I recently started a new forum, and figured id try a gogle adwrods campaign to drive some traffic to my site. The problem is i get the feeling that adwords inflates thier prices and that "bid wars" take place making the ad extremely expensive. I was willing spend .20/click - 5.00/day and most of my keywords are inactive saying i need 1.00 to 5.00 a click bid for them to be active...out of 65 or so keywords 52 are inactive because .20 isnt high enuff...

So im rethinking my strategy now for driving traffic to my new forums. What are free ways to draw traffic into your site, or better yet to be visible to people?

I know the names of some of the methods that will be mentioned like SEO and make an article somehwere...but how are these things implimented, what are good resources to use, etc?

Well, you can get a ton of traffic without paying for any advertising.

To get your piece of the pie you have to implement both the methods – SEO & SMO.

If you need any help in this regard, do let me know.

1) I wouldn't give up on PPC. Many people do because they think it's too expensive but once you work out how to use it you can get cheaper, quality clicks. Few people put in the time to learn it propoerly so if you do you will then forever be ahead of your competition.

2) If you want to learn SEO, then I have a set of free seo training audio tapes available on my site.

Good luck.

Mike

When you create a forum around a community, it has a user base from the first day.

The best way would be to create a forum around a community instead of creating a forum and then searching for a community. Communities that need forums either already have them or will soon. Try to service the "will soon" groups.

Originally Posted by willcode4beer

The best way would be to create a forum around a community instead of creating a forum and then searching for a community.

I agree........

And I ended up learning about this the hard way.

Originally Posted by mikesed

1) I wouldn't give up on PPC. Many people do because they think it's too expensive but once you work out how to use it you can get cheaper, quality clicks. Few people put in the time to learn it propoerly so if you do you will then forever be ahead of your competition.

2) If you want to learn SEO, then I have a set of free seo training audio tapes available on my site.

Good luck.

Mike

Mike,

I actually followed the link in your sig, first thank you!

Thank you for writting an easy to understand and implement method to optimizing not only your ads but your web pages. I have been having so much trouble wrapping my head around this whole SEO/relevancy thing, and your site helped guide me in the right direction.

Im going to immediatly follow your suggestions, compared to where im at it cant hurt and will most likely help.

Originally Posted by ctbinccp

Mike,

I actually followed the link in your sig, first thank you!

Thank you for writting an easy to understand and implement method to optimizing not only your ads but your web pages. I have been having so much trouble wrapping my head around this whole SEO/relevancy thing, and your site helped guide me in the right direction.

Im going to immediatly follow your suggestions, compared to where im at it cant hurt and will most likely help.

Hi,

I'm happy to help and thank you for the kind words.

It will be great to hear about your successes.

Mike

Try other search engines PPC, its cheaper than adwords

Originally Posted by northbeach23

Try other search engines PPC, its cheaper than adwords

Yea im using yahoo marketing right now, but im seriously unimpressed with how they have it laid out...took me about 5 mins to figure out how to login (im not computer illiterate), and tooday i had a message saying that i had exceeded my spending limit even though the dashboard showed i had no expenses for the day...then going into the reports it showed a completely different set of data showing i had had many impressions and clicks, very confusing.

I had followed Mikes advice and am seeing better results then before after only 1 day. It could be better, there is always room for improvement, and i intend on tweaking my ads, landing page, and keywords to get it right.

Also blog about your forum

Well day 2 or 3 and niether google or yahoo has raised the bid on me, however i do notice the QS on goolge has dropped. i was OK for everything yesterday and im poor on everything today.

However the good news is im getting some clicks, im getting impressions, and google doesnt want 5 bux a click.

I think the most confusing thing to me is figuring out exactly what google finds relavent.

If you are a member of several social forums and have friends in each, ask them to visit your forum and review it. Tell em there welcome to stay a while and invite a friend .

Originally Posted by EdTheil

If you are a member of several social forums and have friends in each, ask them to visit your forum and review it. Tell em there welcome to stay a while and invite a friend .

I have been, the problem is my forum is kind of on the tech side...its made for beginners but my firend s have no interest in the topic. I have been trying to use myspace, facebook and some video sites like youtube to promote.

As an update, google and yahoo still have yet to raise thier rates on me, ive held the same bid for the most part this whole time. So im very happy with that. The problem is that my keywords seem to get almost no impressions, and that the majority of my traffic seems to be from the content network.

This could be my fault. Really what im starting to see is that i need to do alot of work on my site, generating alot of content with a key main keywords in mind...possibly even making my forum just a portion of a whole site.

If you have started a forum then try to market it via forum posting on relevant forums and you can try blog commenting too ..

Forum posting is a great way. There are always people looking to get involved in a new forum. There is also a new search engine for forums called www.twing.com. You might want to find out how to get highly ranked there with your forum. Adding an article directory to your forum is another way. Introduce your new article directory in forums and you will not only have visitors but also you will have people submitting content.

There are a lot of ways to promote your site if you have time. I did never spent any cent for my advertising activities since I launched my first blog last february until it gets a steady daily uniques of around 1K..

The process is simple if you can follow this simple procedure.
The daily advertising guide.

you can also use traffic exchanges to drive traffic to your site. take a look at my blog there ra quite abit of info on traffic exchanges also includes statistics http://onlineauctionsecrets.blogspot...ing-stats.html

You can try submitting it to social book marks, they help with traffic, a good one is digg

Do not pay advertise on adsense, do some bum marketing you know write articles and advertise on many sites then, post on forum and just advertise on many different forums like I do see VVV