Forums due to their design and intent, offer an excellent place for people to come together and partake in discussion and in sharing information related to their sphere of interest. This fact can be leveraged by you to gain quality and highly targeted traffic for your website, blog and even forum.

While this is one of the cheapest (in financial terms) method of gaining traffic, it isn’t as easy as it sounds and one has to adhere to a few guidelines to gain long term traffic and audience through forums.

In this post I will be sharing ways to attain such traffic, not only from the point of view of a blog/site owner, but also from the point of view of a forum admin. I have been using these tips to gain traffic for my websites, forums and blogs and it never dries up, even if I stop posting for a few weeks in some forums. On top of it, I never had any one of the forum owners complain about this; instead I have received numerous offers to become a moderator at forums I actively contribute at!

All this got you interested?

Then read these simple yet effective tips to gain highly targeted and relevant traffic for your site…

A word of caution, before you read the following tips, remember never to spam a forum. This is the single biggest point I cannot stop emphasizing upon. If you try to spam forums to gain traffic, you might gain a few clicks in short term, but you will also gain an eventual ban and a bad reputation of being a spammer.

1. Find forums which belong to your niche: First you need to find forums which belong to your niche and can thus give you targeted and relevant traffic. You can use search engine such as google to find forums with a simple query like this, widget forums (replace widget with your niche keyword). Or you can look in forum directories such as Big Boards. If you run a forum then it would be wise to look for forum which address your niche at some level, however aren’t totally dedicated to it and thus aren’t current or future competitors. For instance if you run a forum “every colored widget”, then you can safely register at a forum dealing with red widgets or vice versa. You can even head to general forum with a category dedicated to your niche, provided that category sees good activity and is ranked well in search engines.

2. Don’t register at competing forums: If you run a forum or your competitor runs a forum as part of their website/blog, then please don’t register at their forum. Even if they allow you to post the link of your forum/blog/site, it can turn out to be counterproductive in the longer run. For instance if some day the forum owners gets annoyed of you, he can easily cause you a lot of heart burn and ruin your reputation by confronting you in public and putting you under the spotlight. After all you are a guest at his house and thus have to play by his rules.

3. Read their guidelines and TOS: Always and I mean always read the board rules and TOS before registering, to ensure the forum you are registering at does not have rules which bar posting of links in signature and in posts. While most forums allow this, some don’t and a few don’t allow urls to be posted till a member has posted a specified number of posts.

4. Don’t register at closed/private forums: There are quite a few forums out there which only let you see their content if you have registered there as a member, avoid these like plague! Not only does it cause hindrance for search engine spiders to reach your links, it also limits the number of people who will see your link to the registered member base of the forum. Which in most cases will be bloated due to their must register policy.

5. Choose user name wisely: While it might seem like a bright idea to use your websites name as your user id, it will look spammy to most and lacks personal touch. It is always best to use your real name or some thing closer as your user id, unless it happens to be a gaming or other type of forum, where people like to use call signs.

6. Use Signature links: The simplest and most effective way to post your link in forums is to post it in your signature, which will be visible below all of your posts. While most like to link to the home page of their website in their signature, it is a good idea to put link to one of your quality article with an appropriate anchor text. This would not only attract more users, it will also provide you with some deep links for SEO purpose. Try to update your signature every few weeks with links to new articles. If you have a blog that needs to promoted, then it would be a good idea to use feedburner’s Headline Animator. This will provide you with a simple gif image (see image below this point) which will display your most recent blog posts in your signature (check forum policy on using images in signature).

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

7. Build a rapport: This is the most essential part of gaining traffic; one has to earn rapport in the eyes of fellow members by posting relevant and helpful posts and topics. Also it is always good to welcome new members in friendly manner, when they post their introduction topic. Don’t flame any one or be seen as some one whose only interest is to get people to click their links, instead be helpful and contribute positively even if it means directing people to other websites or posting detailed posts.

Just following these simple steps should ensure you not only receive quality and targeted traffic for your endeavor, but also receive goodwill of people interested in your niche. Remember, like almost every thing else, there are no shortcuts to success and you need to work hard and produce quality content people will be interested in.