What stopped working
Signature links, profile links on abandoned phpBB installations and one-line replies posted to get a link: all of it stopped counting years ago, and most of the forums that permitted it are gone.
What did not stop working is the underlying thing. A useful answer in a place where your customers ask questions produces a link that gets clicked, and it keeps producing visits for years because the thread ranks.
The economics are different from other tactics
A directory listing takes fifteen minutes and is worth a little. A genuinely useful forum presence takes months and can be worth more than everything else combined, because it puts you in front of people at the moment they have the problem you solve.
This is why it does not scale and cannot be outsourced cheaply. It requires someone who knows the subject to spend time in the community.
Rules that keep you from being removed
- Answer without linking first. Establish that you are there to participate. A first post containing a link is the fastest route to a ban.
- Link only when it is the answer. If the page you would link genuinely answers the question, link it and say what it is. If it half answers it, do not.
- Disclose the affiliation. Saying that you built the thing costs nothing and prevents the accusation that follows if someone else discovers it.
- Stay after the link. An account that vanishes after one promotional post is a pattern moderators watch for.
Where to spend the time
The large general communities are the hardest and the least rewarding per hour. Smaller, subject-specific forums have fewer readers, less moderation friction and an audience that is entirely relevant. For most businesses two or three niche communities are worth more than a presence on the biggest platform in the field.
What we have catalogued in this category
Our own dataset holds 114 platforms of this type. 83% of them pass a following link, and 86% are ones a beginner can complete without prior accounts or a verified business.
| Market | Platforms |
|---|---|
| 🌍 International | 101 |
| 🇳🇴 NO | 13 |
Counts describe our catalogue rather than the web as a whole. We publish the numbers, not the list: the list is the product.
One of these is on the free tier
No payment and no card. These are the ones you can open and work through today, and they are a fair sample of how the rest are written up.
| Platform | Market | Link | Difficulty | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freak.no | 🇳🇴 NO | nofollow | Easy | 30-40 min |
Examples of this kind of platform
Names most practitioners would recognise, to make the category concrete: Stack Overflow, Reddit, Quora, Product Hunt, Indie Hackers.
Common questions
Do forum backlinks still count?
Links from real discussions on active forums count, and they bring traffic. Signature and profile links on dead forums do not.
Is Quora good for links?
The links are nofollow, so treat it as a traffic and visibility channel. Answers that rank can send qualified visitors for years.
How long before forum participation pays off?
Months, not weeks. It is the slowest tactic on this site and the one with the longest tail.