come on man, you gotta admit it, sleep is WAY overrated. Nobody makes money while sleeping.

If it is going to be bringing people back, I'd say go for it. It performs a service, and is needed and whether or not it gives you a better position in search engines, it is actually better, since the audience is a targeted audience.. and the benefits will come later on when people start linking to it as a good source, then the engines start giving you better postion... build it and they will come, if there is a need for it.

zen

I made $2 while I was sleeping last night in about the dumbest way possible. Someone bought a dotfart.com t-shirt. I'm not proud of that.

<cough> Exspanding on what our gracious host and my competitor has said:

Today, the only reason and or justification to start a Community via a Forum is becasue YOU enjoy helping folks and the virtual realtionships you will establish.

AND, starting a Community before you have tons of Uniques in your space like D said carries with it a negative implication.

Example" "How good can your site and or service be if your Forums have a small number of weekly post?s"

In summary, if you enjoy helping folks, have very thick skin, and are willing to work 24/7/365 then by all means go for it.

Good luck

I started a couple forums using very simple ASP code. My thought on the matter is that you don't want to have a big, elaborate forum that nobody posts to, so I built a simple single thread board that just displays the 10 most recent messages.

I figure that as usage increases, I will increase the forum... Until then, it's a nice natural extension of the site that doesn't make me look like too much of a loser.

-Nate

Well, I want to reiterate that I have a grasp of what it takes to form a community, the commitment involved, the critical mass requirements, and all that stuff. I have already determined that there is need for such a community, and made a decision that it would be worthwhile to pursue it. I have run two test forums, and worked with many others who have highly successful community sites.


So, does anyone have anything to say about the effects of a forum on SEO?

People like to link to forums.
A forum on a particular subject is likely to contain exactly the keywords people are using when they are trying to find sites on that subject.
As stated earlier, Google can crawl it as long as there are 2 or less arguments required.

Either way, if it serves the user well...

What Could Go Wrong?

-Nate

OK

I'm not familiar with the script you intend to run since I use vB however I have a few little SEO gems for you

- Carefully watch you topic titles and insure that they are descriptive and accurate. You will need to edit these and send a visual signal to your "guest" that you have done this.

For example:

Help Me

becomes:

[Amazon CPM] Help me

- Next each of your forums should have accurate descriptions which help your guests FIRST and then G and others. Keyword rich but still helpfull to your guests.

- Turn on your profanity filter from day one and insure that it contains a rich selection of cuss words. This benefits your guests first and then G as you don't want the bot bringing folks to your forums with an obsenece word. (Assuming your a mainstream community who is interested in quality)

- Assuning yours is a technical Community etc, try not to promote the "water cooooler/social chat forum" as this provides little if any keywords or uniques for the primary focus of your site.


Nate's point is well taken as always A small number of forums to start with is usually much better

Good luck

Umm... Could you translate that for us "slower" folks?

-Nate

Ok, now that is helpful advice, thanks Steve_S