Community SEO (Forum SEO) — the new type of SEO you should be doing
Community SEO is the process of making the user generated content (UGC) from your community space show up higher in search engine results like Google, Bing, etc. The community space that is best suited for SEO is a forum, that is why you can also say community SEO is the same thing as Forum SEO or UGC SEO.
UGC has become more and more important to Google in recent years. Google representatives say that they are placing a bigger enphasys on UGC since the content of marketers has declined in quality, expecially after the appeareance of AI writers like ChatGPT.
What is Community SEO
Community SEO involved joining the conversation inside your community space (forum or websites comments section, for example) with the purpose of optimizing it to show up higher in the search engine results page (SERP).
This has to be done in a non-intrusive way, as to not lose the trust of your community members.
The optimization can be done by either an on-page SEO expert or by a community manager with SEO knowledge.
How does Community SEO Work?
Community SEO is a straightforward process. You perform a keyword research like you would do when you want to optimize a page on your website. Next, you use the research to introduce new keywords, entities and topics into discussions.
When adding your content, you need to make sure you are not deviating the conversations from their original topics. You shouldn’t dilute the value of the conversation and the information given by your members. Otherwise, you can start losing community members.
Advantages of Community SEO
Community SEO has 3 main advantages, if, of course, you already have your own community.
The first main advantage is that it optimizes your website for organic search results. At the end of 2023, I performed research and found that after 2023’s Helpful Content Update and Core Update, several websites with forums started ranking higher.
Moreover, recently, Google confirmed that it started to give more weight to UGC (user generated content) because marketers have diluted the value of content in general.
A second advantage of community SEO is that, done properly, you can actually keep the conversations going and the members engaged. When your community manager enters the conversation and has SEO-optimized questions or statements, those can prompt new responses from your members.
The other advantage has to do with images. Another thing Google encourages is for you to have original images on your website. And what better way to do it than with images taken and posted by your members.
Besides SEO advantages, having a community also helps build brand loyalty, improve customer support, enhances reputation and reduces marketing costs, amongst other benefits.
How to do Community SEO
To start doing community SEO, you first have to create a community space on your website. This could be as simple as activating comments for your posts. While this is a good start, a forum is better suited.
A forum lets you organize the information better and makes it searchable. Moreover, it has enhanced community features and can lead to deeper conversations. Lastly, the content can turn into a real knowledge base, and you have more control over moderation.
Build Your Community Space
The first thing you need to do is build your community space. As mentioned above, you should aim for a forum. If you don’t know how to set one up, you can always search for a freelancer.
I always use Fiverr when I need help with a task as there are many great freelancers there. So, if you have a WordPress website for example, you can search for a WordPress expert on Fiverr with setting it up for you.
Do Your Keyword Research
If you already have a website, you probably already have the keyword research done. If not, you can check out this article I wrote where I explain the entire process in great detail.
The keyword research is going to be crucial as it will tell you exactly what structure your forum should have and will help you guide the conversations.
Create the Forum Structure
What you want to do next is to prepare the layout or structure of the forum. You want to keep things as organized as possible. This way, you can avoid any keyword cannibalization that might occur.
You want your forum structure to be similar to that of the rest of your website.
Invite your members
After your forum is ready, it’s time to invite your members. Ideally, you should already have an email list, and you can invite members to sign up right away.
Remember to also add call to actions to all your other pages, to let visitors know that you have a community space they can join.
Drive & Optimize Conversations
Next, you need to act as a community manager and keep the conversations going and, most importantly, engaging. You should also optimize the conversation for SEO by inserting the keywords and entities that you’ve researched.
Remember to not deviate from the conversation when inserting these. Your contributions to the conversations should be useful to your community!
Create internal links
Internal links are just as important for your forum as they are for the rest of your website, as they will help improve your rankings. Whenever possible, create internal links from one forum topic to another and use SEO-optimized anchor text.
You should also create link to your other pages as well, whether it’s blog post or product / service pages. After all, your goal is to make your community buy from you.
Linking to your blog posts will also give your members additional information to engage with
To learn more about internal links, check out this article.
Monitor and Adjust
Lastly, you should always keep an eye on your rankings. Google Search Console is a great tool to use for monitoring your progress. It also helps you optimize further.
Look out for the terms you are ranking for and try to include them in the appropriate topics. This will help you rank even higher for those terms. I’ve explained this strategy more in-depth here.
