How to increase traffic to forum?
-
Hi all. I help run the forum at www.bearsfansonline.com and really want to see if there any ways to increase traffic. We started with a core group of posters in 2009 and since then have only added one active user. I'm worried if we don't bring in some fresh faces, my core users will start to leave.
That being said, does anyone have ideas how to go about doing this? We've tried holding contests but they haven't resulted in any new sign-ups. Don't really know what else we can do. I'd greatly appreciate any tips, suggestions, etc. Thanks in advance.
-
There is a basic SEO rule: content should only be available via a single URL on your website. There are some legitimate reasons to break that rule. If that happens, you need to take additional action such as use the canonical tag to identify the primary page.
Your home page situation is NOT a legitimate reason to break that rule. It's poor web design. It needs to be fixed. OSE is doing its job correctly. OSE is calling your attention to a SEO issue which requires your attention.
SOLUTION: Remove all references to the /index.php page on your site and replace them with the / page. Also add a 301 redirect from the index.php page to the / page so anyone who bookmarked or linked to the /index.php page is seamlessly taken to your home page.
-
Well, I've posted on a variety of forums on how to address this issue yet haven't gotten any responses. I'm not sure why OSE shows two different results as /index.php is the landing page for both URL's. /phpBB3/index.php is the absolute path and www.bearsfansonline.com forwards to that page as well.
-
You have a duplicate URL issue.
Your home page and the /phpBB3/index.php offer the same content. This is an SEO issue which needs to be fixed.
In order to implement best SEO practices into your site, it begins with solid website architecture. I have not used phpBB in a long time. I would suggest to check their official site for an add-on or extension which takes care of SEO issues.
-
Thanks the quick reply. We have a tumblr and twitter account which we link to on our forum main page (we deleted our facebook account). Regarding competing sites, I'll be sure to see if they're actively doing to attract members.
One question on a little tangent though. My current campaign is for "www.bearsfansonline.com" but when I went to OSE I saw that the page "http://www.bearsfansonline.com/phpBB3/index.php" got a much higher score (it's the landing page). Should I be making a campaign for the page instead? I'm not really sure what to do with this information.
-
I like the idea of finding fans of other local teams. I am a San Diego Padres fan. I like sports so when baseball is not in season, football is. I think the chances of a sports fan liking more than one sport is quite high.
-
There are tons of ideas you can implement. A few suggestions:
-
visit similar sites for other teams and see what they are doing to attract members. Copy the good things, leave the bad.
-
visit other Chicago Bear sites and look for ideas the same as above.
-
network with other Chicago sites such as other sports teams (Bulls, WhiteSox, etc)
-
start conversations which people would find interesting. "Should the Bears fire their head coach?", "2012 Chicago Bears draft choices", etc.
-
interact with others who talk about the bears on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other sources. Let the world know your site exists.
-
add social networking to your site. Allow users to log in with their social accounts.
These ideas are just a start. There are dozens of ideas.
Of course, it would help if this was football season. It would also help if the Bears had a better season
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Turning traffic into community
Hi Mozzers, Using the strategies I learned here, my website has really started to take off :). http://orangeoctop.us/ is less than a year old and we are starting to get some serious traffic. Hundreds of thousands of people are visiting this month for videogame tips. We cover FIFA, NHL, Watch Dogs, etc... The problem is... we have YET to build a community. There are so many visitors but 80% of them just view the tips and never come back. My goal is to build a community and connect users who are struggling to win. Offering a support system to help people get better together. I love the community and gamification of Moz. Which is why I am here asking for help. Does anyone have actionable advice for building community? Or solutions that would work well with Wordpress? Play hard! Joey
Branding | | orangeoctop.us2 -
Drop In Branded Traffic
Hi, We took on a new client in March. Over the last few months I have noticed that their Branded Organic Traffic has dropped off considerably, around 20%. On further investigation I discovered that the drop off occurred between Jan & Feb this year (prior to us taking over). In Jan they launched a new site, the drop off seems to coincide with the launch of their new website. I also found out that their Page Rank had disappeared before the launch of the new website, and is still a PR/na. My first thought was that they have been penalised. How likely is this on a very well known site which gets roughly 170K visits per month? Could the drop in Branded Traffic be due to a decrease in advertising budget elsewhere (to compensate for the cost of the new website, leading to less brand exposure)? Could it be that there are just fewer people searching for their Brand? I guess the questions I am trying to find out are: 1. What are the reasons for massive drops in Branded organic traffic? 2. As an seo I am tasked mainly for optimising for non-branded organic traffic, is there anything I can suggest to the client to help get this traffic back? 3. If it is an algorithmic penalty (Panda, Penguin), how do I know which one? I have started with their links and disavowed known toxic links, fixed crawl errors, optimised their top pages etc etc. If it was a penalty and I mange to fix it, will their branded traffic return? Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated. Jon
Branding | | JonRaubenheimer0 -
A forum on your primary domain name (implications)
Hi there What are the pitfalls of putting a forum on an already busy ecommerce website from an SEO perspective?
Branding | | bfrl
I wouldn't use a sub domain, I would add the forum on the primary domain in an attempt to help build my inbound link portfolio. Some pro's and cons that come to mind... Pros - Lots of (hopefully) great user generated and relevant content - Lots of potential landing pages off the back of the above Targeted community Cons - Dealing with potential negative forum posts Constant moderation Possible issues with potentially 1000's of (what Google may consider) low quality pages on a domain name / site which currently fairs well in the SERPs The last con would be my primary concern.
Anyone have any experiences with this? Or any advice at all. Many thanks0 -
Brand Exposure for Increased Awareness
Looking for a mechanism to increase my brand awareness over the web. Has anyone run across a site or method that has helped them expand the awareness of their brand significantly that can be measured?
Branding | | casper4340 -
Tips on building buzz and getting traffic for new sites
I have an idea for a new "socia"l website. No its not a facebook or anything like that, but I feel it fills a void in a particular niche. The problem I am having is figuring out a marketing plan to get people to sign up. When you're starting a new social website like this its kind of important for it too feel popular and you need users to make it feel popular and useful. Which kind of gets you into a chicken or the egg type scenario. There are a few keywords I intend on doing SEO for, but I don't think pure SEO will make this community popular. Some ideas I have: Creative "tell a friend" strategy that builds incentive to get friends signed up like win an ipad or something like that. I also want to make it easy to tell friends, so you can import contacts from facebook, twitter, and email contacts rather than typing in all those emails by hand. Targeting a few blogs related to this niche hoping that they will interview me about the website. Advertising on forums and blogs related to my niche. Making the site simple, visually appealing and intuitive so users can dive right in without thinking. Making a good enough product to where the site can get buzz on active subreddits and hackernews. I'm a software engineer by nature, so marketing isn't a strong suite of mine, but I'm no rookie to building popular websites either (just been a while). I'd like to get some ideas from the seomoz community on this. Thanks.
Branding | | NormanNewsome1 -
Tracking traffic referrals between 2 sites we own?
I'm working on two sites, with seperate Google Analytics, both referring to each other. Am I able to easily find out which keywords/pages referrals are being generated from each site? e.g. http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk - targets home consumers, and refers trade enquires to... http://www.seedpotatomerchants.co.uk - which targets bulk orders, and refers home growers back to jbaseedpotatoes. Question is, how can we track which keywords/pages are sending traffic between each site, quickly? Is it simply a case of trawling through each site's analytics to find out, or does anyone have any tips? Ultimately, we'd like to find out which keywords & pages are picking up traffic from the wrong target audiences. Thanks
Branding | | JamesMio0 -
Forum Marketing
I have been trying to find information on how to market a forum for a client. Since there isn't really any static pages how would you start? How different is it versus a normal website?
Branding | | purch0 -
Forum Guidance Required for Wordpress
Hi, I have a client with a reasonable size WP site (around 5,000 pages) and we plan to launch a forum to increase user engagement and interaction. My client is in the B2C sector, mainly male and typically high net worth. I have read the Moz article the-huge-untapped-potential-of-qa-content-for-seo with interest and that raises a few questions: Does the Q&A model works in the B2C sector? What is the best way to mix / run in parallel Q&A and posts/threads? Who are the best technology providers within this sector? It doesn't need to be necessarily in WP, but it would help. We would like to incorporate the same reward structure that has been so well impemented with Moz and so it's the usual buy or build discussion... Can anybody highlight great examples of best practice? Thanks in advance ofr your help! J.
Branding | | JonathanSmith0