Forum Moderators: phranque
I run a widget review site.
I've always assumed that links from forums are worthless in the SE world. I would assume people would agree?
However more and more I have found that snip of my review and then a link to my widget review in forums that have something to do with my niche is providing a large (when I say large this is a new site) ammount of traffic.
So this got me thinking. If you are trying to promote a site how much time do you think we should be spent in community based site promoting your site? Would the time spent in said place be spent better if working on the site?
What do you guys think?
A well planned and executed link 'campaign' is generally a long term investment that may initially generate little to no traffic, but will eventually result in better SERPs and more exposure.
However, as with any other small-ish scale endeavor, grass root politicking can prove invaluable. And if your site is worthy, low level exposure will eventually generate more relevant backlinks without any effort on your part as people find your site, acknowledge its merit, and decide to link to it 'naturally'.
Like every other aspect of SEO, everything's relative, organic, and debatable. I would say a 70/30 ratio would be a decent start when considering how much time to spend on an optimized link building campaign versus a community based (ie: forums and/or blogs) campaign.
If your site truly has the 'wow factor', you might focus almost exclusively on community based marketing: Composing evocative and authorative articles/posts that also link back to your site is akin to giving a fat kid a chocolate chip while leaving a batch of fresh baked cookies in plain view.
