Can I get your expert opinion?

[igor.pinchevskiy]

Hello fellow Mozzers!

I've been brainstorming about getting links for my site and thought of the following scenario, let me know if its a good idea or not.

Who we are: an IT consulting firm.

There are many tech support forums and groups on the internet including Google, Yahoo and a few other big dogs...

I thought it would be a good idea to browse them on daily basis and find questions/topics that haven't been answered or don't have any real clear good answers, or are very popular. Then create an article in the blog on our site describing the same exact problem with a solution. Then would post a response under that question/topic with a link back to the solution that is located on our site.

Hoping that this will bring in more traffic, links, and authority...

However I also thought about the possibility  of getting spammed, since there are many spam sites that scrape forums and groups for web site addresses, email addresses, phones, etc...

So what do you guys think, is it a good idea or should I stay away?

Thank you!

[matbennett]

It's a good idea.  I think Rand has previously posted somewhere about he has done this himself, blogging topics that have been asked about on Quora and the like.

The biggest danger in terms of spam from posting on forums is if you include you email address in the post. Publish an email address on the internet and it will get spammed (trust me - I've been using the same address for 16 years. It's an issue!). However if you don't actually put the address in the post then you won't have a problem.  Almost no forums allows their members email address to be seen by other users unless they choose to.

[edited - correction, Rand had mentioned doing this on quora]

[EGOL]

This will work until they figure out that your posts are nothing more than "sign posts" to siphon traffic and spam them for links.

[matbennett]

Why does using people's real questions have to mean spamming? I'd agree if you only used the sites in order to drop links, but why should that be the case?

If there is a site where relevant questions frequently come up then why not use that as a source of inspiration for blog topics? Find the common questions, put together an excellent answer, when the question comes up again cite your post within the rules of the forum.

The forum becomes more useful, the user gets their answer, Igor gets a link and the internet is a slightly warmer and nicer place to be. Where's the spam?

[EGOL]

If I did that for every question that I answered here at SEOmoz, I am willing to bet that people wouldn't like it.    They would view me as creating sign posts to siphon traffic.

Is it link spam?  Maybe not in some people's opinion if a link is placed once in a while but to make that a matter of practice, my opinion is that it would be link spam.  I believe that it would be abusing the SEOmoz community.

The perspective of this can be argued.  People who receive the links have a whiter hat view than the community they are using.

[KeriMorgret]

I think there's a difference between looking at forums for ideas in general and using an aggregate of several questions to write an awesome blog posts that answers most of the questions people have about that topic, and writing a specific answer on your site to a question on another site, and going to that other site and just dropping a link to your site.

Using the posts for inspiration is fine IMHO, but as a user (or an admin) of a forum I'd quickly get irritated at a poster that is using the forum solely to link drop.

[igor.pinchevskiy]

Thank you EGOL & Mat for your responses!

I kind of see what you're saying EGOL, however I'm not talking about creating a link for every single post, as that would definitely fall under link spamming. I do want to respond to your answer about you answering that way here at SEOMoz. SEOMoz is more of a closed and tighter community than your average Google or Yahoo group. Most of the time people answer questions with very poor English, directions, instructions, references, etc... If I take my time and knowledge and create an easy to understand blog post with good content and easy to follow instructions and examples and reply to some topics (probably a few week) why would you or THEY think it would be a "sign post" and/or spam links?

[EGOL]

I think that we are members of the SEOmoz community and the discussion of topics initiated on SEOmoz should remain here for community participation rather than be diverted.

There is nothing wrong with creating a post here and then refining it for use as a blog post on your own website.

[igor.pinchevskiy]

Hi Keri,

Thanks for your response! I mostly agree with you, however I'm not talking about just dropping a link as a response to someone's post. I would provide an answer or partial answer on that forum for a specific topic and then put a link for the reference or for a full answer... I don't think this should irritate any forum admins. In the tech community people reference many sites as their answers (now I'm not sure if they're trying to do this as well or not) but sometimes its easier to post a link to an article or a video instead of providing an answer that has to describe 20-50 detailed steps for a user to follow...

[gtrotter666]

I tend to agree with EGOL and Keri, I suspect you will be viewed as a spammer.

Yes, you are answering their questions, yes this makes for the internet being a warmer fuzzier place (and your answers might be the best damn answers in the world) BUT it will be clear to the forum owners that your intention is to generate a link.  The trouble is you also know that the reason you are doing this work is to generate that link.

I wouldn't necessarily not do it, but I would be prepared for quite a few of the links to be removed because they will be viewed as spam (even if directly on topic).  Don't get be wrong I don't think what you are doing is spam but it will be viewed by many forum admins as such.

Gary

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[matbennett]

"If I did that for every question that I answered here at SEOmoz, I am willing to bet that people wouldn't like it."

I think that most approaches would get treated as spam if you over-do them.  Probably a good reminder that any technique/tactic that you use that includes the word "every" would probably be better turned down a notch or two!