Domain Owl

The Twitterverse is filled with “blah” websites that make the first time visitor flee upon landing. but a few features can make the browser hang around and click a few times to make sure they aren’t missing anything. A domain name with “forum”, “talk” or “chat” can be its own SEO boost by receiving links from related forums. If the forums don’t allow you to furnish your link in a s signature line, put it in your profile.

1. Install Custom Avatars

The option to include an avatar in a forum post personalizes the user and allows them to enjoy making a statement with every comment. It’s a disappointment when this option is not provided. Worse, when especially cutting edge sites have default avatars, it’s a real conflict with their stated ambition to seem avante garde. If the new template does not have any images for the avatars or (worse,) has only the same ones on every board of the type, and make sure the template is used on other high-SEO sites.

2. Chatbox/Chat Board

The chatbox used to be for people who wanted Twitter but it hadn’t been invented yet. They would spout nonsense, get into fights, or babble incoherently. Providing a chatbox invites repeat traffic and user connections available only at that site. If users need to exchange FaceBook identities for easier and more facile communication, you’ve done something wrong. If webmasters find that the forum site gets spammed or uploaded files are out of control set parameters to limit size of graphic upload or only allow a miniature preview.
If spam links get out of control, then only send the participation bulletin to a few chosen users or define the chat as invitation-only. Webmasters can set up a weekly or nightly appointment time when the chatbox is enabled, or restrict the chatbox participation to ten administrator-approved posts. The newsletter or email reminder could alert members of a forum that approval is required up to one hour before chatbox tie, allowing adequate server bandwidth overage protection.

3. Mod Your Board

Deserted Web forums are the worst advertisement for websites in existence. A static one-shot HTML page at least has the excuse of being prepared for brief visits. Forums with extended participation expectations should have at least one full time moderator policing the content and invigorating the discussions.And always put a email verification and other restriction, such as a addition number or image reading Captcha, on the enrollment login registration processs.

An unmodded board may get record enrollment, and 99.9 per cent of it will be out of control spam. Adult material, wares advertisements, email solicitations or instant message abuse needs to be nipped in the bud. Abuses will multiply and encroach until the keyword tags for your forum point in an entirely inappropriate direction in a few days’ time.

4. Tag Clouds

By devising tag cloud per forum category and section, a webmaster allows for loading categorical tag cloud keyword options for user pulldown or fill-in. Thus every post has a resonant keyword association. Always encourage members to introduce new ideas and forum category topics. A search engine bot or spider will trace the development of the new pages the new category builds and their relevance and growth with respect to the rest of the forum.

5. Twitter Favorite Posts

Many forum users will be looking to publicize their own site links or just distinguish themselves by making relevant, board members or forum visitors know more about them, when they are on the forum, and how they can interact with such key users. Encourage such star members to mod their own section, write a review or blog for the board, and/or devise polls and surveys on the forum subject matter. Community members may visit the forum or return to check in just because this user may have said something they want to read.

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A client of mine many years ago invested in a body of about 500 forum names. His plan was to bulk build out the forums for these domain names and then sell them to individual handpicked buyers. This effort met with the expected land rush of ambiguous ambivalence. With little t no promotion of the forums as individual entities with passion and special interest, there was almost no site growth. The clones just attracted spammers.

Forum themes and mods make forum website planning fun. But just establishing a forum application install is not “all she wrote” when it comes to forum domain names. These domainers appear to me like reclusive botanists who expect their exotic orchid to flourish inside a protected greenhouse sheltered from organic activity. Parking a domain name to me is the equivalent of locking the greenhouse door.

Domain values don’t grow in the dark. They need energy and light, vibrance and electricity to grow in value. End users must enjoy visiting the site and have something to do when they get there. Registration-enabled perks or features should reward new fans of the forum site. Promotion and marketing at certain key times can make a forum flash overnight into an online destination with demographics worldwide.

The forum itself needs to be fleshed out with topics and categories and posts. A sample batch of enterprise user names and sample posts sets the stage for a community to evolve. But encouragement is necessary. And imitating another board only works if the mania for the topic is white-hot (like for Twilight fans) or the graphic design and forum theme attracts fanboard moths (like for Twilight fans).

A domain name for a forum does not have to have the word “forum” in it. The words community, group, or board (or even bb) do tend to crop up. Any short niche word plus the “bb” in a dot-com domain name makes an extremely attractive and typable domain investment. The logo itself will be dynamic and fresh, even it is only a Cooltext.com conversion.  One forum needs active linking to grow and find new viewers, if only to get palpable feedback on the site experience from a new visitor.

Forums were the way most online users hooked up with fellow fans before social media took over. But now that advertisers have soured the FaceBook game, MySpace has died a premature death, and hackers focus their lenses on  FaceBook as a mining ground for individuals, online users are being interested once more by the semi-anonymous world of the forum posting again.

Forums can be references that get a lot of SEO query results. Posting articles and quizzes can make for a fun site walkthrough. Game cheat and directories of hard-to-find resources make excellent forum features. Community searchers are looking for the same thing. To get content ideas, Google search your site keywords and review the existing results and buld a better body of reference text.

A forum as a subfeature of a larger site is an excellent way to improve SEO. Hot topics are (ironically) Farmville and Mafia Wars. Quick blurbs of information come across as natural chat, and don’t need the support of a 500 word article around them to make the bots crawl faster. By making dsense code into posting incidences, and by incorporating posting tags and images (with tags), the SEO of the forum name and the parent site grows appreciably.

The one component for the potential success of a forum is that the user base is a prurient target. Some demographics, even niche user bases, don’t get online that much. Some professional groups and age layers in certain tranches of the consumer population either don’t have time or spend their texting social media. Luring away those users can be a futile effort, since the interactivity with their cellphone or mobile device is what empowers that traffic.

Certain user groups are always going to drill a little deeper. But enabling your forum to be mobile device accessible makes for even more potential visitors and members.  But for the Internet surfer looking to make their mark or learn something about their favorite topic, the community website, bulletin board model, and forum domain are still a good choice for domain creation, name investment, partner project launches, and website development.

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