Website Design Blog of Alfred Fox

May  0717

Using Forums and Blogs to Drive Traffic To Your Website

Using Forums and Blogs to Drive Traffic To Your Website
Posted in SEO

There are many ways to drive traffic to a website. One very effective means of doing so is using others peoples websites for link backs. It's not always easy to get high ranking websites to link back to yours, especially if your site doesn't really offer them anything (no offense of course). Using this method you can get high ranking websites to link back to you in turn boosting your traffic, Google Page Rank, and more.

Forums
Many of us post in forums. I personally post in quite a few as well as own several so this method works fairly well for me. Most forums allow you to have a Signature that gets attached at the end of your posts. If you're not familiar with this, look around on a few forums below people's posts. You'll see links to personal sites, images, witty phrases, etc. This is a way to express yourself on forums but can also be used to generate a FREE link back.

Now I'm not advocating spamming in anyway, but it is common knowledge, especially in popular forums, your posts can be read thousands, even millions of times. Think about that. All kinds of visitors could see a link to your site. Not a bad deal eh? There are a few ethics that should be adhered to though. Don't sign up for forums just to put link backs. If you're going to sign up for a forum and use your signature for self promotion, contribute something positive to the forums otherwise you will be labeled a spammer in no time. Besides, are they not doing you a huge favor by allowing you to post a link back? Also, don't abuse this privilege. More and more forums are disabling links and self promotion in forums because of this. Don't add to this cause. It only takes a few people to ruin a really good thing.

Blogs
Blogs are also a very good way to generate traffic to your website. Just like forums, many blogs allow you to post comments. Many of these will ask you for a website which then will generate a link back. Play around with this (but again, be ethical, don't spam and abuse). For instance, in this blog, a website is asked for when you post a comment. If you leave it blank, no link is generated, but if you put in a website your name will turn into a link to your website on the comments section. Many blogs are like this. Take this a step further... Google, for instance isn't going to be too impressed if you have the key word 'Steven' linking to your site about say... Rodeos. (Wow, nice job on that one). Anyway, so why not try to incorporate a key word into your name? 'Rodeo Steve', 'Rodeo Guy', etc.

I can't stress enough though the fine line between a small link and SPAM. Spam is not tolerated anywhere and I certainly don't advocate it . In fact, I hate it. There is nothing worse than getting 200 emails a day telling you that someone has commented on your blog only to find its some misguided, over enthusiastic, website owner who has an infatuation with Viagra or Cialis. Don't be that guy / girl / bot!

I hope you find this informative. Simple signature posts, blog posts can really help generate a lot of traffic. But once again, should be used responsibly and with consideration for the site your posting on. With that said, happy posting.

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Comments for Using Forums and Blogs to Drive Traffic To Your Website

Chris - 8/28/2007
Great article Alfred. Would you recommend blogs as a more effective tool that forums or are they both equally effective?
Alfred - 8/28/2007
Chris, Thanks for visiting. I have found as of late that Blogs seem to be more effective in increasing Google PR and Alexa Ranking. As for getting / acquiring traffic, both forums and blogs seems to be about equal in my experience. You always have to consider things like subject matter, and site content.

If you've posted with the keywords 'Lizard Food' (for example) in a forum full of dog enthusiasts, you can probably expect to not get as many hits as you would if you posted in a reptile forum or on a blog in that subject. If your link is relevant, you'll get a pretty equal amount of visitors.