# best way to advertise!



## radio-talker (Dec 25, 2005)

can people tell me the best way to advertise? cuz i really cant think how i can advertise for my forum i dont wana get banned off this forum but i need to advertise!!!!!!!


----------



## Grove (Jun 21, 2005)

The best way to advertise would be to use the META tag.



> <meta name="keywords" content="ADD KEYWORDS HERE" />
> <meta name="description" content="PUT DESCRIPTION HERE " />


This means when someone searches say through yahoo for they keyword, help, they will get a description and be taken to your link. If my memory serves me well, pages are index every 1 - 2 days.

Google on the other hand, index the words I am typing now for instance. So for your site make sure that you have good words used on your pages as google indexes those.

Apart from that, you can post your site in the Advertisments section. You need 25 posts to view that. If this site is a local site, I would suggest you notify your local paper or arrange a TV or Radio Advertisment.

If this is a bit more commercial site, get in touch with companies to put they're sponsors on your site in exchange for free advertising. 

If you need more help, feel free to ask. :sayyes:


----------



## radio-talker (Dec 25, 2005)

*i need a lil more*

ok i realy want to find a place , like a forum and advertise there,


----------



## Grove (Jun 21, 2005)

Well, like I stated before, don't go advertising in any forum. That is known as spamming. Simply put 1 advertisment in the Advertising forum and that will be enough :sayyes:


----------



## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

What type of site is it? Does is specialize in a particular area of interest? (i.e. car repair, rc cars, gardening, etc). If so, it'll be easier then if it was just a general purpose site. Let's say your site is about rc cars. Locate some already active rc car sites/forums. Become an active member of those forums. When someone asks for other sites/links about rc cars, provide your link. Someone else asked, so you're not really spamming at that point. However, make sure you're known and respected by some people. Just posting nonsense is a good way for people to not pay attention to you. This is basically, a cheap, but slow way of advertising. It's effective since people are interested in finding more sites. But people don't ask every day. 

Another way would be to pay other sites to advertise yours. Again, this is most effective when you have a site that has a specific interest and you advertise on other, similar sites. 

No matter how you get new visitors/members, make sure you have plenty of content on the site and discussion on the msg board. Nothing scares people away faster then an empty msg board. Also, if you have 30 forums set up on your msg board, but only 10 members, it's going to look dead, no matter how much those members post. Starts small and expand as needed. New msg boards should have no more then 6 forums to start with, and 6 may be too many. 

Ask some of your friends to become members and to post. Get some traffic going so that once new visitors show up, they'll see an active community and they'll be more willing to join in.


----------



## johnwill (Sep 26, 2002)

And note that it takes years for a forum to really grow into something, check how long some of the forums have been active on the Internet.


----------



## Jayso (Nov 2, 2005)

Grove said:


> The best way to advertise would be to use the META tag.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



LOL, i can't believe i didn't think about that....

Another Question:
Is there any VBulletin-related issues that stop google bots from scanning forums? MSN have done their job, but the google-bots don't seem to pick up anything (I WHOIS lookup some guests and they track to google bots)

Thanks for the help


----------



## DumberDrummer (Oct 27, 2003)

make sure that your robots.txt allows googlebots.


----------



## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

Jayso said:


> LOL, i can't believe i didn't think about that....
> 
> Another Question:
> Is there any VBulletin-related issues that stop google bots from scanning forums? MSN have done their job, but the google-bots don't seem to pick up anything (I WHOIS lookup some guests and they track to google bots)
> ...


I don't think Google (and various other bots) are able to follow dynamic links. Newer versions of vBulletin have a "search engine friendly archive" option available. I don't know if it's enabled by default.


----------



## oldmn (Oct 16, 2005)

Be sides meta tags (just don't get carried away and add the dictionary to it. Keep it simple and accurate).(Meta tags) Is a word list that a person would normally search for to find the info in your page. This is where you would add misspelled words or phrases that would also lead to your page.
There is alway link exchanges at the moment we have 224 links from other sites. Avoid link farms Google and yahoo will dump you like a hot potato if you are linked to one.
A good robot.txt can helps also like Fox said..(controls what the bot indexes).
Also get it in DMOZ can help, We get a lot of traffic from there.
http://www.dmoz.org/
Sorry had my reference mixed up.


----------



## Jayso (Nov 2, 2005)

can you explain more as in what i should do? i don't really understand...


----------



## oldmn (Oct 16, 2005)

Added some things to my last post. Check them out and see if that helps.
Its time for bed, It wasnt FOX it was drummer that mentioned robot.txt. Sorry :4-dontkno


----------



## Jayso (Nov 2, 2005)

well i just submitted our site to the dmoz site you gave me


----------

