Difference in Forum and Blog for SEO
-
I was pushing my employer to agree to switch to add a blog onto our site and he asked me, what is the difference between the blog and a forum for SEO purposes. Besides the general look and feel and a forum being more community oriented, is a blog better than a forum for seo, and if so, why? It can be vice-versa I just need to fully understand this myself so I can begin to work on one and explain it to my employer. If anyone can provide any insight, it will be much appreciated.
-
I personally like the inbound link aspect of blogs as well as google authorship. You can also use guest bloggers to expand your audience.
-
Forum helps you to collect mails, can be very valuable.
If you want people to register easily, try a Facebook login system + allow a dofollow link on profile. Maybe that the forum just launched by Quicksprout can inspire you.
http://www.quicksprout.com/forum/
Would you have enough time to run a blog + a forum ? If you are usually busy, step away from forum and focus on blog.
-
I would point out these key differences.
1. A blog gives you more control. With a blog, you can target the keywords you want to target. You can edit the content after you've published it. You can time when posts go out. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to come up with good content, but you're in the driver's seat.
2. A forum gives you less control, but you don't have to write all the content. The attractive thing about a forum - for SEO purposes anyway - is user-generated content. This is great because you don't have to do all the heavy lifting that real writing requires. The bad thing about a forum is also user-generated content. All those things you have control over with a blog ... you kinda lose them with a forum. You could exert a lot of control over your forum if you want, but then folks will stop contributing and you won't have a forum. Also, all that heavy lifting you save by not having to create the content may get replaced by the necessity of moderating the content.
3. You can build a blog steadily over time. With a blog, you can go from "Hello World!" to a good following just by disciplined, regular, quality publishing over time. You can start small and build.
4. Nobody likes an empty forum. Unlike a blog, a forum needs to go live with content already in it and conversations already happening. If you're going to launch a forum, I suggest getting some dedicated customers involved in a pre-launch. Seed the forum with a number of conversations before launching it to your full customer base. Otherwise, most people will get stage fright and you will have wasted your launch.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Find blog post idea
How do I find blog post ideas for my website blog when there are only very few questions people have. I am a tour operator operator and the the keywords I target are Provence bike tour, Normandy bike tour , Tuscany bike tour and so on. I am trying to to find blog ideas to create a topic cluster for those pillar pages. Any advice on how to find blog ideas that could boost my pillar pages. Thank you,
Content Development | | seoanalytics1 -
Would it be smart to have 2 different blogs on our site?
I run Wick Video - where we make animated videos for businesses. We are toying around with making blog/video content geared toward marketers, _and _creating blogs/tutorials geared toward designers and animators. Since it's two totally different groups, we've had the idea of making two separate blogs. Is that a good idea? Any websites currently doing this well?
Content Development | | WickVideo0 -
Blogs, blogspot, tumblr etc
We currently have our own wordpress blog on our site using wordpress, is it worth while having others such as blogspot, tumblr etc for seo purposes? Or would I be wasting my time and efforts?
Content Development | | Shuffled0 -
Content: Best Blogs Article
Hello, For an Ecommerce site, I think a good way to get known is to write a "Best X Blogs" article, where X is a topic in your industry, and then letting the people you link to know about the article. I got the idea from a Mozinar. My question is, how close does the X from above have to be in your niche? For example, if your product is running shoes can you write a "best athlete blogs" article? I'm worried about them reading the article, then leaving. In some smaller niches the topics closest to the product don't have much in the way of blogs out there. So how close to your niche does the Best X Blogs topic have to be?
Content Development | | BobGW0 -
SEO Arbiter
Anyone heard of SEO Arbiter? I am looking into them for article marketing. Any thoughts? 😄
Content Development | | KarlMarxTheBear0 -
Best Blog Engine
We currently are using blogengine.net 1.6 and it's proving to be an SEO nightmare, with link loops causing infinite "duplicate content". I am trying to find the best blog solution as far as ease of use, clean content and good SEO. What do you use? What do you suggest? Thanks!
Content Development | | QuickLearnTraining0 -
Can you use creative commons non-commercial images on a company blog?
Does anyone know if it is okay to use creative commons images on your company blog if they are under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Technically you are using it on a commercial site, but you are not directly making money from the image or selling it.
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0 -
Why does my lousy little blog Rank number 1 on Google?
Search "Google Places Changes." My Blog, www.salesjumpstart.net/blog is ranked first. Has been for a week. Why? Makes no sense. I have been getting many first page Google results for 3 and 4 word keyword searches. The site or Blog just isn't that strong. http://www.google.com/search?q=Google+places+hchanges&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=uFR&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=Google+places+changes&pbx=1&oq=Google+places+changes&aq=f&aqi=g2g-j1g-b1&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=4293l4293l0l4628l1l1l0l0l0l0l271l271l2-1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=661c0b1152c259b4&biw=1024&bih=583
Content Development | | MBayes0