Use of forums with a site

Strategic?

[ryan26]

What is the general consensus on forums for use in boosting depth and such in a site?

I have the idea that if a forum is setup to build individual pages (the post threads) with content and a link to my home page, that it will be nothing but a positive benefit to my page the next time I'm spidered. This is only, of course, if you've got the traffic to do so :)

For example, if I've got a web site setup about oranges and apples, and I've got two forums that are averaging 20 posts a day about oranges and apples on my server with links to the home page, would this help?

Can anyone set me straight?

[txbakers]

I don't know about what the search engines think of it, but I think forums are a good idea because they keep people coming back to your site/store. Anything you can do to keep people coming back is good.

You have to be careful not to lose site of the purpose of your site, however.

[Filipe]

I think txbakers has it. I see forums as one of those things that are going to get deprecated by SE's if they aren't already.

They are a great community building tool. I've seen several instances of sites that were built with one idea in mind, but the forums are what really kept people coming back. This can be a good thing or a bad thing.

[Mohamed_E]

The forums may provide a lot of spider food if the spider can follow the links to them. Much of the available forum software is not spider friendly, there have been very many threads on that subject here, check out some of them:

spider friendly forums [google.com].