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Traffic is the major issue to make a forum active. Once you get people to your forum it will go a long way towards making it active. To accomplish this you need to target a specific demographic of users.
One of the easiest way to create an averaged active forum is by basing the forum on something fan related like the media or similar.

Notice how you have selected your demographic in this way; persons interested in the same song/movie/book as you. In addition, if your site is the only one that presents such information it will eventually become very popular because only your site will present an opportunity for these like minded people to get together.

When creating your forum, you should avoid:

1) Bad site design. Even if you are not a graphic designer be sure not to include lots of ads and flashing gifts on your site. This makes the site look like a spammer site. The simplest design can be best even if it does look a little awkward; at least it won’t be annoying your visitors. You will loose a lot of visitors if your design is bad and there is an alternative site with a reasonable or better design.

2) Poor moderation. By this I am referring to a number of things that can affect the growth of the forum.

These include users posting vulgar or spammy or even abusive stuff, having inconsistent rules; one user may be penalized for something while another might not for the same reason and banning a person because of one mistake. All these are classified as poor moderation and unless your forum is very big with lots of posts everyday, poor moderation can cause users to disappear and find better moderated forums.

3) Nuking the board. As times goes by you may be required to reinstall the board but doing so often and having the users re-registering every time you do this can cause you to lose your users and thus overall forum growth.

And when creating the board, do the following:

1) If you have a fan forum, try and locate the original artist of the work you are amazed by and check if he/she will link to you. Always be polite when asking. If they agree then traffic from the original sit will soon drive to your site. You can see how well this works in book fandom

2) Advertise discreetly. While it is ok to put links to your site in your profile on other boards it is not advisable to post ads on their boards. To do so is disrespectful. If persons are fond of you they will take a peek at your profile and may come to visit your forum.

3) Post interesting topics. You will not get visitors if your forum is full of spammy topics which are boring. If you carefully write a post to get discussion/opinions going then persons will contribute. Far less persons will start a new topic unless they are comfortable on your forum or they are highly sociable.

4) Try to keep the good posters you have. It is always important to cherish the posters that keep the forum alive and growing. They also lessen your workload as you do not need to keep posting all the time and also more persons become attracted to your forums because of this.

Unique Content Management Software and Sales Manager Solutions

The short answer is NO.

There are many webmasters who spend a lot of time managing duplicate content, either within their site or from external sources. The fact of the matter is, the issue of duplicate content is often overly emphasized by some over-zealous webmasters. According to Google (and also in my personal experience), having duplicate content does not normally have negative effects on your site’s presence in the Google index. In fact, regarding content theft, Google goes on to say “we look at various signals to determine which site is the original one, which usually works very well. This also means that you shouldn’t be very concerned about seeing negative effects on your site’s presence on Google if you notice someone scraping your content”.

That being said, let’s examine some possible issues with duplicate content. Let’s take, for instance, article writing and the submission of these articles to article sites for SEO purposes. Let’s say you write an article, put the article on your web site, and then submit it to various article directories or web sites. Quite obviously you would rather have the page on your site rank above the article directories you submitted that same article to. And in most cases, this is what happens. The reason your page will normally rank ahead of the others, is that the others contain a link from that article to your site. Directly quoted, “In cases when you are syndicating your content but also want to make sure your site is identified as the original source, it’s useful to ask your syndication partners to include a link back to your original content”. This link tells Google that the content originated from your web site. So according to Google, they know the original source of content even if it has been “scrapped” or stolen. But content purposely submitted to other sites (or as Google refers to them, “syndication partners”) can also be identified as yours if a link back to your site is included along with the content.

Well, the idea behind article submission is to obtain a link back to your web site from another web site, usually from a page that contains keywords related to your web sites theme. But what if the site applies the “nofollow” attribute to your link, which some shady article submission sites do? If this is the case, the article site could actually rank higher than you for the same content. So be sure you do not submit your articles to article directories that do not allow your link to be followed. Even in this case, Google will usually find the original source of the content.

What about onsite duplicate content? The same applies. Google does not penalize you, the duplicate content is simply filtered from the search results. So don’t worry too much about duplicate content, and focus on building quality content for your site, and of course building quality inbound links.

Manny is an SEO enthusiast who enjoys sharing his experiences with other webmasters. Please visit his web site, affordable seo for more great SEO articles and information.

If you are an Internet entrepreneur, your reason for setting up a website is to make money. And you would probably like to make lots and lots of money from the comfort and convenience of your own home. But to get that money, you must have targeted traffic.

Targeted traffic means visitors to your website who have a very high probability of already being interested in buying the products or services you offer. It doesn’t do you much good to get a plethora of people to come to your website who are interested in buying something that you don’t even sell. You need to attract people who are interested in your specific products and services.

So, what can you do to get targeted traffic to your website?

Well, one tool is a newsletter. With this, visitors who visit your website can choose to sign up to receive a free periodic newsletter from you in their e-mail. This won’t be seen as spam because they have given you permission to contact them by signing up. A newsletter keeps your name in front of them and allows you to easily send out updates, promotions, special offers, etc.

Your opt-in list can also be a great source of referrals for you. These people may find they know other people who may be interested in what you offer and they’ll pass on your contact info to them. Next, they will visit your website. Referrals are usually extremely targeted traffic, so make sure you provide high-quality information in your newsletter.

But, probably the best way of initially getting the necessary targeted traffic to your website is by writing articles. Just one article written by you can be published in article directories such as the famous EZineArticles.com or GoArticles.com, among scores of others and with more emerging all the time. There are literally hundreds of article directories to choose from.

Now, you might be wondering, “What’s so important about articles?”

First of all, they establish you as an expert in your industry. People want to do business with the most knowledgeable people. Another thing articles do is establish trust. Potential buyers want to deal with people they can trust. Gain their trust and your much more likely to convert a casual visitor into a customer.

Your articles can be picked up and republished by other people who run similar, non-commercial websites (or sometimes complementary commercial ones). Not only is this a surce of targeted traffic, but it will also help increase your link popularity. More links always equals more traffic!

Your articles will eventually show up in search engines and be read by many more people over time. Once you get this powerful traffic machine rolling, there is literally no way to stop it (not that you would ever want to though).

To get maximum results, each article should focus on a specific keyword phrase, have a link in the bio section to your website, be between 450 and 750 words long, and offer very valuable information that is presented in an easy-to-read format.

After you have published 15 or 20 articles, you’ll likely see a big increase in your targeted traffic and your profits! So, what are you waiting for? I suggest you write and submit your first article today!

Want to quickly and easily boost your web traffic? Then check out Targeted Web Traffic Secrets for 3 powerful and 100% FREE resources for getting more targeted web traffic.

Google Webmaster Tools says that in order to gain Page Rank (a way of gaging website authority, PR is gaged from 0-10, 10 being highest) you should have high quality sites linking to yours, which is termed a backlink. A backlink is simply a link to your website from another website.

There are several types of link building strategies and all of them should be utilized to optimize your sites for the search engines which in turn will increase our traffic, so build links everyday

1. Relevant/Reciprocal Link Exchange

Reciprocal links are where you exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours. AS far as Google is concerned relevance equals quality as far as a backlink is concerned.

There are some webmasters who exchange links with any and all sites. But if you have a website about weight loss, how helpful is it for your visitors to see a link to a car auction site? This is a weak link and a useless waste of time and looks lame on your website! Build links for your visitors and not for ranks and your site will be rewarded.

The two most important factors in finding reciprocal link exchange partners are relevance and Page Rank, relevance being first important and page rank second. If you can get both then that’s great. If you’re site is new higher rank pages are hard to get, so don’t worry about it and just look for relevance.

Where you place links on your site is important and can be done in several ways. While many still use a links page, this method is not the best option. These days search engines place less value on links pages and when you think about it, how good is a links page for your site and its visitors?

A better option is to place your links and get the reciprocal site to place links as hyperlinks within the content on your site with relevant anchor keywords. This method looks better, provides a natural flow of links and gets more link juice from the search engines and especially Google.

The key to link building on your sites is to make the link look like a side effect and not the end goal.

2. One Way Links

A one-way link is where you get a link to your site from another site without having to place a link back. Of course, one-way links hold the most juice with search engines.

When your site is new it is unlikely that you will get relevant high PR sites to give you a one-way link, unless of course you provide great content or a link bait (explained below).

Natural One-Way Link Building through Content

One of the best ways to get one way links is the natural link method which can be obtained by posting fresh original content on your sites that is so good it makes other websites want to link to it. Good content, which should all ready be a first priority for your visitors and visitor retention, will facilitate natural one-way links.

Link Bait

Another great way to build one way backlinks is to use a link bait on your site. This is the method of choice to get get higher page rank sites to link to lower page rank sites. Link Bait is basically any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. These link baits could be, information hooks, news hooks, humor hooks, tools hooks like a widget or some helpful tool that other sites can use.

Article Marketing and submitting your sites to Internet Directories are very effective ways to get one-way links.

3. 3-Way Links

3-ways: Site A points to Site B and Site B points to Site C and Site C points back to Site A. The point is to try to make reciprocals look like one-ways, this method really doesn’t have much value and I don’t recommend it.

4. Outbound Links

Outbound links are the websites you link to or site as references within content. Whatever your niche there authority and other helpful sites for your visitors and and those are the sites that you want to link to.

Some webmasters are so afraid of losing traffic or giving up their link juice that you hardly ever see outbound links on their sites, this is a big mistake.

Outbound links are a necessary part of establishing your authority within your niche and a vital part of your Internet Marketing efforts. They are a vital part of any website/blog and their existence or non-existence can determine whether high-authority, high page rank sites would ever link to you, mainly because if you are not consistently seeking out new information and intelligence within your niche and citing those sources they will view your website as stale and out of date.

Take a look at the authority sites within your niche, they all have outbound links and references. It is impossible to provide really useful information without offering other sites that can benefit your visitors.

In conclusion, it is crucial for any Internet Marketing Campaign to build links everyday. This is the main way that Google can establish authority, relevance and importance to your websites and is at the center of the search engine optimization strategy.

To get 13 effective link building methods that also increase direct website traffic please visit: 13 Ways to Link Building that Also Increase Website Traffic. You can also get many simple and step-by-step Internet Marketing guides at Internet Marketing Strategies.

While surfing the net over the weekend I landed on a couple of websites that reminded me of the importance of a good landing page. I clicked on these sites because the Title and Description in search results promised to provide what I was looking for, but once I landed there, all hope was gone.

I could not find a hint of what was promised and on one of the sites I had to navigate through at least 50 units of Adsense before seeing a glimpse of relevant information, and I quickly clicked off and moved on.

The landing page is so crucial for visitor retention, not to mention their return. A landing page is the page that visitors first land on when visiting your site either from search results, or from any links to your site. Usually it’s the home page, but it’s actually any page that is linked to and from where visitors can get to your website.

Also, it is important to realize that while we, who are webmasters, understand websites and navigation on a deeper level, you always have to assume that your visitors are complete novices and they need obvious and clear indication of what your site is about, what’s there and how to find what their looking for.

The landing page is really the “first impression” of your site and its content. What is on your landing page?

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Is your website clearly defining what you are offering?

2. Is there some kind of welcome message or post that explains what’s there?

3. When visitors land on your page, are they easily able to navigate to different sections and pages within your site?

4. Is the content reflective of the title and description?

5. When they land, are they met with valuable relevant information or do they have to muddle through a ton of adds, like Google Adsense and banners?

If you answered NO to any of these questions then you will have problems with keeping your visitors and obviously they will not return.

Remember that the Internet revolves around the ease of getting information, if a surfer has to jump through a thousand hoops to find what their looking for on your website, believe me, they will not, and why should they? There are millions of other sites where they will find what their looking for with ease.

This is especially true for bloggers, I surfed about a hundred blogs this weekend and found many whose landing pages were just awful. One of which was a high traffic guru blog.

Because blogs do not usually have the same navigation layout as websites, instead of pages they have posts, they should be even more diligent in the landing page layout and navigation; because posts are THE content of a blog and they should be placed at a top spot, with a proper header, like All Posts or Recent Posts where individual post titles are listed for easy access and navigation. A visitor shouldn’t have to spend half an hour looking for posts and believe me they will not.

Don’t let a bad landing page and navigation set-up affect your online business and Internet marketing efforts.

Get comprehensive, simple, hands-on and step-by-step Internet Marketing Strategies at Step-by-Step Internet Marketing Guides Blog. One of my best posts: List of 70 + Free Webmaster and SEO Tools.

Building a good looking site is one thing. Profiting from it is a completely different story. I’ve heard many people complain about having a unique website offering great products or services and not profiting from it. They spend money on advertising every month and get nothing from the site.

There is a widespread myth that only people making money on the internet are the ones selling products on how to make money online. That’s not true. There are many profitable websites that sell various products. Why is Ebay the most frequented and profitable site on the internet? People sell variety of things there and make loads of profits. A lot of people make money selling things like Jewelry, cosmetics, shoes, shirts, trousers, watches etc. and earn big profits. There are a few simple low or no cost strategies that any small business entrepreneur can do immediately to increase their web exposure, drive traffic to their site and make a lot of sales everyday.

Understand your Market
The most important thing for an online business is to know your market. Many new entrepreneurs and website owners tend to neglect the fact that if you don’t do a market research you will never know your target market. It is a misconception that a product is for everyone. You must know your target market before starting a website. Even if you have a website already, you should do extensive research to know your target market.

It is same as in the offline world. If you open a brick and mortar store in the real world you would definitely research your target market to strategize your advertising campaign. First, you should understand your target market and then the purpose of your website. For example, if you sell dog beds, you should first research on the number of people who have a dog. There are millions of people in U.S who keep dogs as a pet. Now research on how many people buy dog beds for their dogs. And how many of them prefer to buy dog beds on internet.

You might be thinking on how to research your target market? Well, you should use surveys and visit related forums. So if you are selling dog beds you might find a forum where dog enthusiasts frequent. Ask them what problems do they face buying dog beds online? You will know your target market. Now tweak your site in such a way that it hosts a number of articles on buying dog beds along with the product itself.

Conversion element on your website
To convert the visitors on your site, you need to have a strong sales message on the front page of your site plus a strong call to action. Consider tweaking your front page content to convert the visitors on your site. Urge them to buy and tell about the benefits of buying and using your product. Deliver a strong call to action and create a sense of urgency.

Remember, if your site doesn’t convert the visitors, there is no use in generating traffic to your website through expensive advertising budgets. You site should convert at least 1% of the visitors so you can be sure that if you bring 10000 people to your site through various online advertising mediums, you will get 100 sales.

Grabbing visitors email addresses and phone numbers
It is very important to ask your visitors to leave their email addresses in exchange for something valuable. You can gather visitors email addresses and send them offer and discounts on your product.

To encourage visitors to give their email addresses, you need to give something valuable. For example, if you have a business of selling fish equipment, you should offer insider tips and tricks on catching big fish. Give away these tips and tricks in a report in exchange for email addresses. This strategy alone can increase your sales and profits.

And remember always, always, always, track everything. Track where your traffic is coming from, track your conversion rate, track your email opt-in — with free tools like Google Analytics you can’t afford not to.

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