Are Forums Easy to Outrank with SEO?

[DanielS]

Would taking note of the keywords/search terms a niche-specific forum is ranking for be a good way to find low competition keywords? I've heard that forums are easily outranked, so if a forum is ranking for a keyword, wouldn't that keyword be easy to rank for with a normal website?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Would taking note of the keywords/search terms a niche-specific forum is ranking for be a good way to find low competition keywords? (...) I've heard that forums are easily outranked, so if a forum is ranking for a keyword, wouldn't that keyword be easy to rank for with a normal website?

Yes, I think so. Forums suck for SEO for the most part, including sites like Quora and StackExchange except they have monster backlink profiles at this point. The problem is two-fold. They have bad on-page and it's all user-generated content. I'd go for the "question" type keywords that aren't already dominated by Quora and similar big sites. I've competed with the big ones too though, it's all possible, once your domain is juicy enough. But yes, this is a reasonable tactic.