Is my linking tactic affecting my rankings?

[Paul_Tovey]

Hello All,

I'd like to think that my SEO style was both helpful and useful. But lately i've been thinking that I may be damaging my own SEO!

Let me explain, I love forums and technical gossip. Being a IT guy, I usually find an interesting question from websites like Yahoo, Microsoft, SOASE Forums etc etc and write a decent article on one of the questions going into real detail. I then post my basic answer (word limits) and a hyperlink incase anybody wants to read the rest of my article.

I used to think that this was great for SEO, because it was certainly great for making great connections. However, a backlink check on my website shows that I have a good 40 - 60 hyperlinks, 40/ 50 of which from just Forums I've posted on but only from 3 - 4 domains.

Would this affect my ratings? Looking at my own site from an SEO consultant perspective, having one source of links seems awfully suspicious to me!

[eli.boda]

I would say yes! Having the majority of your link profile be forum links can't be good in terms of SEO.

Your technique is a great idea, but I would incorporate some other methods of link building into your strategy. if you're willing to write great content (it sounds like you are) i would suggest doing some guest blogging on high authority sites.

Google wants to see a natural looking link profile. Links from forums are a naturally occurring thing, so they aren't bad in and of themselves as long as they are a small part of a great overall link profile.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Sounds like a smart tactic - and I'd continue to do it - but you most likely want to diversify your link profile.

Keep in mind that multiple links from the same domain typically don't help as much as links from multiple domains. But if the forum posting are generating you traffic and connections, I don't see much harm in continuing to post.

For instance, I have like a jillion links from SEOmoz, but I still continue to post here, and wouldn't stop for the world.