This case study focuses on forum link building. If you are interested in a similar case study on Forum Marketing (free and paid methods) check this article:
This is not a spammy technique as associated with Xrumer, known as “forum profiles” (which many use for tier 2 backlinks) but manual registration, and posting / interacting within a community that is heavily moderated. It’s one of the most time consuming white hat tasks because it involves content marketing (your reply), branding (your name if you wish), and one link per reponse/thread. The first method tricks forum moderators, the other engages with the community, gives back and in return, links out to a website – a reciprocal relationship.
Good examples in the Internet Marketing space are WarriorForum and DigitalPoint. Both allow signatures, but it’s understood that you must contribute something of value (in your response) in order to reap the rewards of your marketing efforts. Same is true with nearly every quality forum in existence.
Why Forum Signatures?
There are thousands of people each day participating in forums. The benefit of becoming an authority and trusted figure is great (as seen with previous study with brand marketing) but what about direct search results from forum signature links?
The Setup:
If you are tracking the “how to rank an adsense / amazon affiliate website” niche test you will know the website was beginning to rank for the term “robot vacuum”. The content is great, landing pages are relevant, and the offpage strategies are built for long term success. Before we began the big push using Forum Signature Links, the links were a bit stagnant, as well as rankings:
Notice the huge surge in backlinks once the forum link building began. This was accomplished by manually registering to 500 forums and posting on them using four-hundred different anchor text terms (roughly a new anchor text keyword per forum/signature). The end result is nothing short of amazing. Not only did rankings improve from the #10 spot for the main term robot vacuum to the top 5, but hundreds of related long tail phrases are now being rank for by robotvacuumhut.com. The main keyword phrase is diluted to avoid any algorithm penalties, and long-tail searchers are finding what they are seeking – win/win situation.
Each forum was posted to around 10 times. 500 x 10 = 5000 forum posts. 5000 potential backlinks. We are also receiving referral traffic as well (better explained in first case study). Forums are amazing places to learn, market yourself, help others, and talk amongst like-minded individuals. This advanced technique was used from our internal service: Manual Forum Posting
Clearly, this doesnt work – Maybe it did, but no more. Your website is nowhere to be found.
Just have to be smarter with it. I was dumb with it, but still getting lots of organic long tail hits each day and making $$ with adsense/amazon through this website.