[Guide] How to gain more traffic on your site!

[Michael]

As many people have wondered on how do I get more members on my website/forum? Well, I will talk about that with you today.

Lack of traffic is what new webmasters have to deal with and is quite difficult to build a community if you have little resources. This thread is made in attempt to help you increase traffic and hopefully build some sort of a community. Keep in mind that you need money in order to do this. I know.. it may be difficult for some people but this is the way.

1. Starting a forum - A forum ranks for keywords and increases your chances of having a stable community.

2. Promoting your site via social media - Use your accounts to advertise your website/forum. This is one of the free ways but it is quite difficult if you don't have a lot of followers/likes.

3. Post Actively - Be active on your own forums and actually take care of it like you would with a child.

4. Purchasing advertisements - Go to other promotion sites and ask if you can advertise. They will most likely ask for payment but it will be worth it in the end. You can always do it the free way and advertise in the promotion section.

5. Reddit - Post your website on sub reddits... It actually works.

6. Use YouTube - Have a YouTube channel that has a good amount of subscribers? Be sure to use that and they should come on to your website and check it out.

7. Associate with other sites in your category - Talk to other owners that are in your caterogy and make some sort of friendship with them and they should let you advertise.

8. Add your website in signatures - Only if they allow it.

9. Interaction - Interact with your community as much as possible. They want to feel apart of something.

Hope this has helped you!

 

[JLogan]

In regards to Reddit, it does work but you shouldn't abuse it. Keep self-promotion to a minimum. The Reddit community as a whole doesn't really like constant self-promotion.

 

[fcuco]

In regards to Reddit, it does work but you shouldn't abuse it. Keep self-promotion to a minimum. The Reddit community as a whole doesn't really like constant self-promotion.

This is extremely important, of course you are not going to be the first one to figure out that Reddit is going to score you a sweet amount of free publicity and traffic if you simply go ahead and self post your own stuff, and that's why people on Reddit usually hate that kind of behavior. That being said, each sub reddit is really a small and self contained micro cosmos, the small niche sub reddits usually are actually struggling for content and the moderators are going to be very open and welcoming to content that fits that particular niche. Of course, your content has to be relevant to the particular sub reddit and as long as you don't push it too far you are going to be fine, just don't try to self post your blog to a sub reddit like news or something because you are going to get down voted into oblivion.

 

[cortana]

Just starting a forum does NOT increase your traffic at all. You can start 100 forums, but that doesn't mean anyone knows about them and it certainly doesn't mean they will rank high in Google.

Your # 1 tip is not true.

 

[fcuco]

Just starting a forum does NOT increase your traffic at all. You can start 100 forums, but that doesn't mean anyone knows about them and it certainly doesn't mean they will rank high in Google.

Your # 1 tip is not true.

I think the OP is referring to starting a forum and them making sure that the forum becomes and stays active, just like he states at his third point, not simply installing and configuring some forum software on your server because, you are right, an empty forum is useless in terms of Google rank.

I do believe that a forum is a great tool if you manage to kick start it, it gives people a reason to go back to your site to respond to posts and such and it is a great way for creating communities, so the tip is still valid, worst case scenario the forum remains empty but since you should be able to add a forum for free to your existing site I see no reason for not doing it, ok, maybe it doesn't help but certainly it is not going to hurt your site either.

 

[cortana]

I run forums. They don't grow or generate any traffic whatsoever without tons of work.

For the OP to suggest that someone opens a forum and it will simply bring traffic is both irresponsibly wrong and terribly misleading.

In fact, just opening any site doesn't mean a damn thing.

Every site you open requires work, but forums especially require ten fold the amount of work because no one goes to an inactive forum and stays.

So what will HOPEFULLY NOT happen here is that someone will read those tips and go waste hundreds of dollars on a forum script + addons and then realize they have NO clue what they're doing and NO traffic.

A person would be wiser to start a free Facebook group then ask his users if they want to move to a private sector for better conversation and more freedom.

 

[fcuco]

Look, I am with you, the advise was not particularly good. If you have a very low traffic website and add a forum to it, you are only going to have an empty forum with the same amount of traffic that you had before, but, yet again, it may not be particularly helpful but it is definitely not harmful since it increases your chances a little tinny bit. Of course I was talking about using some of the free forum alternatives, at least to begin with, and then maybe moving into some paid platform if your traffic justifies it, it would be insane to spend a large sum on deploying a forum and expect that to bring you tons of traffic, that will never happen.

 

[jc banks]

I know its not considered proper to use a free site but it don’t hurt to start with one it gives you practice and you can find your voice and still get followers. They may not get ranked as well, but if you got good content, updates and know your area, you will rank and people will find you.If you have a YouTube channel it don’t hurt to use it to promote your sites add a link join a group and share back links to related content. Collaboration can help you a lot.