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Phil Tanny
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22 Aug 2003
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1324
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Gainesville Florida USA
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Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 11:38 pm
Post subject: Do Forum Links Build PR?
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Hi all,
I'm curious whether links in a forum template would build PR.
By that I mean this. There are 26,000 posts on this board. Suppose Allan added an outgoing link to one of his other sites in the template that creates these pages.
So a link to some-where-else.com would appear at the bottom of all 26,000 posts on this forum.
Would some-where-else.com get an immediate giant PR boost because it now has 26,000 more incoming links?
If this theory sounds right, then it might be interesting to do an experiment and see if a link at the bottom of these posts would boost an obscure site to the top of the rankings.
Darn, if I only knew someone with an obscure site I would volunteer to help out! 
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Debs
Joined:
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NY
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Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 12:14 am
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Sometimes forum links help with PR, sometimes they don't. Hopefully with Allan making this forum SE friendly we will know soon enough. Your nature sites come to mind, Phil 
Debs
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onlineleben
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Germany and the World
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AllanGardyne
Site Admin
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by the beach, Australia
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Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 11:08 pm
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Beware. Remember that Yahoo! and Google both penalize cross-linking - excessive linking among sites that are all owned by one person. They warn you on their sites about this.
Adding links to pages within the SAME site is fine. Adding heaps of links to another site you own may get you into big trouble (although Sean Burns links repeatedly from his soccer site to his main site and gets away with it).
Yahoo! appears to have banned three of my sites. I imagine that's because of cross-linking.
Try to think like a search engineer. Would you be impressed by 26,000 links from one site? No. Would you be impressed by 26,000 links from different domains? Yes.
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Allan Gardyne
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Phil Tanny
Joined:
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Gainesville Florida USA
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Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 12:14 am
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OK, sorry, I now remember discussing this in another thread.
Well, I suppose one could develop all one's projects within one domain: all-my-stuff.com
So if you had some forums going within all-my-stuff you'd wind up with a zillion internal links, whatever that's worth. Probably not much.
Sean made a good point, in order for a forum post to pass PR it has to have PR to pass. So I guess a forum is a way to create tons of unoptimized content that you hope people link to. Sound about right?
The index for this forum has a PR of 4, but the categories and posts seem to have a PR of 0. Not indexed yet perhaps?
Anybody see a point to building a forum from an SEO perspective?
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robertb
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Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 2:31 am
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| Phil Tanny wrote: | The index for this forum has a PR of 4, but the categories and posts seem to have a PR of 0. Not indexed yet perhaps?
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A lot of them are in the index and probably have some PR, but the Google toolbar has yet to be updated, as it hasn't been done in a while, sigh... 
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Sean Burns
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Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 2:41 am
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Cross-linking isn't really against Google's rules but if you do it and it helps a site that isn't very good to rank well, Google will definitely try to find a reason to get rid of you. Googleguy once said that people who think that they have been banned for cross linking were probably doing something else wrong as well.
If you apply the main "theory" behind Goole's rules, would you do it if search engines didn't exist, then cross linking is fine. I cross linked before Google existed and whilst AltaVista possibly used link popularity at the time, I didn't know that. People have cross linked since the web began.
The best example of it is SearchEngineWatch. Visit their site and look at the links at the bottom of every page to Internet.com, EarthWeb, DevX, ClickZ and five Jupiter Media domains. If it was against the rules, I'm sure that they wouldn't be doing it.
So, if the sites are good, you can probably cross link (as long as it's not dozens of sites) - if they aren't, it could cause problems. Having said that, Google are probably looking to devalue it in the future.
In regards to setting up a forum for SEO purposes, it can work well if you create a good forum. If no-one links to it, it will still be useful because every page that Google finds is automatically assigned some PR. This means that you can actually build PR with a forum but it's not overly effective - you'd be better off spending your time writing articles for other sites to use and just adding normal content to the site.
Forums have other benefits though so it's probably worth a try.
Cheers
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Phil Tanny
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Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 12:09 am
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Well, the first forum I set up is dead after only a day because my web host just died. The whole company, gone poof... Oh well.
Thanks for your reply Sean. I was exploring whether there is any business model in hosting forums for those who would like to have a forum, but don't want to learn the tech end stuff. You know, 100 forums on my server, moderated by their owners. Thousands of pages of content, created by others, under my control.
Hosting fees won't work, so I was wondering if there was a SEO angle that might make the project worth doing.
It sounds like that possibility is way too nebulous to base any serious actions on. Thanks for the heads up, much appreciated.
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Sean Burns
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Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 12:25 am
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Hi Phil
That's actually a great idea if you can make it work. You wouldn't need to have links to multiple sites anyway - just a "Forum hosted by Phil Tanny" link that would go to your main site for this service. You can then send the PR to whichever sites need it from there.
Cheers
Sean Burns |
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AllanGardyne
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Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 2:11 am
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| Sean Burns wrote: | | So, if the sites are good, you can probably cross link... |
I think that's because good sites usually have plenty of links from other sites, so the cross-linking in such cases is only a small percentage of the pattern of links.
If you tried to rely on cross-linking as your main strategy, I think you'd have serious problems. It used to work several years ago with large clusters of sites all owned by the same person..
These days, if you were relying mainly on cross-linking, you'd need to have the sites owned by different people, perhaps your aunt, uncle, brother, cousin, son, daughter, friend, neighbor...
You big challenge would be: Can you get lots of people to link to the proposed forums?
Because you're planning to allow lots of different people to have forums and THEY would do the promotion, then that could work nicely.
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Allan Gardyne
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Phil Tanny
Joined:
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Gainesville Florida USA
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Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 5:24 am
Post subject:
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Thanks for the feedback guys, having access to your brains is great.
| AllanGardyne wrote: | | You big challenge would be: Can you get lots of people to link to the proposed forums? Because you're planning to allow lots of different people to have forums and THEY would do the promotion, then that could work nicely. |
Each site owner would provide at least one link to their forum. I'm guessing their promotions would be to their site, not to their forum directly.
Would users link to the forums? I don't know how to guess that factor, but I'm sure there would be some.
If the forum collective is big enough, the whole package should inspire links on it's own.
My sense is this idea needs to be based on some other business plan, with any PR benefits seen as a nice bonus if it happens. We don't know for sure what the PR situation is now, let alone a year from now etc. Does that sound about right to you?
Allan made a good point that Adsense income on a forum may be limited because you have a lot of repeat traffic seeing the same ads over and over. So let's put that in the same bonus box with the PR.
Hmm, still need to find a real reason to create a bunch of forums.
Hundreds of pages of unoptimized content being created on your site everyday. How do you make it pay?
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Charlie
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Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 1:11 pm
Post subject:
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| Phil Tanny wrote: | Sean made a good point, in order for a forum post to pass PR it has to have PR to pass. So I guess a forum is a way to create tons of unoptimized content that you hope people link to. Sound about right?
The index for this forum has a PR of 4, but the categories and posts seem to have a PR of 0. Not indexed yet perhaps? |
It's true that the vast majority (if not all) posts have low PR, but aren't there benefits to getting (just about) any links, irrespective of PR?
| Sean Burns wrote: | | Googleguy once said that people who think that they have been banned for cross linking were probably doing something else wrong as well. |
I used to think that the way the SE were vague about their rules and always seemed to be moving the goalposts was a nightmare, but I've gradually come to realise that this is often a good thing...
In fact it gives them the perfect excuse to penalise naughty boys (and girls) without having to justify their reasons. In other words, if you break the spirit of the rules they can pull the rug from under you.
I think this is why rules seem to apply to some sites (but not others), as Sean said.
| Allan G wrote: | | I think that's because good sites usually have plenty of links from other sites, so the cross-linking in such cases is only a small percentage of the pattern of links. |
Are you saying that is why Yahoo SE penalised some of your sites but not AP (because of the large number of diverse incoming links), or was the size/authority of AP a bigger influence?
All the best,
Charlie.
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AllanGardyne
Site Admin
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Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:32 am
Post subject:
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| Charlie wrote: | | It's true that the vast majority (if not all) posts have low PR... |
The programmer's work on making this forum search engine friendly was done only very recently. It's far too soon to see what effect that will have on PageRank. Also, there are lots of links within the forum to various posts using the OLD linking system. It would be better to start off with a search engine friendly forum right from day one. I assume PageRanks will gradually improve as more internal links are created. We'll see.
| Quote: | | Are you saying that is why Yahoo SE penalised some of your sites but not AP (because of the large number of diverse incoming links), or was the size/authority of AP a bigger influence? |
Either of those would make sense to me, especially the number and variety of incoming links.
Unfortunately, Yahoo! HAS penalized AssociatePrograms.com. It can't be found in the search engine. It's one of the three that Yahoo! doesn't like.
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Allan Gardyne
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robertb
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Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 3:09 am
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Yahoo is adding and removing sites all the time, even adding and removing pages. It's unreliable at best, if you ask me.
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Blazester
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Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:51 am
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| AllanGardyne wrote: | | Unfortunately, Yahoo! HAS penalized AssociatePrograms.com. It can't be found in the search engine. It's one of the three that Yahoo! doesn't like. |
I feel your pain Allan. I had some high ranking real estate websites dropped from Yahoo at the end of July. I even used it in my advertising campaign at http://www.geekvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=25097
It really frustrates me that Yahoo plucks good high ranking sites. I feel like it is almost a monopoly. I thought my real estate sites were fairly good, but AssociatePrograms.com is 1000 times better and it shocks me that it has been dropped.
Rather than give up, I've decided to channel my frustrations with search engines into my StartPlane project. A truly OPEN directory, that allows all sites to be ranked based on their ability to share traffic with others. I hope others will see the value of such a directory once it becomes apparant how dependant we all are on Google, Yahoo/MSN, and DMOZ and how self serving they have become.
These are people's livelyhoods we are talking about and there should be a fair/unbaised system for everyone.
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