Is it Worth Adding a Forum to your Website?

By Richard Marsh

If you have a website you may be considering whether to add a forum to your website or whether it is just a waste of time and money. This article will look at the benefits of adding a forum to your website for your visitors and for the search engines.

How a Forum Helps your Customers

If you have people that regularly use your website having a forum can be really useful for them. It can help them to discuss any issues about your site they might have, which will in turn help you improve your website. In addition to that, if they have any issues or questions about your products or services, they might be able to get them from your forum. This will prove to be a valuable resource for your customers and will keep them coming back to your website.

The main advantage to this is you have a greater chance of getting sales. The more time that people spend on your site the more important it becomes in their mind and so there is a much greater chance that they will buy from you. The aim of any website should be to convert as many visitors into customers as possible and a forum can really help you do that.

How Forums Help your SEO

Believe it or not but a forum can be a valuable tool in your SEO campaign. The main reason for this is that the search engines will put a lot of emphasis on Forums. If you search for something you want an answer to, you will probably find that a lot of the results on the first page are forums. This is probably because the question has been asked before on a forum and so it is easy for you to get your answer.

There is one thing you need to think about here. It is absolutely vital you get your forum set up by a web developer that understands SEO. This will ensure they set your forum up to be search engine friendly, this will include having a top quality URL structure. You will probably also need to do some work on publicising your forum, but if done properly you should gain top rankings for your forum.

This can be great for your business as you will be getting a lot of people coming to your website for information. If they are able to get an answer to their question then they will have more confidence in your website. This will significantly increase your chances of converting that visitor into a sale which is your ultimate aim.

As you will see from the above, there is a huge amount of value in adding a forum to your website. If you think that a forum would benefit your website then it is a good idea to discuss the issue with your web developer and your SEO company. They should both be able to give you advice on the best way to do it to ensure you get the most out of your forum. If you are serious about making your business a success then a forum is a valuable tool in the battle and can help your website to stand out from the crowd which in this day and age is more important than it ever was.

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