Forum Posting is Still Effective

Hi Rosemary

Are you saying myvouchercodes.co.uk got hit after the Panda Update?

Do you know why? Have you analysed the linking strategy?

It seems now the dust has settled, the Panda (and revised) updates seem to have done more good than harm.

But poor content, duplicate and links to bad neighbourhoods seem to be main reasons for traffic drops.

We started to build up some duplicate page issues, mainly as our directory has multiple categories, which generates multiple pages. But the fix for this was to make one page the master and 301 any duplicates.

The forum does help our SEO ratings

Panda hits the site they having spam content. Forum posting is effective at present because there every post is unique.

Yes, Forum posting has always been productive, not only from the SEO prospect, but it also keep you updated with value and latest information that what's happening around you, what others are doing and facing issues while doing so. Even you can acquire knowledge from them as well.

Yes myvouchercodes.co.uk got hit after the Panda Update?
We are analyzed it and we are fixing the problem.

and panda do hit forums.
Google Panda Kick Online Forums
Google's Panda Update Hurt Discussion Forums?

Still it very much effective in SEO. Commenting and participating in forum that let you include a link to your website in your signature line or at any other part of comment. Forum can act as an ideal marketing tool for your business.

No, forum links might not be as good as they once were, but that doesn't make em a bad thing. As long as you go about it the right way. You need to be able to add value to the forum. Not register and post a generic load of nonsense just to get to be able to have the right amount of posts to enable your signature. neither do you keep posting a few times after that until you think you have sufficient links pointing back to your site and move on to the next forum. Its abuse IMO, and not the reason forums are there.

They are a community of people chatting to each other about their related fields, asking for help, and actually expecting help. If you are genuine and sincere, believe you me, you would get a lot further in a forum than you could imagine. Posting quality posts, helping where you can and even reporting people that abuse the system is a good way to not only show you are a person that cares about what happens on the forum pages, but that you are not just their to drop a link and run. it goes a long way to helping promote the forum, as well as adding quality to it.

I can't speak for everyone, but I know that when I ask for help, or ask a question, I get really agitated when someone answers the post and you can clearly see they haven't even read the post, because they are talking about all sorts of other things, except what I was talking about in my thread, and staying clear of the "good post, thanks for sharing" is another way to make sure your contributions are valued in a forum.

Think about it this way. You represent not only yourself, but the company you work for, or whatever online venture you're part of. Which would you prefer, having people look at you and what you say on forums, knowing you represent these companies and / or ventures and think that they would like to see what it is you sell, or write you off completely because they can see you are not adding value of any kind, and just ghosting along to get the appropriate counts so you can link and increase your own profits?

It's worth a thought, not?

This will heavily depend on how you go about using forums, if you go along and spam and post silly comments which are useful then no forum posting will not help but if you continue to be a good member and post useful questions and good answers then forum posting can still be a good SEO tool.
Its like any other aspect of SEO

You hit the nail on the head there. I get really frustrated when people just fill posts to get a post count so they could use a signature. and then vanish into the sunset when they have enough posts to their liking.

A forum is a community. The part you play determines not only how well you would do, but how well the forum would do. It's also a way to show you can interact with people. If you have the personality of a bowl of fruit and either post comments that help no one, or outright abuse other members with your posts, then you shouldn't really be part of the community.