Building Message Boards - Good for traffic / Links - Why?

[sbones]

Hello,

I need some advice on building message boards. I have a content driven site struggling to build traffic. I am implementing a article syndication strategy. I have heard about connecting my site with a forum that could boost traffic, rankings, links, and with ads, revenue. But how does this work exactly and why haven't I heard more about it in the PR threads?

I do know of a site that earns about 50% of their revenue from a highly active forum with ads but it's a content based non article syndication style site. Building forums is a lot of hard work and I don't want to waste too much time on it if there are better way to achieve the same result.

Is building a message board forum worth the effort?

With all that said, what is the best forum building strategy you know of?

What tools are available to help?

What is the best forum software to use?

THANKS!!!!

[URbanWorld]

Originally Posted by sbones

Hello,

I need some advice on building message boards. I have a content driven site struggling to build traffic. I am implementing a article syndication strategy. I have heard about connecting my site with a forum that could boost traffic, rankings, links, and with ads, revenue. But how does this work exactly and why haven't I heard more about it in the PR threads?

I do know of a site that earns about 50% of their revenue from a highly active forum with ads but it's a content based non article syndication style site. Building forums is a lot of hard work and I don't want to waste too much time on it if there are better way to achieve the same result.

Is building a message board forum worth the effort?

With all that said, what is the best forum building strategy you know of?

What tools are available to help?

What is the best forum software to use?

THANKS!!!!

I have three forums and two of them have a PR of 2. If you're interested in a link exchange, feel free to PM me and we can exchange info.

Is building a message board forum worth the effort? They do take a lot of time to get off the ground and many never catch on, but the very popular ones are certainly worth the effort.

With all that said, what is the best forum building strategy you know of? Having a forum that contains plenty of info regarding the subject the forum is related to.

What tools are available to help? Not sure.

What is the best forum software to use? you could try Fiverr to see if you could pay people to post, otherwise I'm not sure of any software.

[Matt Morgan]

It is worth the effort but will take time to get off the ground.

You might have to do the first posts yourself but when you get it started it can be a community to bring in some good search engine traffic.

[sbones]

Originally Posted by URbanWorld

I have three forums and two of them have a PR of 2. If you're interested in a link exchange, feel free to PM me and we can exchange info.

Is building a message board forum worth the effort? They do take a lot of time to get off the ground and many never catch on, but the very popular ones are certainly worth the effort.

With all that said, what is the best forum building strategy you know of? Having a forum that contains plenty of info regarding the subject the forum is related to.

What tools are available to help? Not sure.

What is the best forum software to use? you could try Fiverr to see if you could pay people to post, otherwise I'm not sure of any software.

Thanks Urban!

I don't have enough posts to PM yet. You can try to PM me.

[sbones]

Originally Posted by Matt Morgan

It is worth the effort but will take time to get off the ground.

You might have to do the first posts yourself but when you get it started it can be a community to bring in some good search engine traffic.

Thanks Matt!

Can you explain though how it works. I understand how to build the forums from scratch but how does it build traffic? By people finding the forum then following links back to the site? And how does it build links? By putting links in the posts?

Thanks!

[URbanWorld]

Originally Posted by sbones

Thanks Urban!

I don't have enough posts to PM yet. You can try to PM me.

I just tried, but don't have enough Posts yet.

[sbones]

Originally Posted by URbanWorld

I just tried, but don't have enough Posts yet.

Hahaha! I guess we better keep posting then huh?

Are we allowed to exchange email in here??

[Matt Morgan]

Originally Posted by sbones

Thanks Matt!

Can you explain though how it works. I understand how to build the forums from scratch but how does it build traffic? By people finding the forum then following links back to the site? And how does it build links? By putting links in the posts?

Thanks!

You build traffic by the posts/threads getting ranked in the search engines,

so if you have a relationship forum, and somebody makes a post of "relationship tips"

and the number of posts expands and gets larger, then the search engines should hopefully rank this thread.

if 4 months later, somebody enters in google
"relationship tips", then that Thread on relationship tips can get in the top 20 rankings in google, so somebody will click it and go to your forum, so will be on your own forum.

You can have an optin form there, and collect their email address to help build your list, for an additional hidden way to make money- via your list


You can build links pointing to the domain of the forum, 1 way links, backlinks, reciprocal links, paid links etc. Make sure the site the links are coming from are in a similar theme of your forum.

[URbanWorld]

Originally Posted by sbones

Hahaha! I guess we better keep posting then huh?

Are we allowed to exchange email in here??

I have no idea. I found a couple of interesting posts and signed up with out reading the tos. Though I doubt it will be a problem. I've always been a little hesitant about posting my e-mail in a public forum, but if you post yours I'll gladly send you an e-mail.

[gurusconcept]

i need 60 backlinks to my website

[sbones]

Originally Posted by Matt Morgan

You build traffic by the posts/threads getting ranked in the search engines,

so if you have a relationship forum, and somebody makes a post of "relationship tips"

and the number of posts expands and gets larger, then the search engines should hopefully rank this thread.

if 4 months later, somebody enters in google
"relationship tips", then that Thread on relationship tips can get in the top 20 rankings in google, so somebody will click it and go to your forum, so will be on your own forum.

You can have an optin form there, and collect their email address to help build your list, for an additional hidden way to make money- via your list


You can build links pointing to the domain of the forum, 1 way links, backlinks, reciprocal links, paid links etc. Make sure the site the links are coming from are in a similar theme of your forum.

Thanks for the great tips Matt!

[sbones]

Originally Posted by Matt Morgan

You build traffic by the posts/threads getting ranked in the search engines,

so if you have a relationship forum, and somebody makes a post of "relationship tips"

and the number of posts expands and gets larger, then the search engines should hopefully rank this thread.

if 4 months later, somebody enters in google
"relationship tips", then that Thread on relationship tips can get in the top 20 rankings in google, so somebody will click it and go to your forum, so will be on your own forum.

You can have an optin form there, and collect their email address to help build your list, for an additional hidden way to make money- via your list


You can build links pointing to the domain of the forum, 1 way links, backlinks, reciprocal links, paid links etc. Make sure the site the links are coming from are in a similar theme of your forum.

Originally Posted by URbanWorld

I have no idea. I found a couple of interesting posts and signed up with out reading the tos. Though I doubt it will be a problem. I've always been a little hesitant about posting my e-mail in a public forum, but if you post yours I'll gladly send you an e-mail.

Hi Urban, I guess I have the same concerns posting my e-mail. I do have a biz e-mail but I don't want to offend the admins by posting something that could be construed as a link to my site. I should cross the post barrier very soon, once I do I will PM you for sure!

[URbanWorld]

Originally Posted by sbones

Hi Urban, I guess I have the same concerns posting my e-mail. I do have a biz e-mail but I don't want to offend the admins by posting something that could be construed as a link to my site. I should cross the post barrier very soon, once I do I will PM you for sure!

Sounds good. I'll also work on my post count.

[sbones]

Originally Posted by URbanWorld

Sounds good. I'll also work on my post count.

Will do! Keep a watch out for my posts, I ask lots of questions.

[sbones]

Just to follow up on my original question of how to build a forum I found this advice:

At the beginning creat no more than 4 topics in very general categories. As traffic grows you can split these off into their own topics.

Post, post, post! Check everyday and make a post in every topic until you can get more people involved.

Ask friends and family to create accounts and chime in. Ask them to link to the forum from their social accounts.

Create Ghost accounts and use them to keep the conversation going in threads.

If any one wants to expand, improve, or rebuff any of these ideas please feel free to do so!

Thanks!

[fxprofitmountain]

Originally Posted by URbanWorld

I have three forums and two of them have a PR of 2.

Hi URbanWorld - I have searched this forum and Google and still do not know what PR means..... will you please tell me what this means? Pretty sure it is not "Public Relations" .........

[fxprofitmountain]

Originally Posted by fxprofitmountain

Hi URbanWorld - I have searched this forum and Google and still do not know what PR means..... will you please tell me what this means? Pretty sure it is not "Public Relations" .........

I just figured it out...... "Page Rank"

[URbanWorld]

Originally Posted by fxprofitmountain

I just figured it out...... "Page Rank"

You are exactly right!

[fxprofitmountain]

Hi There-

If anyone is able to send me to the correct discussion, I would be grateful. I have searched here on the forum and have not found what I am looking for...

Basically I want to learn about the positives and negatives of:

- SEO with regard to a private forum (members pay for access)
- SEO with regard to a public forum

The obvious choice would be to use a public forum for SEO benefits, but I have heard it is possible to have a private forum that is "discoverable" by the search engines, and thus it will help SEO, but not sure exactly how this works or even where to go to learn about this.

If anyone has any suggestions, please do pass them along.

Many thanks!

[RevSEO]

Are forums worth it? Depends on your niche and how you plan on getting members.

They are very tough to get active, but once they begin to hit a critical mass its all smooth sailing from there (aside from moderation).

Keep in mind that you'll want to probably open it to the public and Google/search engine bots so that your threads/content actually begin to rank for keywords. That will help drive traffic and in turn drive member count and forum activity.

So analyze the competition before starting and then go after it if you think theres an opening.

[tebor79]

I started a regional forum as a hobby because I like discussing whats happening in my city.

I did put adsense on it to try and regain the 10$ per year for domain.

There are several options of forum software. Vbulletin is prob the best, or most common anyway, but you have to pay for it, yearly I believe.
there are several free options. smf, phpbb, and mybb are the commons


I went with smf because it was available through fantastico on my host. Which meant no ftp required.

One SEO benefit would be free backlinks to other sites you own through profile and signatures of your account and your ghost accounts. You may want to use a different host so sites wont be on same IP.

The most time consuming part is logging in a few times a day to delete the spammers. I've also enlisted a couple of old friends as admins, they take pleasure in booting spammers and profile addresses to bad neighborhood type of sites.

My forum hasn't been very succesful. I just recently got to the first page of google for my chosen keywords *my region forum* which gets over 4000 monthly searches on google.

One way for good attention to your forum is controversy. An argument or a debate. People are opinionated and will join
a forum to mouth their onion on a hotly debated topic.

My friend and I started arguments and it worked. People were signing up just to chime in.