Forums

Forums can be a great way to generate traffic to your site, particularly if you're just starting out and you have a limited budget, because posting on forums doesn't cost anything. The trick is to find popular forums relating to the subject of your site that allow you to make posts and include a signature in every post, where you can indirectly advertise your site. Note you shouldn't make it look as if you are only posting to advertise your site, make sure you add something constructive to the discussion, and actually have something worthwhile to say otherwise you will possibly get banned from that forum.

So how do you find these popular forums? Well you should first go to one of the search engines, and enter "____ forum" where ____ is the subject of your site. Go through each site that comes up, read a few threads to see if they allow signatures. then if so, go to alexa.com, and check it's traffic ranking to see how popular it is. I would say any forum that is in the top 50,000 sites on the net is worth signing up for. You obviously don't want to join forums that has a traffic rank of 2,000,000 that hardly anyone visits.

This process can be quite time-consuming but it's definitely worth it. Once you've joined some forums it's time to create your sig message. This should be in the form of anchor text rather than your URL, and should include your main keyword(s). This will help you get higher search engine rankings in the long run. Don't use the same anchor text for every message in every forum, mix it up occasionally.

Now you are ready to start writing some messages. As I mentioned above, although your ultimate aim is to get forum readers to click on your sig file link to your site, you shouldn't constantly draw attention to it, or blatently advertise it. I've found the best way to get people to visit your site is by not even mentioning the link in your posts. Your aim should be to come across as an expert in your field, or to give the impression that you at least know what you're talking about. So when people read your message they will instinctively wonder what your site is, or will want to read more about you and see what you have to say. How will they get this information? Simple, they just look at your sig message below every posting you make, and click on the link that takes them to your site.

People will not respect you or your opinion, and therefore will not click on your link if you simply post spammy messages such as "I totally agree" which looks like you're just posting to get your sig message seen, or you simply post messages to lots of threads that don't add anything to the discussion.

If you want to increase the traffic you receive from forums, you could consider starting interesting threads that you think will attract many posts in the future. These really long threads can end up generating thousands of hits, and because you started this interesting thread, your opening message and hence your sig file link will get seen by potentially many thousands of forumites, increasing the chances of them visiting your site. Also you could add constructive posts to an already existing thread that has been viewed thousands of times. You will usually find a few of these epic threads on every forum.