I have been promoting my forum for several months and I can't quite seem to break about 25 visits per day. I rank well for my keywords, but my keywords bring very little traffic. I have commented on other related blogs, and I post on related forums. I have tried social bookmarking, but have had poor results. My forum is a tennis forum. The link is in my sig. I can't seem to generate the traffic I want. I think I've tried almost everything. Am I focusing on the wrong things? Should I focus on one type of advertising? Any advice is welcome.
hi tennis forum, is it customers registering or do you want them to subscribe paying a yearly fee? regards steve doyle
I'm trying to get enough traffic to increase my member count significantly. I have tried adwords already.
try getting your friends to join try giveaways, maybe tennis gear? add a guest message on the header? maybe a template more related to tennis? try try try, dont give up
One... work on the link structure of the site... Most of the pages in Google, are showing as posts, not topics... which doesn't work so well... Secondly find as many local tennis courts in your area, and take some photocopies of your URL and start post everywhere.
hi tennisplayer89, after having a little think; you need to write quality articles and give them away as free on your website. you need to come across as a professional / expert who knows everything about tennis so that people will come to you for your free advice and then they will register. when you hit your web site on my screen it doesnt tell me what the benefits are of registering or viewing. you want your customers to scroll down and read more however it just goes straight to the forum bit and a couple of categories. then you have 2 adverts for other sites? this potentially could take your prospects away i would get rid and then write compelling copy showing that you are an expert in your field at the top of the web page so that everyone will want to learn more and scroll down. whats the benefits if registering. Free? Community? Speak to other like minded? Join peoples tennis clubs? you need to get the benefits across to all that hit your website. maybe suggest by registering they will get a FREE VIP newsletter so when they register they will get top tips from yourself enhancing their game and money off products that you can add on. go on to other fourms and post, get your name on banners or ads on other websites that are relevant to your content. maybe see about putting video and audio on for tips etc... this can be done quite cost effective. try pay per click i know you said you tried it however, test the keywords and measure what traffic hit and how long they stay or leave. capture email addresses and add to your newsletter etc.... if i think of any more i will let you know. hope this helps... steve doyle
Thanks I will try adding a message at the top of the page. I was thinking more of methods of bringing people to the site.
You need to customize more your forum on the topic of tennis, not just the header. You need to have quality graphics and make it fun for tennis lovers.
One main things is, that there is no point bringing people to your site if they are not going to stay. 1000 people may come from one source and only 20 from another, but if the 20 stay and the 1000 don't, then the 20 source is much better Work to make the forum more appealing so people stick to it, then work on the advertising aspect of it.
I would reccomend becoming active in all the other tennis forums you can find and leaving your signature link. Also I have noticed more success with tennis forums and blogs that follow more of a niche. I.E college tennis, junior tennis, pro tennis. Tennis players like talking about the higher levels of tennis more so then thier local legue results. Becoming an expert in one of these main tennis catagories, following the sport and writing articles about achievments, players, tournaments etc.... then not only have the aticles on your forum but submit them to other tennis sites. So maybe the addition of a blog to the forum would help out alot to attact visitors that would hopefully sign up for the forum. I.E. when the US open is going on if you are writing articles about some of the hype, when someone searches for lets say "John Isner US open 2007" you will be listed on the search engine and get alot of clicks from highly searched terms for the current tennis news. If doing a blog is not something you want to do then atleast start categories in you blog that discuss junior, college and pro tennis. You would be surprised how many lesser known tennis names are googled and having these names on your forum would pick up alot of traffic from the search engines.
Just checked out your site. Yes adding a section on your forum where alot of the names of top juniors, college and pro tennis players are dicussed will help you pick up tons of keywords (tennis player names). Afterall names of the tennis stars and emerging stars are searched much more then "mental tennis" "tennis strategy" "tennis forum" or any of the like keywords.
I will definitely try making a professional tennis section to discuss the players. I thought that was covered by my general tennis discussion area, but I will make another area specifically for the players.
A great resource for forum owners, and a blog that I subscribe to is CommunitySpark. I'd read over their articles, they are very informative.
See if you could get some highly trafficked related blogs and sites to mention yours or link to you. Get some StumbleUpon stumble (free section) to stumble your site and do reviews with tags like "tennis, tennis forum". Don't do this until you've got plenty of threads on your site, otherwise it's probably a waste. Maybe pay some forum folks to post on your forum for a while. Do Adsense Revenue Sharing (list your site here if you decide to go this route). Maybe pay a coder or write it yourself, some funny or entertaining flash tennis games. Give away tennis games for XBox, PS2, etc. Hold a contest. Maybe to take part they need to have 50 posts or more. You could also buy some autographed tennis memorabilia off Ebay and have a contest for it. Start a newsletter.
There must be really helpful articles for your problem - how to get more traffic without spending even money. Anyway, good luck
Hi, have you ever tried advertising on other related forums ie sports forum? Try to buy banner space on popular sports forum to get yourself more traffic. You may wish to look at other types of traffic driving methods such as article marketing, blogging etc.