Website Promotion
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5. Promoting your site in message boards
Participating
in message boards (forums) is so effective as a strategy for
promoting a website that it warrants its own section. Message
boards, such our own
Web Launch Forum,
is an excellent place to ask questions, share knowledge, and of
course, bring publicity to your website. I get at least
40-50 unique visitors a day to this site by participating in various
forums on website marketing and search engine optimization.
One way that posting in a forum can help bring visitors to your site
is through direct referrals from your signature. For example,
my signature in the
Web Launch Forum might be as follows:
Website Promotion
::
Pay-Per-Click Advertising ::
Banner Exchange
::
Domain Appraisal
::
Express URL Submission
I set up this
signature in my profile so that it is shown below all my posts. When
a reader clicks on any of these links, he or she is taken to one of
the various websites that I own.
Some forums do not allow signatures or outbound links of any kind.
Those who permit signatures usually have restrictions regarding
their lengths and the number of links they contain. Always read the
guidelines of each forum before posting with a signature.
Another way that participating in
a forum can help drive traffic to your site is through search engine
exposure. Many search engines index threads from forums such
as ours.
If you were a contributor to a thread that had been indexed by a
search engine, the thread will have contained a link to your site
via your signature. The URL pointing to the thread will have
counted as a page linking to your
site, adding to your link popularity and search
ranking. Plus, when visitors click on the URL, they will read
your post and possibly follow the links in your signature.
Different forums have different rules and policies regarding
signatures and advertisements. Some do not tolerate
promotional material of any kind, not even a signature linking to
your site.
Others, such as our
Web Launch Forum,
allow visitors to promote their sites through their signatures.
In my view, allowing
signatures is the least that a forum can do to compensate members
for contributing to its content.