Forums have been taking quite a bit of a hit over the past few years.
In fact, very large affiliate marketing forums have dropped off a cliff.
One notable exception to that is this forum.
But if you were to look at the top forums from 10 years ago, most of them are almost nowhere to be found in top results on Google.
Google has changed the baseline of how forums get traffic from user search.
If you want to reverse the downward slide in your forum traffic, you might want to consider what other niche forums in other industries have done.
They have tightened the interconnection between their threads and their social media presence, as well as Quora and other platforms.
I'm not sure how sustainable that strategy is, but from what I've seen, it has done quite a good job of recovering some lost traffic.
But given Google's recent changes and its strong anti-spam AI updates, it's anybody's guess how long the strategy can hold.
It goes without saying that forums that feature real engagement and real content offering users value stand to survive this sea change better than automated or spam-heavy forums.
