Forums – Expert poster makes good, massive traffic entails!

Posting on forums, if used properly, can be an excellent way to get your name “out there”, and ultimately to build up a heap of traffic to your website.

Note the emphasis on the words “if used properly”. Good, relevant and useful content is the key here.

Let’s cut to the chase here, if you expect to join a forum and to post a huge advertisement, and then sit back and wait for the massive amount of traffic to hit your website, then your probably going to be disappointed (not to mention waiting for a long time for it to happen).

You don’t spam people with email (hopefully!) and spamming a forum is just as bad (effectively posting a huge advertisement is spam) and will more often than not get you banned from the forum, and your post will get deleted, not to mention you will quickly get a reputation as a forum spammer.

Even though the Internet is a huge place, you might be surprised on just how fast word can get around for things like this. Don’t risk it.
Not spamming is even more important if your trying to become an expert in your niche area, because chances are the forum you just got banned from was a major one for your niche market if you had done your research properly.

So what is the best way to use a forum to get value out of it?

Firstly, find relevant forums for your niche market, and take the time to read the rules generally of the forum, and specifically the rules as they relate to forums posts.
To find forums use the search engine and look for forums and your keyword phrases.


e.g. Forums for car wholesalers, do a search for forum car wholesalers.

Some forums will not allow you to post any form of blatant advertisement, others may allow a signature block at the end of the post that can point to a website, with maybe a brief description of your site, others may not even allow that. Take the time to read up on just what is and isn’t allowed for each forum you sign up with.

Once you’ve done that, actually consider if you’re going to be able to add value to the forum by posting. Do you have knowledge that can be used to help out other posters? Can you actually add decent content that is not just along the lines of “Sounds like you need my affiliate-o-matic program, grab it from my website”.

Recognise that you should be able to reply to posts without doing selling of any kind (although hopefully you selected a forum that allowed a signature block in your posts, so that at the bottom of each of your fabulous relevant, and expert, rich in wisdom posts, there is also a link for people to reach you).
This signature should NOT be the focus of the post though; the focus of your posts is to actually help people by solving the particular problem or issue listed in the forum post.
You will be amazed how quickly you can build up yourself as an expert in the forum, which adds immense believability and credibility to you on the forum, meaning people will start coming to you for help!

The other huge bonus is that forum posts usually get picked up by the search engines so that over time your answers will get into the search engine results, and low and behold there is a link to your website in them!

Note though that some forums do NOT get indexed in the search engines for various reasons, so don’t assume automatically that this will happen. As a test you should do a search in the search engines for posts for that forum to see what has been indexed to date. Chances are you found this when you did you initial investigation for suitable forums.
One quick way to check is to do a search for the entire website. In Google this is achieved by the typing the following: -

site:nameofwebsite.com

(obviously you substitute nameofwebsite.com with the site you are searching for).

Be specific here. For example if the website was overwhelmingtraffic.com but the forums were located at forums.overwhelmingtraffic.com, then do a search as follows:-
site:forums.overwhelmingtraffic.com
You will quickly see if the website and forum posts have been indexed by the search engines or not. Hopefully you can start to see the power of this, because each forum post you make is a one way link to your website which assists you in the search engine rankings (Refer to the One Way Link chapter for details about the importance of one way links).

This brings up an important point though…

Make sure your posts are in a forum that is relevant to your niche market. For example if you have answered questions in a gardening forum, and your signature at the bottom of each of your posts leads people to a sports site, you may be disappointed with the results.

In this case, assuming your website was sports related, you would have been far better off posting in a sports forum, but hopefully a sporting forum that is specific to the exact sports your website focuses on.

The search engines love relevancy, and you will find you will often actually lose points and valuable rankings if you are just concentrating on getting large numbers of links, and not paying attention to using relevant forums to your niche market.

Remember the golden rule about one way links, a relevant one way link to your website from another site (including forums) is far, far more valuable if both sites have related content.

So choose your forums carefully and ensure the ones you pick have lots of users, lots of posts, and most important are specifically related to your niche area i.e. the content of your website.

Forum postings once indexed stay in the search engines and other archives for a long, long time, and can continue to bring you traffic year after year. Don’t believe me? Just do a search for my name in Google (you do know my name, right?

Tim Buchalka just in case your mind went blank), you will see forum references dating back many years (1997 or earlier!). That’s right, forum posts I made over ten years ago are still sitting I the search engines.

Of course back then I was busy concentrating on running my ISP (since sold) and programming, so I wasn’t actively trying to “entice” people to click to my websites, although you will see examples of the use of signature blocks in you hunt far enough.
While you are at it, take the time to see if you can find any other Buchalka’s in the world because as far as we know our lot in Australia are the only Buchalka’s in the world (makes me feel important!).

Getting back on track, the other thing you need to consider (especially if your trying to sell a product via an affiliate link to another website that isn’t

your own) is to try and avoid long URL’s in forums (i.e. in your signature blocks).
Firstly they can look messy, un-professional, and can put-off would be clickers on your link who can “smell” an affiliate link a mile away.

Take the time to use a link generator to make your link “easy on the eyes” and more professional. If possible you need to consider the link you give out not just forwarding to a “sales page” because forum users who click your link and see a “hard sell” may be instantly turned off and click away.
It’s far better to link to an information page, which ideally would have information that is useful and relevant to the “clicker” (relevant, quality content anyone?).
That way the person who has just arrived on your page will hopefully get the information they required and then start looking around your website.

A good idea would be to have an “opt-in” on the page (where you request the first name and email address of the person) so you can follow them up. I have a whole chapter on mailing lists and auto-responders (to follow people up) so be sure to read up on that.

If you really want to get creative, you could set-up a different landing page for each forum with information targeted to that forum.

I suggest you invest in decent link tracking software so that you can see exactly where your visitors are coming from.

If you establish that a given forum is generating 80% of your forum traffic (quite easy to determine with decent tracking software installed on your server) then obviously you want to ensure that you concentrate on that website (although it could be an indication that you haven’t been putting enough time in on the other forums).

Forum traffic, although taking a while to build up (due to the need for you to become an “expert” and believable genuine person on the forum), can reward you over and over for many years. Whatever you do, make sure you use it to your best advantage, because chances are there is a huge untapped market just waiting to visit your website (and to buy any products you happen to be selling!).

I hope you enjoyed this article, another one will be arriving into your Inbox in the next few days.