[Banadmin]

Discussion Zone's Website Promotion Thread - Different Techniques
Websites or forums normally start-off by getting their traffic by promoting/advertising their website through different systems and websites. The most well-known promotion method is advertising/showcasing their website or forum through different sites such as HackForums' Website Showcase and Reviews forum section.

Search Engine Optimization

Another method of gaining traffic is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This method involves gaining traffic through Google, Yahoo!, Bing and any other search engines. I would rate SEO the best possible method for long-term traffic.

How can I gain traffic through SEO?

I forgot to mention this is probably the hardest to follow through method. You or your members post quality content which gets ranked on Google, someone searches that specific term and finds your website or forum.

Tips to improve SEO
I use MyBB powered forums as an example

• Re-write URLs to look similar to the forum, thread and post title (Google SEO plugin)
  
• Add meta tags such as descriptions, names and keywords
  
• Create quality backlinks which links to your website or forum
  

Useful Links
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/206...-Meta-Tags

This is not a guide, I just thought I would spice up this thread with some useful information. Post other ways to promote or advertise your website or forum. I will add them to this thread if I like your method!

[Banadmin]

Sitemaps and Google Tools

Sitemaps

The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently. Sitemaps are a URL inclusion protocol and complement robots.txt, a URL exclusion protocol.

The above pretty much covers what sitemaps are. If you would like to read more about sitemaps then click here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps

Submit your sitemaps here:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

Google Tools

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

Google Tools provides professional statistics to you using your website or forum. You can submit your website sitemap link to Google and it will provide you with MORE statistics.

You have to go through a site verification process to verify your ownership of that site.

Google Tools provides the following:

• Site Health
  
• Traffic
  
• Optimization
  
• Labs
  

I have highlighted "Traffic" in red as I find it the most useful. You can click the "Searched Queries" sub-menu and it will show you how you're doing in Google/SEO.

Useful Links
http://whatpageofsearchamion.com/

[Anon]

Thanks for the thread, Nice improvement!

[Banadmin]

Thanks for the thread, Nice improvement!

Thank-you, Gio! I spent a small while styling it. :p

[Wonders]

Very nice thread, thanks a lot for sharing these useful tips with us.

[Banadmin]

Placeholder updated 26/04/2013.

[Anarchist]

Thanks for the update, Reign!

[Banadmin]

No problem!