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
-
Safest Way to remove a blog?
I have a Magento site that is around 4 years old. It has 2 different wordpress blogs on the same domain. domain/blog domain/nicheblog I would like to completely remove the 2 blogs as the information on them is of low quality and its outdated information. What is the safest way for me to remove this content with out having negative effects on my rankings? thanks
Content Development | | Shop-Sq0 -
Same content on site blog as a separate blog. Will unpublishing on one blog evade duplicate content issues?
I just discovered my client was posting the same content as the site I'm working on for him on a separate blog. I don't want to run into duplicate content issues. Both are Wordpress sites. Will it suffice to simply unpublish duplicate entries on the other blog and leave the posts as drafts?
Content Development | | locallyrank0 -
What is the BEST way to find guest blog? Use Google under the blog tab??
I want to post articles and get backlink. What is the best practice for finding guest blog? Thank you, BigBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
SEO, Rel Author and Several Clients
How do you deal with Rel author on blogs for your clients? Suppose I'm a contributor (or rather, the only copywriter) to a clients blog - which happens to be about DIY. The blog articles are written from the business perspective and published from 'the business'. not from Me. Should I be adding myself as a contributor and using my own personal Google profile on these blogs? If so, then it's my face that appears next to the blog post and I'm not sure that's what I want for a blog about fixing shelves etc! Am I misunderstanding how I should be using rel author? Is it for SEOs to work into client strategy, or is it just for our own personal blogs?
Content Development | | littlesthobo0 -
Blog Benefits
I read a very interesting answer by Andy Solo to a previous question in which he replied: "Use your blog to create some Tips & How-To's, optimize those blog entries for the long tail keywords and soon enough your blog will be the gateway into your website. Learn how to target longl-tail keyword searches and how to analyze keyword competition to find the right niche blog posts to create". With my own company site, www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk which has a long-standing blog attached, www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/blog I always felt that the blog content greatly aided our top positions in Google.co.uk. However, over the last 12 months we have slipped right down page one and I wondered if the blog is still helping our site or if the emphasis/value has switched and Google is looking at a lot of other factors where we score badly? Colin
Content Development | | NileCruises0 -
The same phrase in many different pages of one site
Hi,
Content Development | | webg
Recently, I had to add the same phrase, with 15 words, nearly, in 700 posts in a same blog. In this phrase is written about the site ownership and eventually some links showing the posts sources. I thought in create a image, but it will be some variations in the source words (2 or 3), therefore I chose to use text format. I'd like to read some comments and opinions about this kind of insertion (the same phrase in many different pages of one site). For exemple, did you handle this in your site? Problems or benefits (mainly with indexing)? Special code to indicate in this case? Any threat?0 -
I need to feed our companies blog into our facebook business page
Hello can anybody help me. I'm trying to setup a feed from our company blog to our companies facebook page. When I try and Google it the advice is out of date.
Content Development | | catherine-2793880 -
Blog on Sub-domain affect on SEO
Hi, Setting up a blog for a new website. What affects will hosting a blog on a sub-domain (blog.mysite.com vs. mysite.com/blog) have on SEO? Also, would having a separate blog domain be beneficial or detrimental (myblog.com)? Thanks, Shane
Content Development | | notarynow0