Discussion boards are without doubt one of the best ways to get traffic to your website and heaps of backlinks without doing that much work. In this article I hope to show you how to fully utilise the power of community forums, and there is a list of dos and don’ts at the end for quick reference.
For a start, what is a discussion forum? Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an easy question to answer, but as with everything in site promotion, we must analyse even straightforward factors so that we can really employ them to our benefit. Backin Roman times, a forum was a ‘public space in the middle of a Roman city’ where people would sell items and meet up to socialise. The term ‘discussion forum’ in its Internet sense, is generally accepted to be a niche-specific community where people can post and reply to comments about a theme, and interact with each other.
In case you are a bit perplexed by the term ‘niche-specific’, it just means that it is targeted to a certain topic, such as cars, or cooking. In this case, both ‘cars’ and ‘cooking’ are niches. If you are a webmaster, you may be part of some webmaster discussion boards such as the famous DigitalPoint forums. DigitalPoint will be talked about further later on in this article.
So now that we understand what a forum is, let’s get into the real stuff of how you can use discussion boards to promote your site. First off, you must choose a discussion forum that you like and can imagine yourself spending some time on posting. It should also be relevant to your website’s topic. For example, if you are advertising a ‘cooking’ website, do not think of promoting your site on a ‘cars’ forum. To find discussion boards related to your site do a search on google for “‘…’ ‘forums’”. Replace ‘…’ with a keyword related to your site such as ‘cooking’.
Once you have picked a discussion forum, you have to sign up to it. The registration process varies depending on the discussion board, but in general you have to fill out some information and get emailed your login details. Discussion forum registration will be free 99.99% of the time, so don’t worry about having to pay money. After you have logged in successful it’s time to update your profile.
You should now update your profile. Again, this may vary from forum to forum, but your profile normally has space to enter a forum ‘signature’ or your website url. A signature is tagged onto the end of every comment you post on the forum and is the best way of promoting your site on discussion boards. In the signature field you should put a link to your site. If there is a website address field on your profile, then fill that out too.
Note: Some discussion boards require you to have posted a minimum amount of times before you can add a signature. If this is the case, then just read on and come back to this step later.
It is time to get posting. Remember, don’t spam. Never spam. You’ll get kicked off or banned, and then you have wasted all of your time. Make smart posts, and hopefully if you’ve chosen a related community forum, you will know the topic pretty well. Do not focus on promotion at the moment, just answer questions, post comments, anything to try and get up your reputation. If you have already got a signature, then that should show up at the end of each of your posts which counts as a link back to your site each time. If you have yet to get a signature because of minimum post requirements, fill it in when you have reached that amount of posts.
If you’re stumped choosing a message board, then I would recommend you check out DigitalPoint. You can get a load of visitors through this website and it is very valued in the search engine’s eyes.
Here are a list of discussion forum dos and don’ts:
Do…
Add a link to your website in your signature
Post informative/intelligent comments
Visit the community forum often
Don’t…
Sound artificial/promotional in your comments
Add a link to your website and then disappear
Be inactive on the message board
If you have the time, sign up to more than one community forum so that you get more chances of getting site visitors and backlinks. Post on your chosen discussion forum(s) often, and each time you’ll obtain an extra backlink with your post. Also, try and get a good reputation by making useful posts, as this will make people want to check out your website. Always remember, to be successful, advertise your website in other ways as well as discussion forums, such as submitting it to web directories such as Best Website Directory. I wish you the best of luck and happy posting!
Readers that are searching the Internet for more info about the niche of internet marketing, please go to the web site which is mentioned in this passage.