Forum Takeover

[UkDude]

Hi i have decided on a niche to focus on but have noticed there is a forum which has started with a pretty accurate domain name and around 15,000 topics and around 85,000 posts on its forum. Is it possible to overtake this forum and become the niche leader or is it too late that it would cost too much time+$$$ to overthrow.
I have thought i can build my own forum and perhaps pay for spam content also to negatively affect the other forum.
Also i could just scrape all the posts and import them into my forum and see what happens with the google rank etc..?

any thoughts or ideas on what would be a good plan of action??

 

[ija61]

You can rank higher than that forum but not using the method you posted.

 

[sbsc]

You can rank higher than that forum but not using the method you posted.

if not this method then how?

In my view you already have a blue print what works
what are the questions people ask and what type of answer are requried

and you also need organic traffic.

so content + traffic + activity

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Scraping the competitor is a short term solution, as he'd probably get you DMCA'd pretty quickly. If your strategy is short term, hit and run, you may get away with it. But if you're building a forum for the long run, I wouldn't scrape it.

Community building is not easy, you will need to invest $$$ and time. AND you need a differential, what makes folks use your forum and not the larger one?

 

[sbsc]

I agree scraping is not a good idea..
but you see people discussing topic asking questions
rephrase them

if that thread is getting 10 replies then your thread should get more replyies


articles...
you can easily find popular threads in that forum
write genuine high quality article on that topic...
and post it as a new thread...

after this you need to make that thread look active...


backlinking
onsite seo is another part.

and yes rome was not built in a day......

with fake activity you can make your forum a success

 

[seocrab]

Post scraping is not a good idea. Try a new take on the niche, or if you must compete directly, use a service like post loop to get content. You could also hire some seo-ers to create content for you to start it off. If you provide helpful info for people, they will come. Good luck.