How to get more pageviews/user

Right now my forum is getting 2.86 pageviews per user. This is pretty low according to forum standards. I get a good amount of uniques.. around 200k a month but only getting about 450k pageviews a month. I know a lot of forums that get 7-10 pageviews per user. What is the best way to increase pageviews per user?

 

Adding modifications displaying "related topics" on the topic/post view pages is good.
Entice viewers and members into participating in contest

 

The main thing is content! Try to deliver more and more content frequently. On my forums, I usually do a certain type of system where I post 5 new topic on each board a day during the first 2 months of operation. This can be done longer obviously but there more content, the more information members, guests, lurkers and spiders have to view. There is a plus to doing this as well, even more, you get to add a lot of content to your forum giving members more to discuss and potential members something to join to reply to.

Next you need to get your forum link out. Join relevant forums and add your forum to the signature link. Just make sure you are allowed to first otherwise you may be seen as a spammer Submitting to directories help but I would focus on the big ones like DMOZ, BOTW and ones like that, more than the others. Facebook pages works too but again make sure you have permission to link to them and try to stay in relevant ones that share your forum's niche or are related somehow.

Its quite easy to grow your forum but it will take time

 

My forum is already established and we have over 1mil posts in the last 3 years. I have the traffic I just want to get more pageviews per user. I changed the posts per page from 20-10 and that has already given me an extra pageview per user going from 2.5ish to 3.5ish so thats a good step. I want to get to around the 6-7 mark though.

 

I notice that more of my posts get more page views when I keep the actual topics active with frequent replies from the forum members. Over a million posts on a forum is really good! You shouldn't be having that much issues with page views On the forum I am working on to get active now, I get about 5,000 page views a day and around 100,000 something page views a month. I am happy with those stats for right now but then again we don't have even 100,000 posts yet so those stats IMO are appropriate for the forum in its size.

However, I am sure more back links will help get more page views. I was able to get my forum PR3 in just a few months My trick is I added my domain to a lot of those free statistic pages like aboutus.org and ones like that. When you search for your domain on them, it will create a page for it and spiders will index it and thus you get a back link. I manually do it though as some paid services will likely get you banned before getting proper back links.

 

Remember thats an average , It includes guests which land on your site by accident or landed on your site and didnt see what they wanted to find so they left. On most high traffic forums guests often mess up statistics like the average time on site and average page views. Obviously it would be alot higher should you only count your members. However that does open up another question as to why people are landing on your site and not finding what they are looking for.

To me that would say that you are getting alot of un-targeted traffic.

I have a couple of forums with over a million page views a month, both site around the 7.38 pages per user mark with an average of 11 mins average time on site. That being said it also depends on the niche, I have another site which gets around 250k uniques however is the same as yours with visitors only visiting 2.5 pages per visit.

Another thing worth thinking about is the different types of forum script , if you are running xenforo then page views/impressions drop considerably over for example vbulletin because of the pretty Ajax features taking away users from having to keep refreshing pages etc.

 

Im running IPB. It used to run on Simple Machines and I noticed ever since the switch members, posts, topics, and just about every other stat are down. I am thinking about switching back to simple machine or moving to VB but I dont want anymore down time of the members. We get a thousands of guests per day but it only converts to about 6-10 members a day. What is a good way to get them to register?

 

While I would say switching to either of them might help out though software really doesn't have much to do with page views, I would still not recommend it...

If you forum members have already experienced you going to a new software, going back to another one or switching again may frustrate them and cause them to go inactive

For the time being, work on content building more and more and getting more members and I am truly sure your PVs will increase

 

There are plenty of stories around the net that many people including myself has had bad experiences regarding traffic and SEO with IPB, I personally wouldnt recommend it to anyone. If you thought it wouldnt cause too much of an upset in the community i personally wouldnt hesitate to switch to VB or xenforo however i wouldnt go backwards to SMF.

 

I think if I am going to switch now would be the time. Our active member base isnt large by any means. Maybe 100 active members per day and about 10-20 people make up the majority of the posts per day. For every 20 members online there are about 400 guests. I am thinking about moving to VB ill decide after I move to my new server.

 

I have a question? How is switching to SMF going backwards? :-\ I mean it offers just the same as XF even if you have to install a modification or two...

It seems like your one of them "if you use a paid software, your a better forum" type... Do correct me if I am wrong...

If that is the case, then I can say that if you don't use a dedicated server like I do myself, then your a step back... would that be fair?

 

The simple fact that there is quite literally thousands of forums which increase in traffic, usability and over all activity once moving from a free platform. A couple of my forums were once upgraded from free platform and i very much doubt they would be where they are today if i had stayed with those inferior products. One particular board upgraded to VB with VBSEO and with in 4 weeks traffic had doubled, Time on site has increased by 200% and page impressions had gone up over 100% .

I don't claim things of which of just an opinion, everything i say is because i have experience in those areas and its happened to me. There is other things to consider, Time taken installing modifications, time spend doing general admin or moderation duties, Time in promotion , core coding structure, ease of use for custom coding , ease of upgrades. All of which takes longer on certain free boards. Time is money.

I could go on all night about why certain things are better, why core coding is better and why commercial scripts are better but fact is some people just don't want to hear it and will defend the script they are used to, for that reason ill agree to disagree that if someone disagrees with what ive said its up to them, its of no concern to me if someone doesn't want believe it. In fact if they are in the same niche as me its better for me that they dont believe what i and thousands of others say lol.

Your always going to get fan boys, generally fanboys have never actually had long term experience of the commercial scripts that they are bashing and therefore continue to support something that is inferior.

Not really sure what the dedicated server comparison has to do with anything we are talking about as it has no real relevance to this at all, if you do not use enough resources to have a dedicated server then your wasting money, but then there is the argument that dedicated would obviously be much more secure so over shared, If i didnt need the 4 dedicated servers that i have then id sure as hell downgrade, it would save me a small fortune. There is arguments for everything but it all really comes down to your situation and whether you can warrant the better stuff in life and whether your open enough to admit things might be better than what you are used to. Some people just dont like change and dont like to admit there is something better than they are using , whether it be short or long term gain.

 

I agree that there are a lot of those who upgrade and its not a bad idea. However, there are a lot more users of free forum software simply because it is free. Then people, a lot of them upgrade to a paid software or better yet, convert to a paid software simply for the prestige of having a paid software forum.

Saying that paid forum software is better is an opinion. When one says "better" they are claiming an opinion. Look at Gaia Online, that is supposedly one of the largest forums online and its built off the platform of PhpBB2. Also, check out Hack Forums, a HUGE forum powered by MyBB. I have seen a lot of paid forum software communities try to go up against Hack Forums and fail miserably. I could give you so many examples of successful free forum software powered communities which proves by fact that a free forum software can be extremely successful... See its not about the software, its about how much you dedicate and devote yourself to keeping the community active and marketing it.

I have used many paid solutions and still do including vBulletin and IP.Board, the most special thing I have seen is the better support and of course it should be better seeing as I paid over $100.00 for the product. You say the coding is better... how? I would love to see factual evidence that a commercial scripts coding is always better than a free script coding. Factual evidence that is not opinions.

Just like you will apparently always get your paid software fanboys BTW, I have been using vBulletin for many many years...

I am simply comparing it to the mindset of this discussion. You say paid is better and the only way to succeed properly. I match that with my dedicated server argument.

 

And whats to say that there couldnt be huge improvements from upgrading to a superior product, comparing other sites isnt a viable argument as the only real test is to compare metrics of the same site before and after a conversion. Ive never stated that free scripts are not successful.

Wow really , if you've had a good support from vbulletin you need a medal because most other people think their support until recently has been terrible. What more proof do you need, Look at the packages that are presented in front of you, especially the likes of xenforo of which is leaps and bounds above vbulletin and IPB in clean development terms. It makes life 100% easier when having to work with it.

Ive used most free and paid solutions through out the years, i would say im a fanboy of any but i do have preference to the ones that earn me more money.

There has been no mindset to compare it too , you disagree with me because you obviously havent actively recorded the performance of scripts for statistics , server resource usage and revenue growth and there are thousands of other people that claim the same.................. I should add im not a sad case that sits doing these things because i want to , its apart of my job lol

As i said above , ive never claimed that free forums are not successful or cant be successful i owned a number large forums on phpbb 2 in competitive niches and was very pleased with them however i dont think the sites would be where they are today with out being upgraded to their current states.

 

contests do good works too

 

Advertising is the best option forever, or SEO is also one of this technique that you can use for your page view. Well I personally use The SEO technique...

 

IPB is good for seo, I've never had a problem with it and have run successful forums using it.

 

OP, can you share the percent of your Search engine visits? I think forums have higher pv/visits when you have a lot of regular visits. But if most of it is from search engines (people who come to read about one specific query they had and once answered, they quit), it is possible you are having low pages/visit.

 

Make users automatically subscribe to threads when they post in a thread. And email new posts of subscribed threads to user.

 

Hide links and other info say images and ask the users to register to view the link or image.