Build Forums, Get Traffic

Build Forums, Get Traffic

Forums are an important -- and often overlooked -- part of building traffic to your website; but, many webmasters overlook forums and instead focus on other features of their website. Why would someone spend a lot of time setting up and configuring a forum when they could be adding content? After all, forums offer no immediate benefit to the website ... or do they?

• This Internet generation is the interactive generation. Think of the most popular websites out there today: Slashdot, Digg, Fark, etc... They all have one main thing in common: user interactivity. Forums offer users a way to interact not only with you, but with other visitors. These conversations lead to an exchange of ideas, which leads to ...

• Free content for your website. By having users create content for your website, you don't have to work as hard. Since users in a forum get to post their own topics and reply to anything, they can easily create fresh new content for you (and the search engines). Remember, content is king, and no article can come close to the traffic driving power of a 200 page forum topic about socks.

• Forums get repeat visitors. You may get someone to read your articles once or twice, but users come back to forums time and again because they offer new content on a daily basis. That means that they are also viewing your advertisements on a constant basis, and may find something of interest. And, the more often a user visits that forum the more they will be inclined to post, thus creating free content for you.

• Forums can be used to track feedback. Writing about what you know is one thing, but writing about what your community wants to know is the real secret to having a successful website. By keeping track of what questions are being asked most often you can easily figure out what your community wants to know, which tells you exactly what articles you need to write.

• Over the long term, forums help drive targeted traffic to your website. At first you're not going to see an increase in traffic, but as the months go by your forums can become the top traffic generation utility on your website.

In a nutshell forums offer your visitors interactivity and fresh content, while they offer you easy feedback tracking and free content. Forums are a win-win situation for both you and your users, so what are you waiting for?