Making a Forum "Popular"

[funrockerz]

Hello Fellows,
i Just installed my first Forum(phpbb3) on my old Domain.. ..
I know very well that "Content is king" and i also know- every New thing takes time to get popular..
but i want to know is ..

if there are other things which i should do .. Which i dont know..

Like in Blogging - we submit sitemaps, all in one seo packs,etc etc ..
But what in Forums?


Thanks in adv..waiting for replies

[jelderkin]

I am no expert so my knowledge is only limited but I have heard that forums can be very hard to get started due to the fact that if you havn't got lots of members then your forum is going to be pretty empty looking and not very active.

Of course content is always top of your list with building any site, the more members you can get posting and having conversations is a big plus on forums.

I would post lots of threads with are likely to start long conversations and about subjects that catch the eye and are very popular.

I'm sure there are plenty of other people on here who will have great advice on this subject too.

Good luck with your venture anyhow.

P.S why not look into hiring people to post on your forum I can't imagine it will be that expensive just make sure they post relevant topics related to your niche.

[Raylau]

Start doing SEO as we do for normal websites. For optimizing forum there is something different to do :

* We available as a moderator
* Banned the users who post duplicate contents
* Allow to users to set their signature so that webmaster will also attract to your forum
* Off course do forum posting in other forum with your forum link

try this will helps

[jelderkin]

Can I ask what top/niche your forum is aimed at???

[C.Rebecca]

There are no short cuts available for promoting a forum. You have to promote it manually or sometimes with some tricks.

1. Create a forum with user friendly navigation
2. Segregate all categories properly
3. Hire or Choose some moderators from your existing members... Do not hesitate in offering remuneration
4. Tell your moderators to jump in ongoing discussions
5. Tel your moderators to start new informative threads
6. Promote your forum on other niche related forums
7. Get relevant backlinks to improve your keyword rankings
8. Allow people to post their blogs and give them backlinks in return
9. Keep the signature limit low in the beginning and raise it gradually to control spam
10. Hire some members to make your forum active in order to attract new members

[clydefrog]

when it comes to running a new forum, there are a lot of things that come into play. from the layout of the site, to the ease of usability. you're best bet to get the forum active is to get a number of close friends to start posting to make the forum active, and advertise, and hope people come swing by.

[Mujahid]

Many years ago, I wrote an article "How to get activity on your new forum". I'm sharing the link with you, i hope it'll help.

http://www.selfseo.com/story-19343.php

[xclgreen]

raylau hit main thought on how to make your forum excel. i am glad also i was able to read this thread so i can try this idea also. thank you.

[trojan]

Just use an RSS poster plugin to populate some of your sub forums with a bunch of threads or buy a forum DB in your niche and start with that for a content base. Getting members to join the forum is the same as getting readers on a blog to comment, you have to give them a good reason, usually rss content won't help so you'll need to build quality content too. there are forums that swap members for a small fee - pick a niche you'll be able to compete in and one that isn't over saturated with competition from other forums etc.

If all else fails just make registration easy, let spammers take over the forum, build it up till you have over 1/4mil spam accounts and a ton of spam accounts then clean it up and keep the rss aggregated content and flip it to someone that doesn't know any better for a few grand.

[jelderkin]

No one with 2 grand to spend on a site is going to be stupid enough to buy a site that generates no profit, has no original content and no genuine users. Please be serious

[sundancerz]

Originally Posted by trojan

If all else fails just make registration easy, let spammers take over the forum, build it up till you have over 1/4mil spam accounts and a ton of spam accounts then clean it up and keep the rss aggregated content and flip it to someone that doesn't know any better for a few grand.

Are you serious? I hope not. That's one hum-dinger of a terrible idea.

[diychuck]

Fighting spam is your biggest problem. Search engines hate spam and will penalise your site if they find it!

Watch out for people creating profiles but not posting, they come back months later and then put links in their profiles to porn sites etc. This nearly got me banned from Google adsense once as it happened on a forum I do not check every day. Google sent me an email giving me 2 days to remove the spam or they would suspend my account. Just imagine if I was in hospital or on vacation and could not get to a computer- it would of seriously screwed me up!

[jelderkin]

Yea you really do have to moderate forums so much more than any other type of site due to spam

[Tedel]

Can a search engine really penalize you for taking a little time in removing spam? I am more concered about losing visitors because of that.

[jelderkin]

If your forum becomes full of spam sooner or later your site will get unindexed

[sundancerz]

A forum full of spam will also lose any members who frequent it...which will make it useless as a forum and Google will see the same thing. Starting a forum today is going to be a tough road to travel and more than likely you'll fail. Most all the forums that have good traffic have been around for years...something you'll have to compete with unless you've found a nitch no ones uncovered yet ant it'll still be tough.

[diychuck]

It's not just a case of loosing indexed pages in search engines. If you have just one member on your site that puts a porn link in his profile and Google adsense appears on the same page as the profile it can get you banned.

[Grant Draper]

I've used VB and VBSEO. VBSEO has only been recently installed so I can't really see if it's had massive affect. I have some OK backlinks and get fairly good rankings for keyphrases and some article keywords too which is good

[itpixelz]

As my observation S E O on right place i mean posting in related forums blogs and social bookmarking take place important role to promote your forum