Forum Advice
 

Hi,

I going to start a new forum.

My question is; Should I have the forum, itself in the root directory or create a landing page first?

Maybe the landing page could have my keywords and a few ads, which might help in ranking?

Any thoughts or advice would be great.

Thx,
Dan

Re: Forum Advice
 

I use PHPBBB to make my forums and instead of a home page I access the PHP template that makes the main forum page and customize it.

That way the main page is often changing with content but better serves my purpose by customizing it.

If you want some examples of these forums let me know.

Thomas Prendergast

Re: Forum Advice
 

Hi Dan,
I think that at main forum page you can add keywords, title and description (maybe you need edit template code), also when you create a frorum category and forum description make it keyword related. I think, this will help you in ranking better than landing page.
You can have always at top and bottom of forum some banners for advertising and get some income from it.

Re: Forum Advice
 

I would start out making a forum in a root directory. There is so much you can do from there including rss feeds and linking to other popular forums.

Once you get a couple main forums, then maybe subdomains off of websites and lead capture pages where you can always link back to your main forums. Search Engines love forums and the crawlers will spend a lot of time in them once you get them up and running with good content.

Re: Forum Advice
 

Hi Dan,
What is your intention? Leads? (landing page then kewords and content applies) or forum content (and of course keywords and content are relevent here too) and so not necessarily obtaining leads. You could say have different landing pages in different subdomains then each subdomain leading to different catagories in the forum which could be in the main domain. The tricky part here though is where does a subscriber go when they land on the main site. I am not a believer in redirects so you would not want to send them back to your landing pages but have perhaps separate registration pages on the main blog directing the subscribers to different catagories.

Brian Walters SEO

Re: Forum Advice
 

I want to put together a local hometown sports forum. I talk sports with my friends and figured this would expand it. I would have about 15 people ready to join.

The idea is to make a few bucks while building it, then sell it. You never know how it might turn out.

The mind is always turning.

Thx,
Dan

Re: Forum Advice
 

Since your not really looking to get the leads, and if you want you can email the members through the admin panel anyway. I would set it up on your root domain. Also, if you later decide to make it a membership site then you just change the membership ratings in your admin panel as well.

Re: Forum Advice
 

This is a perfect scenario for things I write about when I write articles for clients.

You can make a hobby into a money-making venture. You have the forum or even just a blog discussing your favorite interest. You can include lots of stats and interesting content for those who share your passion. Stories about the pros, etc.

Then you can monetize it by selling stuff that is related on your sidebar (like on a blog). Of course my example is golf because I can think of more things to sell than baseball.

Like golf clubs, golf shoes, golf lessons, golf instructions, etc.

This is the perfect way to build interest/traffic and do passive selling.

NATURAL, organic traffic.