Increase Website Traffic with Forum Marketing

January 21, 2009 by
Filed under: General 

Here is a little freebie website marketing technique that I thought I would post. If you promote your website properly on a forum, and I don’t mean just by your signature, you can get a lot of quality targeted traffic for free. Here is a case study that I did recently:

I submitted a collection of my link building strategies that I share here on my blog to the link building category on the DigitalPoint forums. I catered it nicely by providing a little summary of the posts that would include places to build links quickly that some people had not heard of (after all, most of digitalpoint are people still doing directories or web proxies). I also added a little blurb about how they could subscribe to my blogs RSS feed to receive my link building posts (much like the hundreds of you do), and I made sure not to give a summary of a lot of posts because I wanted them to come to my blog wanting more.

I also prepared a few friends of mine who I speak to on instant messenger, and I told them what I was doing and that I would need a favor from them in a few days. After they agreed, I submitted the thread and called it the link building goldmine. I purposefully wanted to call it something that nothing else was ranking for or named after, and didn’t call it the link building cookbook because I knew it would rank quickly for it (I already made that mistake when I was just starting this blog).

Well just as I assumed, a lot of readers thanked me for giving away tips rather than selling them in an ebook (like many people on digitalpoint forums are use to), and I got a little bit more green reputation points from the post, and people kept replying in the thread giving their thanks which bumped the article back to the top of the forums and ultimately got more people to see it. Once it was starting to die, I would instant message my friend and have him do the same thing, thank me on the thread giving it a little bump. At the end of the week, I ended up having it receive over 1200 unique hits, it has sent a ton of traffic to my blog, and a lot of people mentioned that they either bookmarked my link building cookbook or subscribed to my RSS feed. I now see a lot of these members so thankful that I am providing this expensive link building techniques for free that they are posting my link in other areas of the forum and in different threads.

All in all, I am receiving a lot of targeted traffic from the good users over at the Digitalpoint forums. The lesson of the case study is to find the most targeted place to post your thread, but make sure you plan it out and have a friend or two ready to bump it to potentially double the traffic that it gets. Last but not least, you actually have to have content that provides value and people will be obliged to read. If my link building techniques were a load of garbage, I would not be receiving the thousands of visitors from the digitalpoint forums that I have had since I started this blog. I hope you can take this little case study and potentially use it to bring yourself some traffic.

** As a little side note, this promotion had 1200 unique visitors to the digitalpoint thread, which passed my marketing plan of 1000. However my other post (with the near same idea from six months ago) has a little over 7000 now. The process can be repeated multiple times because there is so much traffic going through digitalpoint that the same people will not be reading the link building thread in a month, therefor you can keep repeating what works, and there will always be people who want to learn from you so the traffic keeps coming. For me personally, Digitalpoint is the best forum of choice and is my second most popular referrer of all time (when I exclude the 100,000+ digg.com hits I received in a 2 day period which messes up all my other data). **

If I really wanted to be creative, I could post this technique in the “General Marketing” thread on digitalpoint, and get some more targeted traffic from that area, however I am saving a promotion like that for more worthy posts that people will be glad to read in the future months. :-)

Comments

30 Comments on Increase Website Traffic with Forum Marketing

  1. tyler on Wed, 21st Jan 2009 1:47 pm

    2. I have to admit, I was one of the users at DP. Have to admit, your post worked on me.

    I had no idea of most of your tips, and highly appreciate your content.

    Now I am both a RSS feed subscriber, and a regular visitor to your site.

    Thanks for everything Collin, you are a highly valued asset to the webmaster community.

  2. Sacramento Weddings on Thu, 22nd Jan 2009 10:34 am

    3. Colin, you are the master! I’ve been using forums for many years, but never achieved this type of overnight success. Most of my forum posts are at Disc Jockey or Wedding related forums. During American Idol season, I participate at “Vote For The Worst,” the most popular karaoke related forum. Finally, I maintain several memberships at SEO related forums (including DP).
    My success has been more gradual, taking several years to achieve….but I’m here for the long haul and not in a super hurry for a fast buck!

  3. Ryan @ Linkbuildr on Thu, 22nd Jan 2009 12:52 pm

    4. I did a few thorough posts on their too Collin with some good tips and it got me banned. Your post was still much better than my most thorough one though lol. They don’t allow posting back to your websites even though I think it’s stupid. All the posts in link building section are not worth the binary they’re printed on.

  4. Link Building Reading To Keep You Going on Fri, 23rd Jan 2009 12:11 pm

    5. [...] 1) Collin Lahay – Increase Website Traffic With Forum Marketing [...]

  5. chuckiesd on Mon, 26th Jan 2009 1:02 pm

    6. Thanks for sharing some idea on that. I agree with you taht DP is have good potencil to bring traffice to our site. I have put my blog on sig portion. It is really make traffic for my sote.

  6. JennyPrincessX on Tue, 27th Jan 2009 12:25 am

    7. Hi there!

    I’m new to the forum so I just wanted to say hi to everyone!

  7. SEO Roundup: 27th January | MoreNiche Affiliate Marketing Blog on Tue, 27th Jan 2009 3:49 am

    8. [...] we have a post from Colin Lahay talking about forum marketing techniques and how they can be used for both SEO and direct marketing [...]

  8. Tom @ The Home Business Archive on Tue, 27th Jan 2009 12:25 pm

    9. Forums are great places to learn more about internet marketing and also give good tips and advice to others.The best forums are those who give “link juice”.

  9. Sacramento Weddings on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 11:25 am

    10. I want some of that Link Juice you’re drinkin!……LOL

    Where’s Collin? no new postings to his blog in 11 days….hope he’s not bogged down with his collegiate studies!

  10. Forums - Gaming Music SEO Anime on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 12:49 pm

    11. Overall I believe the niche of your site really matters when it comes to forum marketing, a seo/traffic site would do great on Digitalpoint compared to a Dog Toy site.

  11. Scott Allan on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 2:19 pm

    12. Well.. I’m going to have to re-read that to understand( I’m an SEO newbie), but the part I did understand was exciting and obviously proven by your case study. Good read. I’ll give it a whirl.

  12. zakk on Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 8:16 am

    13. An oldie but a goodie.

  13. Mark Wilson on Thu, 5th Feb 2009 2:57 am

    14. Forums can be such a huge source of traffic if you use them correctly. If you use them in away that can be seen as spam. watch out, they can sometimes bite back.

  14. Justin Brooke on Mon, 9th Feb 2009 6:52 am

    15. Forum marketing can be used to promote any business undertaking, but the issue here is that much work will be done in order for this to be successful.

  15. Y. Steven on Thu, 12th Feb 2009 12:50 pm

    16. DP is a good place to easily get indexed by google but they have strict rules. They will not hesitate to ban everyone who break the rules. I have seen like 10+ member were banned at single days which is scars me a bit when i want to posting. Yes i agree with you, DP is the best place to build link. Try to search something on Google and you’ll see that your post on DP will get indexed at first page.

  16. shall on Sat, 14th Feb 2009 3:29 am

    17. Great to be here and learn a lot

  17. Aircraft For Sale on Mon, 16th Feb 2009 1:25 am

    18. dear what ever you mentioned here all are the best for link building of our sites ….

  18. Justin Brooke on Wed, 18th Feb 2009 3:25 am

    19. Answering forums may be too labor-intensive for some, but what they don’t know is that forums can help too in the campaign to get traffic.

  19. Link building on Tue, 24th Feb 2009 8:03 am

    20. well dear it is truth that the forum submission create a traffic to our website, it is also necessary for us on the time of forum posting that is to avoid Black hat SEO.
    thanx.

  20. SEOVancouver on Wed, 25th Feb 2009 11:42 am

    21. Yet another DSP referral here. All great info. Much appreciated!

  21. Kindle 2 Covers on Sat, 7th Mar 2009 6:05 pm

    22. I’ve used forums for traffic and also to build my mailing list. I didn’t think of having friends go in there to keep bumping me back up to the top. Thanks for more great tips Collin.

  22. Exposed seo on Sat, 21st Mar 2009 5:14 pm

    23. I was warned not to post such self promotion threads on DP by one of the mods. I have no idea how you got away with this but people like webmaster were banned for this.

  23. diabetic man on Mon, 27th Apr 2009 12:37 am

    24. thank you, I really wanted to learn how to naturally draw visitors and keep, your article is very interesting

  24. alibeig on Wed, 29th Apr 2009 7:31 am

    25. yes this is working

  25. alibeig on Wed, 29th Apr 2009 7:33 am

    26. I did a few thorough posts on their too Collin with some good tips and it got me banned. Your post was still much better than my most thorough one though lol. They don

  26. janiceenberg on Mon, 15th Jun 2009 12:46 am

    27. I’m new here on the forum, found it by searching google. I look forward to chatting about various topics with all of you.

  27. freelance guide for beginners on Fri, 10th Jul 2009 9:08 pm

    28. thanks,it is really a valuable information.

  28. Rhititype on Mon, 17th Aug 2009 8:51 am

    29. Hi

    I was checking around and I’ve seen that most guys make money with affiliate marketing,
    sorry for my question :( , Do you guys know where to find good info about affiliate marketing?

    Thank you :)

  29. whcadmin on Fri, 4th Dec 2009 5:11 pm

    30. Interesting, I like the idea of ‘calling on your friends’ in instant messenger. good tip.

  30. ShiennaBeenly on Fri, 18th Dec 2009 6:48 am

    31. Hi nto All
    My PC worked slowly, many errors. Help me, please to fix errors on my computer.
    I used Windows 2003.
    Thanks,
    ShiennaBeenly

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