Please review my forum (Camping Babble)

Hello Digital Point users,

I am looking for some feedback on my camping forum. Camping Babble has been running for about 2 years now (for about a year under the current name) but things have really started to pick up recently when we switched from MyBB to XenForo. I think we are the best designed site in the camping and outdoors niche and have been growing slowly and steadily.

Some recently implemented features that I am proud of include:

• Custom XenForo skin, not a premade one
• 100% Responsive design
• Use of CSS3 or icon fonts wherever possible
• Retina support (Up to 3x)
• Support for HTTPS
• An elegant list of trophies
• Most importantly, a great group of people!

Visit Camping Babble​

 

Really? Almost 400 views and not a single reply!?

 

Well, you have a well established forum there. It's hard to comment on stuff when things are up and running and everything is where it's supposed to be. Just keep on driving traffic to it. It has a great potential for growth.

 

Thanks, it is hard to stop fiddling with things

I have noticed that it is starting to build up slowly, but progress is slow and a lot of members only make a couple of posts.

 

Well, you're nowhere to be found on the first or second pages of Google for your keywords (camping forums).

These guys are dominating the niche: http://www.campingforums.com/forum/ , http://www.survivalistboards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=11 , http://www.rv.net/forum/ .

You may want to join some of those forums and tastefully promote your forum in the signature / profile. It is and it will be an uphill battle, you will need to get used to it. You will have to triple / quadruple your advertising efforts. If you do not have a steady flow of new members your old members will eventually bail out on you. Utilize all you can: G+, Twitter, Pinterest to draw new members. I assume you're already doing all these things, may be not as persistently?

 

Thank for the pointers.

Most of my search engine traffic comes from very random, specific keywords to a few particular pages which are about that topic. Google webmaster tools says the average search position for "camping forums" is 12, but I know that Google results are different for different people.

I have been doing some advertising but it is starting to become expensive so I am not sure if I will be able to increase my budget for that any further. I do have a few solid members though that is enough to keep the conversation flowing for now but I think you are right about the social media. Isn't posting links on forums considered kinda spammy? Also most places like that nofollow all the links or unless you mean purely for traffic from the members of those sites.