Webmaster Forums

Here are some great forums and services for learning more about optimizing your site and getting higher search engine rankings. There are some very clever people who hang out in these forums so you are going to learn a lot about search engines, optimizing your pages to rank well, and many other topics.

• SEO Chat - Part of the Developer Shed network and easily one of the most popular forums for webmasters. SEO Chat has a very good collection of informative articles on search engine optimization, as well as good discussion on day to day SEO issues.

• Search Engine Watch - Quickly evolved into an industry leader in terms of search engine news. Signup for the SearchDay newsletter and receive search engine news daily.

• WebmasterWorld - The highest Alexa ranking for an SEO related forum. The large number of members can be a bit overwhelming but if you ask a focused question, you'll probably get a reply within a few minutes. They also have a paid membership section where you can discuss more complicated issues with the pros.

• HighRankings - This forum is focused mainly on increasing your website rankings. Although somewhat less formal than the other forums, you can pick up a lot of "in the trenches" strategic advice for improving your rankings. There are several good resources available as well such as a comprehensive guide to linking strategies.

• Search Engine Roundtable - Excellent SEO advice concerned with the ethics of SEO tactics.

• Threadwatch - Nick Wilson's Threadwatch.org looks like a blog (individual blog posts) but acts more like a forum (anyone can register and then post on the blog). Threadwatch gets the news to you fast, and it covers everything from SEO to marketing to search engines to technology issues.

• Search Engine Watch Blog - Top SEO people such as Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman cover all the good stuff on the SEW blog.

• SEOmoz - a unique perspective on SEO. Rand (or randfish, as he's known in the SEO forums) is also the author of "Search Engine Ranking Factors" - a list of "key" SEO factors a webmaster should keep in mind.

• Stuntdubl - A blog with an emphasis on quality writing. A good source for finding out how search engines actually work.