While most people understand benefits of forums from a "gathering information" perspective, many don’t think about hidden benefits of forums. The most common reason for visiting is to ask questions or get advice. That's a good enough reason to go, but there are other - more beneficial - reasons to become a forum frequenter.

Besides providing a wealth of quality information, forums can also be powerful promotional tools. There are three distinct ways forums can benefit you. And all it takes is a few minutes a day to help others in need.

Link Popularity

I think you’re probably familiar with term "link popularity" by now. In case you’re not, it refers to number of incoming links pointing to your site from other sites. Forums can serve as excellent link popularity boosters.

Each time you post a question or response on a forum that’s spidered by engines, you get one extra link back to your site. Every time your signature (along with link in it) appears, it counts as an additional link. Since Google puts a lot of weight on link popularity, posting to forums can give your rankings quite a boost!

ACTION STEP ONE: Create a powerful signature line to use in your forum posts that includes benefits to reader and your URL.

Establishing Yourself as an Expert

In addition to extra help with your site’s search engine rankings, forums also give you an outlet to establish yourself as an expert.

There are lots of ads for lots of product out there , so it is very easy for your ad to get lost in shuffle. To avoid this, you must do all that you can do to make sure that your ad gets noticed. Here are some things that you can do to ensure that your ad commands attention.

1. Place colorful graphs, pie charts and other charts in your ad copy. Use charts that will grab a person's eye and also support your product claims. For example, if you are selling a product that boosts website traffic, a screenshot of your site's traffic stats can be very effective.

2. Highlight buying incentives like free bonuses and money back guarantees. You could place them in boxes or in front of a different colored background.

3. Use short sentences or sentence fragments in body of your ad copy. A short burst of words can catch a skimmer's eye with one quick glance.

4. Highlight all important keywords and phrases in your ad copy. You could use bolding, underlining and color to highlight important words. I see keywords both bolded and highlited in yellow in many ads nowadays.