Greetings, I am not big on SEO. I know what it is, however, never really applied myself to the extent of learning it professionally. Perhaps it is why I came here looking for your suggestions/guidance. One of the sites I run is a relatively big web hosting forum. It runs vBulletin, has vbSEO.com installed. However, it is no secret that in recent months it has been declining in traffic and activity. Surprisingly, for the term "web hosting forum" my site is not positioned in top results, which is very disappointing. In the effort to change that, I have been looking into launching an advertising campaign to bring in the fresh blood to this venue. But someone suggested going for SEO instead. So now I am puzzled... advertising or SEO - what do you think is a smarter choice and why? What will serve better long term? I've heard that even SEO efforts have to be maintained. And my budget cannot be anything more than affordable. So can someone suggest what the better option is? Does "affordable" and "good results" go together in the same sentence? Is it possible that SEO is the only good thing for me to look into? Are there any famous members here who can provide a consultation? And finally, what sort of a BUDGET ($) should I be looking at if I decide to go with a SEO option? What is considered expensive, reasonable or unreliable? Thank you for any advice I can get. Best, Artashes
oh donot worry about SEO , all you need to do is write some articles on Web hosting and link your forum with them . Also exchange link of your forum with them ..thats what SEO about . but if you choose advertising campaign ,its good option too because if you got good number of users , they will keep posting for you , they will create fresh contents for you which will result more SE traffic .
TAP, what do you mean articles and link my forum with them? Could you please give an example (how it would work technically)? And how would that solve the traffic and search engine positioning issue? Thank you.
oh ok , see there are some keyword research tool , do some reserch on keywords that are in demand ..then write 1 or 2 pages articles every day for example What is web hosting how to find out if deal is good or not what could be possible problems with host what is the largest host available on internet etc etc keep writing whatever comes in your mind and at end of each article write " Want to Discuss Webhosting Issues with other webmasters ... click here (your forum link) i just provide you blue print you have to impletement it yourself .
Thank you for your information. Indeed a valuable suggestion. However, a few more questions: 1. Does this method really improve traffic? And if yes, why others are not doing the same? 2. Is it better to host those articles as separate pages on the same site (same URL) or outside web site (different URL)?
1.it works , but takes time and probably thousands of articles, and who said why others are not doing it ? its the only thing affiliates does . you can conduct survey . infact it is only legitimate technique for SEO . 2. it depends on you . > for example if you post such articles on other peoples forums/blogs , you may get some visits from them , even if your SEO attempt fail > also i think if search engine have option to pick from forum or site they pick from site ( i am not sure about this fact) . however you should get some SEO books , they would explain you whole stuff in detailed manner . there are some other issues like keyword density etc which will make this post long enough (more than ebook lol) .
Well, thanks a lot. You've cleared up a lot of things for me and definitely made things less confusing. Actually, I like your idea of articles, but who has the time for 1000s of articles? If I write 100-200 articles - would that effort be worth it - what do you think? Does it have to be thousands of articles? I am not sure there are even that many things the industry has to write about...
man it depends on how much research you did before writing articles ... there are lucky peoples who wrote one article and is quite successful and earning a lot . there are few unlucky guys who write 1000's and make nothing ..luck plays important role in seo .
It sounds like you already have an idea of what is affordable in your own eyes. It would be great to know how much you can affordable. The word "affordable" is really only relative to your own position. What are your goals? You need more visitors...more traffic...why? Do you monetize your forum with adsense or some other type of affiliate program? It's hard to suggest a plan of action when we don't know anything really. On that note, getting some good incoming links that use the appropriate anchor text (in your case, "web hosting forum") probably would help tremendously, since it "sounds" like your site is pretty old-er and has a decent amount of links pointing to it already. If you can fill in the blanks a little bit, we might be able to help you a little bit more.
Hi, Artashes, TAP is right as for the standard type of website. But - no offense, TAP - forum is something completely different. What about checking couple of popular fora in your niche and analyzing what they do to attract their visitors and then using the same approach (without simply copying them)? For example, within the webhosting area, creating couple of free tools would help to promote your site very much (check e.g. the DP tools at http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools)...
wow i got a new Name Tap and how these tools going to improve your SEO ranking (except site maps tools etc ) . i think they are just to monitor traffic ? most of the traffic on forums is from a big link given to index page of your website like " visit to our forum etc "( in case of new forums) in case of old forums traffic comes automatically as posts are searchable by SE's
You hit the spot with all your questions, Voasi. Let me address them so that perhaps there is a better direction I can take. You are right, however, what is competitive for the quality product/service? When I visited a forum for professional writers, it was clear they were expecting at least $1 per word. However, the offers that I come across elsewhere (heard http://www.articlesandcontent.com/ had good reputation) are lower priced, yet service seems of good quality. Monetarization, believe it or not, is my last concern. In 4 years I have built a strong platform for the industry to interact and discuss issues. However, with my attention partly shifting toward new enterprises, the forum's traffic is struggling. The activity rate is pretty much stagnant. So the goal is to bring the forum back to satisfactory activity levels. I believe one of the main reasons for me to have that ongoing traffic battle is because the forum is not listed at the top of search results when someone is looking for "web hosting forum". Perhaps if I can fix that, I can spend less time worrying about the declining traffic and instead focus on how to maintain and increase it. The site has good history. Its been out there for at least 4 years. So what can be a good solution based on this information?
Trust me, Kaudo, monitoring/analysing work like that has always been ongoing. The industry is highly competitive, so it pushes us to live up to same standards. I believe we always have had enough creative services to offer back to community and industry as a whole. While that is an awesome example, it feels like it would require heavy promotion of its own. Tools used by the hosting industry closely correlate with the ones used by the webmaster crowd (it still is the same crowd after all)!
Of course, Artashes, but it gives you the hipe and helps to differentiate you from the others (or just be more visible). I am referring to things like Blog Juice Calculator or Link Calculator both by TextLinkAds.com - http://www.text-link-ads.com/blog_juice.php and http://www.text-link-ads.com/link_calculator.php. I am not sure whether those two tools really help anyone, but they are discussed very much, bringing the traffic to textlinkads.com
Sorry, TopAffiliateProgram, it was just easier (and quicker) The reputation of the forum comes with its visitors. You would probably - too - trust more a forum that has 10.000 active user than one which only has 10 users. For new forum it is crucial to get as many (quality) users as possible. And it is pretty hard now, having lots of quite good fora already running. One way how to attract new users is to offer them valuable tools that nobody else offers. If they are satisfied by these tools, you can convert them into your forum posters easily.
I agree that adding "viral" type marketing will help. Also known as "link bait" to get more people (and links) to the site. Tools are always a good idea, but try and think outta the box. Maybe a tool suggest how much bandwidth/storage they would need...? Throwing it off the top of my head. Another idea I'd suggest is possibly holding a contest of some sort. Winner will get 6 months free hosting somewhere. Try new members and such threw the contest. Give away t-shirts with your logo on it for free. Make some bumper stickers for cars (this usually can be done real cheap). I'd also recommend jumping over to the www.EarnersForum.com and ask some questions there. There are a few big earners there that "launching and maintaining forums" is there business. They have a monthly audio series with a few other big forums that you can sign up for $15 a month and gives tips on getting members to forums. As for SEO, I'd do the in conjunction with some marketing efforts to drive traffic. Your site is older, so just getting some text links with your anchor text should do the trick from some other older sites. Try www.Text-Link-Ads.com or www.textlinkbrokers.com for some good links. Also, ask around on the other web hosting forums if they sell text links. I'm sure you'll find a dozen good sites.
Kaudo: Thank you for the excellent example. I like the idea behind those calculators - truly an attractive feature. Btw, the correct link would be: http://www.text-link-ads.com/blog_juice/ I see which direction you are going. I will try to have a creative brainstorming section on that subject. As an example, I did have an innovative custom application programmed that imitates the financial stock exchange for the web hosting industry - it tracks the average prices in relationship to space and bandwidth for different types of hosting and in different markets. Oh boy... the number of contests we've had! Sometimes it seems that the forum is one big contest. We had contests in which we gave out flash memory devices, major cash prizes, popular products, etc. We've had $100 contests and $5000 ones. We have an ongoing loyalty program in which members earn reward points for postings. Those points they can spend in our reward store on quite a wide range of Internet and hosting-specific products and services like domain name registrations, advertising, critical software for sites, etc. Yet still forum is struggling through some rough times. Thank you for these suggestions. I will definitely snoop around those forums, try to get a few links. By the way, what do you mean by "anchor text"? Do you mean that if I want to focus on keyword such as "web hosting forum", I should name my text-link "Web Hosting Forum" instead of the actual name of the forum? Thank you, Voasi, for all your help. It means a lot.
Anchor text is what the links says, such as for google, the anchor says google, but it goes to yahoo, therefore helping yahoo rank for "google". (heh, heh)
SEO should not cost a fortune to do - but it will need some budget. If you have not bothered with the site as far as SEO goes, then there are probably a fair few on-page things to consider. Once the research as to the target words, and initial on-page stuff has been done, then that is the time to do some article submissions. Directory submissions should also be on the list of things as well. The advantages (as I see it) of SEO is that once you have done the hard work, you can and do reap the rewards for a long time. Sure, you will need to tweak things from time to time especially in a very competitive area. Now, Regarding a budget, if you take a bit of time to read some articles about on-site optimizations and do that yourself - cost is just your time. Now, you should be able to outsource the taks of writing articles - there are a lot of members here who do those sort of jobs. With your articles, then you can once again pay for them to be submitted to several article sites. The best bet, is if you have say 10-20 articles is to submit them a couple at a time over a 1-2 month timeframe for maximum exposure. Finally, pay someone to do directory submissions. As long as you can vary the description/anchor text over several keywords you will be ok. If you manage this yourself and purchase most of these services from individuals on these forums you could probably do this for around a few hunderd $. If you pay a firm to do the work, then they will additionally do all the monitoring and reporting and the sky's the limit on the cost. There are a lot more things that you can do as well, but this relatively simple strategey will work with most sites and for a few hundred $ you can outsource a fair bit of it. If money is a problem and you have the time, then all of these things are possible to do for almost no cost.