Forums, just like all other websites, thrive on new traffic to survive. You must drive visitors to your forum is you want to be successful. There are many ways to increase traffic to your forum. Some are free, and some require money. Below are a few basic tips for driving traffic to your forum. Note that I said ‘basic’. They may seem obvious to most, but I guarantee that some people out there aren’t doing all of them.

Search Engine Optimization

Most of your forum visitors will come to your site through search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Getting indexed in a search engine is very simple, however, moving up the rankings can be difficult depending on the competition for your keywords. I will dive deeper into forum SEO tips later on. In fact, it will be a major category topic for FBB. But for now, some basic SEO tips include having optimized page titles, search engine friendly URLs, and proper META Tags.

Paid Traffic

I know you don’t want to read that. No one likes paying for traffic, but sometimes it’s a must, especially if you have a very broad forum and have a tough time moving up in the SERPs. But there is no faster way to show up on Page 1 of Google for your keyword then to purchase the spot. If you can afford to invest a few dollars into Adwords and other PPC networks, you will drive traffic to your forum.

Backlinks

Get other forums or websites to publish a link to your site.

Post On Other Forums

Be sure to post on related forums. Include a link to your forum in your signature and people will follow it. Post thoughtful, lengthy responses that answer the thread creator’s question.

Social Networking

Myspace, Friendster and Facebook can be a valuable source for traffic. You will find thousands of people on social networking sites that share the same interests of your forum. This is one of my biggest traffic drivers and I will have plenty more to say on how to properly market on social networking sites in future blog posts here at FBB.

Like I said above, these were just a few basic tips. I’m sure you’ve already tried them all, but if not, go ahead and dive in. You’ll be surprised how the simple things can show the best results.