I’m continuing my series of posts about different types of backlinks. In my previous post, I covered profile backlinks. Now I want to take a closer look at forum crowd backlinks: what they are, why they are still needed in 2026, and why they are so often misunderstood. Let’s go.
Forum backlinks are often automatically classified as spam. And, to be honest, there is a reason for that. When most people hear the term “crowd marketing,” they think of spam and imagine something like this:
🟢 find 100 dead forums
🟢 register accounts on them
🟢 write “I recommend this great website” in the very first post
🟢 insert the same link everywhere
🟢 repeat the process another 99 times using Xrumer
Obviously, this approach looks like complete garbage. It isn’t crowd marketing—it’s basic mass spam across platforms that haven’t had any real users for the past ten years.
What is a forum crowd backlink?
It is a link placed within a forum post or discussion. For example, someone asks, “Where is the best place to order motorcycle gear in Ukraine?”—just as an example.
Another user replies, shares their experience, and naturally mentions a store or includes a link. In other words, the link isn’t placed in the user’s profile, signature, or a separate article. It appears directly within a “live” or “semi-active” discussion. Ideally, the message should look as though the person would have written it even without the link. In my opinion, that is the main principle of proper crowd marketing.
Where should forum backlinks be placed?
The best option is when the topic of the forum—or at least the specific thread—is reasonably relevant to your project. If you’re promoting a motorcycle gear store and place a link in a discussion about helmets, jackets, or motorcycles, I think that’s logical and appropriate. If you place the same link on a fishing forum in a thread about winter bait, it already looks like complete nonsense. Create a relevant topic in the forum’s off-topic section and work the link into the discussion naturally.
Why do you need forum backlinks at all?
Let me say straight away that most forum backlinks won’t push your website into the TOP—that’s a fact 🙂 You can’t publish 100 forum posts and expect a commercial keyword to reach the TOP 3 within a week. Forum backlinks are not a substitute for strong outreach links, PBNs, guest posts, or links from relevant industry media. Once you understand that, life becomes much easier)) Forum backlinks serve slightly different purposes.
a) Diversifying your backlink profile
Just like profile backlinks, forum links help make your backlink profile more diverse. Believe it or not, people still discuss brands in forum threads, share links, leave reviews, recommend services, ask questions, and argue with one another. Google the name of your city plus the word “forum,” and you’ll travel back in time and see how people still communicate on forums))
If a website has nothing but expensive editorial backlinks, its backlink profile can look far too sterile. Forum backlinks create a background layer of links and make stronger placements look more natural.
b) Adding brand mentions
Forums are a good place to use not only commercial anchor text but also more natural variations:
🟢 brand name;
🟢 brand website;
🟢 brand URL;
🟢 official website;
🟢 this service;
🟢 found it here;
🟢 you can find more information at this link.
Sometimes you can simply mention the brand without adding an active link at all. A natural backlink profile isn’t made up of 500 identical “buy motorcycle gear” anchors. It should contain brand names, URLs, unanchored links, and ordinary user-generated phrases.
c) Generating clicks and referral traffic—and this isn’t a joke
This is where forum backlinks can be more valuable than profile links. Almost nobody clicks a profile backlink because nobody really cares about a random user profile. A good forum thread, however, can receive traffic from Google for years. If you naturally add your link and it genuinely answers the user’s question, people may click through to your website.
Recommendations tend to look less suspicious when they answer questions such as where to download an app, what people think about a company, or which service to choose. “Where to buy” threads are very easy to spot nowadays.
d) Helping with indexing
Forums are often crawled regularly by Google’s bots. Google generally likes UGC—Reddit and Quora are good examples. If a thread is open for indexing, isn’t buried ten levels deep, and is periodically updated with new messages, the link may be indexed faster.
However, the logic here is the same as with profile backlinks. Until the forum page itself is indexed, the link provides virtually no benefit. You can place 100 forum backlinks, but only 20 of them may be indexed by Google. That’s why you should submit forum links for indexing using Telegram bots.
Is nofollow bad?
Most forums automatically add the following attributes to user-generated links:
🟢 nofollow
🟢 ugc
🟢 sometimes both nofollow and ugc
Does that make the link useless? I don’t think so. Yes, a dofollow link can potentially pass more link equity. But passing PageRank isn’t the main purpose of crowd marketing. If you confidently build nothing but dofollow links with commercial anchors, that doesn’t look natural either. A real backlink profile will always contain a mixture of dofollow, nofollow, UGC links, redirects, and plain brand mentions. Just look at the backlink profiles of Twitter, YouTube, and Amazon.
Why do forum backlinks get deleted?
Because they often genuinely look like spam. Here is the classic pattern:
🟢 the account was registered today;
🟢 there is no profile picture;
🟢 there is no description;
🟢 the account has zero previous posts;
🟢 the first post immediately contains a link;
🟢 the text looks like an advertisement;
🟢 the user disappears after posting it.
A moderator doesn’t need to be an SEO specialist to understand why that account was created. And you understand it perfectly well too)
Is placing forum backlinks still a viable strategy in 2026?
I believe it is—but only if you understand their proper role. If you use Xrumer to spam 50,000 dead forums with the same message and then wait for your rankings to improve, you will most likely end up with nothing but a garbage backlink profile.
But if you manually select decent platforms based on DR, some rankings, and at least a minimal amount of traffic, find relevant threads—or create them—build up the accounts, write normal replies, get the threads indexed, and then place branded or unanchored links, that is a completely different story.
Forum backlinks in 2026 are not a primary SEO tool. They are simply one small element of a broader link-building strategy. Once again, their purpose is to:
🟢 create a background layer of backlinks;
🟢 diversify the backlink profile;
🟢 add UGC links;
🟢 generate brand mentions;
🟢 maintain consistent link-building activity;
🟢 occasionally generate real traffic—if you’re very lucky.
As with profile backlinks, the key is not to set unrealistically high expectations. Don’t treat a $3–5 backlink like a $300 outreach placement or expect it to meet the same standards. Crowd links won’t replace strong backlinks. However, a backlink profile with no forums, profiles, comments, or other user-generated mentions often looks far too artificial.
What do you think about forum crowd backlinks? Do you still use them, or do you consider them spam and a complete waste of time? 👇
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