High Authority Forums for SEO Autopilot into 2020
Current users of SEO autopilot will know that the latest update has added a whole new subsection. Profile forum links.
This new link type is part of SEO Autopilot’s long-term aim of developing all the high value / high volume links over from GSA Search Engine Ranker.
Why forum links now?
I get the question. Forum links have had a bad rap over the years. As much, if not more so than Blog comments. As direct links they are not – usually – very good.
However, and this is a big issue here. Also, like blogs the forum a link is from really, really matters.
We know from John Mueller’s videos from Google Switzerland that there is a filter that checks links from low quality platforms. That’s all they will commit to in detail “low quality platforms”
However, it is also clear that this is just a filter. It parses the link to be checked at another level. We don’t know how this extra check works, but it is sae to assume Google knows the difference between a good forum and a bad forum.
One with high authority, that cannot be spammed by most bots, has a good record or real user moderation of low-quality content and link spamming on its thread and sub forums.
Then likely a “bad” list of open-door forums that allow users to create an account and spam like mad.
In the past tools like Xrumer have been fed with massive lists of unmoderated forums. Often a 6-figure number. The largest forum list I saw was almost 2 million URL’s in length, and even after deleting sub forums and duplicates it was almost a million unique websites
That is not the approach Elias and the coders at SEO Autopilot have taken. Here is a curated and DA checked list of forums that take some specific coding within SEO Autopilot to both create the user account, then post the content. The average forum I’ve checked as a DA of almost 60. (59.151515… to be exact)
I’ll contrast that and say the DA of a random sample of my last Xrumer list had an average DA of under 10
The difference is night and day. SEO Autopilot provides a hard to get link from a website that Google loves. A website that will pass page authority – or a link from a garbage site full of millions of other spam links that might do more harm than good.
(*Oh come on – Google still measure page authority even if they don’t publish it any more)
Interestingly Elias and the team at SEO Autopilot, who REALLY know their stuff when it comes to SEO trends and are not just coders – still recommend not using these forum links as your first tier or direct linking.
Personally. I would perhaps use the top 20% of these new sites as direct linking in certain circumstances. If the following criteria are met – then forum links of this type can add substantial value
The website you are promoting is over 1 year old – preferably over 3 years old.
The URL’s you are promoting in this site already have good inbound link profiles pointing to them
Your traffic levels are above “starter level” and your bounce rate is under control. Over 70% bounce rate is not the time to experiment. Improve your user experience first.
Your site has not had any sort of Google penalty – preferably ever, but at least for more than 3 years. If it has you are still under their scrutiny radar. In practice 5 years after a ban has been cleared a site is golden. How and why? Here we go. John Mueller again…
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/link-penalty-recovery/296567/
You use only forum links from sites with a DA of over 50 (and there are quite a few of those)
If you don’t want to use forums for direct links, of course that’s fine. Remember though a realistic profile from a popular site would have forum links. Genuine users post links in forums whether you want them to or not. It happens, it’s part of what forums are for, Same for blogs. Getting a link from a moderated blog that doesn’t use a coded comment section (Like Disqus) is still golden of you follow the same rules as above.
Good luck and happy linking