Forums and blogs are becoming an ever more popular resource for technicians looking to research tough hardware or software problems. Their rise in popularity is both a result of the growth of online technical communities, such as the www.Tech-Army.org, that discuss IT problems and the traffic that is driven to these sites though search engine results that list forums and blogs as highly relevant matches for the search query.
If you have Goggled a tech problem in the last several years you will have undoubtedly seen results from some tech forum on the first page of Google. Often times this happens because of the closeness of match, as the forum thread linked in the Google result is most likely very vertical with a strong correlation to your search. Another factor is that forums are often updated, more often at least than static web pages, so they may get a boost in the Google algorithm for freshness.
Of course Computer Service Now is a member of the Tech-Army.org so we use the Tech-Army Technical Discussion Forum to both list solutions to common tech problems that we encounter as well as answering questions from other forum members.
If you are looking to start a blog or a forum for your business you may want to look at Blogger or WordPress for blogging, or the WebWiz forum software for a simple easy to manage forum solution. Once up and running of course be sure to prominently link your blog or forum from your website and take every opportunity to market and promote its use.
