Got an SEO tip that’s been working wonders for your community or site? Drop it here and let’s help each other grow! Think about a keyword strategy, optimizing old threads, or a tool you love. share your advice and learn from your fellow community leaders. ;)

 

A few ideas to get you started:

 

• What small SEO tweak made a big difference for your traffic?
  
• Found any cool tools or trends lately?
  
• How do you handle SEO for new or updated content?
  

As an absolute SEO novice; subscribed.

Recently, I've found this very useful, although I only made use of it yesterday and would take a wee while for guest activity to explode...

 

What it does it submits your forum/site to 379 search engines but overall, it actually submits it to over 200,000 websites. Although, there's an extra 79 search engines/directories to submit to manually.

I make sure to add relevant title attributes to images and sometimes links.

If you want to rank for short-tail keywords, I’d recommend focusing on ranking for long-tail keywords first, as they’re usually less competitive. By ranking for long-tail keywords, you can generally start ranking for short-tail keywords over time, especially if you rank well for the long-tail ones.

 

 

Long-tail keywords usually contain more than 3-4 words, whereas short-tail keywords are more popular and generic. For example, a short-tail keyword might be ‘forum,’ while a long-tail keyword could be ‘the best admin forum.’

 

Additionally, building backlinks using a mixture of both long-tail keyword phrases and short-tail keywords is something I’d recommend.

 

Be sure to build links to other pages besides your forum’s homepage as well, especially if you want those pages to rank higher too.

Not SEO, per se, but buy expiring keyword domains in your niche as they likely have traffic.

 

At one time, I had over 100 domains forwarding into 1. With an average of 8.5 type-ins per domain per month at a cost of $9/yr ($900 for the portfolio), I was essentially paying 8.8 cents CPC on the exact match keyword domain with low to medium competition with bids of $0.25-1.75, saving a ton of money from traditional advertising.

 

The plus side is when I was done with that niche, people wanted to develop their businesses on those domains. Out of that portfolio, I got a maximum of $2000 for one of then (others I've sold for a few hundred here and a few hundred there, keeping what I felt as the best 20 or so that I won't let go for less than $7500 each).

 

You can also do this for dead forums that have links — just redirect to yours and hope $9 can buy you a member per year at the least.

People sleep on image SEO. File names and alt attributes can make a significant different if you think about them from an SEO and not purely organizational standpoint. They also help make your site more accessible, and Google at one time said accessibility is important for ranking. I am not sure if they still take accessibility as a ranking factor, but these optimizations do not hurt and cost nothing to implement, so why not implement them?

Not SEO, per se, but buy expiring keyword domains in your niche as they likely have traffic.

 

At one time, I had over 100 domains forwarding into 1. With an average of 8.5 type-ins per domain per month at a cost of $9/yr ($900 for the portfolio), I was essentially paying 8.8 cents CPC on the exact match keyword domain with low to medium competition with bids of $0.25-1.75, saving a ton of money from traditional advertising.

 

The plus side is when I was done with that niche, people wanted to develop their businesses on those domains. Out of that portfolio, I got a maximum of $2000 for one of then (others I've sold for a few hundred here and a few hundred there, keeping what I felt as the best 20 or so that I won't let go for less than $7500 each).

 

You can also do this for dead forums that have links — just redirect to yours and hope $9 can buy you a member per year at the least.

This is an underrated method, but very much effective.

 

I bought adminforums.org a while ago. At first nothing special. But this domain was first registered in 2010. There was a big admin forum during that time. Since I have redirected it to Administrata, it has proven some solid results. Average 7k views a day. Also, my 404 page is being hit several times a day:

[ATTACH type=full" size="1101x230]121[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH type=full" size="1082x107]117[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH type=full" size="1106x114]119[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH type=full" size="1101x109]120[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH type=full" size="1101x69]118[/ATTACH]

 

So that tells me, there's been approximately 4k hits from old adminforums.org content that redirects to here. There isn't much conversion rate yet, but still this is pretty amazing traffic considering Administrata is only a few weeks old.

 

To put that in perspective: the red box is when the domain was not redirected yet:

 

[ATTACH type=full" size="1113x284]122[/ATTACH]

This is an underrated method, but very much effective.

 

I bought adminforums.org a while ago. At first nothing special. But this domain was first registered in 2010. There was a big admin forum during that time. Since I have redirected it to Administrata, it has proven some solid results. Average 7k views a day. Also, my 404 page is being hit several times a day:

[ATTACH type=full" alt="1728398897680.webp]121[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="1728398758583.webp]117[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH type=full" alt="1728398839170.webp]119[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH type=full" alt="1728398847783.webp]120[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH type=full" alt="1728398769727.webp]118[/ATTACH]

 

So that tells me, there's been approximately 4k hits from old adminforums.org content that redirects to here. There isn't much conversion rate yet, but still this is pretty amazing traffic considering Administrata is only a few weeks old.

 

To put that in perspective: the red box is when the domain was not redirected yet:

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="1728398941769.webp]122[/ATTACH]

All it takes is one good domain like that too.

Since I have redirected it to Administrata, it has proven some solid results.

You sly old devil you... 😜

This is for a site I was working on, not a community.

 

Long-tail keywords.

 

Google's "People Also Ask" feature and related searches has been a gold-mine for uncovering long-tail keywords as well as new topics to write about. Because people are already asking these questions, I know there is interest and intent, and likely traffic and better rankings to be harvested from exploring this area.

 

Since we are here, don't overlook online communities like forums, social media platforms, and Q&A sites because these can also be goldmines for niche-specific long-tail keywords. By monitoring these sources, you can stay informed about the language and concerns of your target audience. Both of these are crucial for creating targeted content that resonates with a specific audience.

 

Once you've identified potential long-tail keywords, consider grouping them into content clusters. Doing this will help you create comprehensive, authoritative content around related topics, which can boost your overall SEO performance.

 

Everyone knows this, but it's a nice bonus. Use tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to keep an eye on your competitors' keyword strategies. They may be ranking for valuable long-tail terms that you've overlooked. If you find such keywords, try to create content and topical clusters that are better than what is already available to outrank them.

 

Remember to use keyword modifiers like "best," "how to," "vs," or location-based terms (especially if you are doing local SEO) to further refine your main keywords and target more specific search intents.

 

As [mention=5]Cpvr[/mention] said, these keywords are less competitive, so it is much easier to rank for them. Finding them might take some work, but the benefits are worth it.

Get easy SEO content ideas from Reddit in 1 minute:

 

1. Search inside a relevant subreddit

 

2. Find a thread with user engagement

 

3. Use this ChatGPT prompt:

 

"Extract content ideas from this that are relevant to a company that sells dark roast: [CONTENT]"

 

4. Boom:

 

⭐️ BONUS: Prioritize topics with proven search demand. Creating content is riskier if an idea doesn't have a quantifiable demand.

 

Risk = no guarantee that you'll get an ROI from your content investment.

 

 

Create list articles or listicles - strategically.

 

Look up your keyword on Google. Look at all the listicle results. Find the highest numbered list result. Create something that nearly doubles the amount of listed items. Go with an odd number because it tends to stand out and become eye-catching.

 

Listicles and how-to articles are your best friends in terms of SEO.

 

I get most of mine on page one every time.

Be sure to diverse your backlink profile, which means, you need a mixture of directory links, profile links, social media links, forum signature links, links from reddit/quora, tumblr, etc. A diversified backlink profile goes hand to hand with good rankings on Google. It's not a good idea to ever build links to just your homepage alone, be sure to build links to all pages that you consider your "money" pages, which are the pages that you believe are highly important and the core foundation of your site. Social media shares have an indirect ranking signal on search as well, so if a post gets multiple likes on twitter, tumblr, bluesky or shares, you'll see an impact. Tumblr reposts are important as repost from another each user's profile is considered a new backlink, which can boast your backlink profile quite easily and fast.

 

Whether that includes articles, or resources, you'll need to interlink your forums posts to other related content, so it's easier for the search engines and visitors to browse & navigate your forum. A site's that easy to navigate, is one that performs well on the search engines.

 

Also, if you have images on your forum, be sure to include the "Alt" tag on them, that way, the search engines know what the image is about and can rank your image as well. Search engines aren't able to read images directly and the alt tags help screen readers as well.

 

The alt text can be added via the "pencil" icon if you click on an image on the attachment if it's an Xenforo forum.

 

If you want quick backlink gains, you can also release a press release, whether it's a paid campaign or a free one, which will get you backlinks from various news websites. The added attention from the media can help your forum a lot. A free press release can be done via prlog.org or a paid one can be done via https://www.einpresswire.com/