How To Get The Word Out About Your Site?

[MarcInJapan]

I own a mustang site that have members all around the word (lots of military personnel) and its actually not doing too bad. Got almost 4400 members in a little over 3 years. Thats not to bad for a car/military site.

Other than being published in magazines, coordinating with other sites (Partner sites who share links), and advertising with Google Internet searches (which I have done all)...what is the best way to advertise your site (paying and non-paying)?

Thanks!

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Whatever you think, posting it on vB.org is not the way as we do not allow advertising.

[Zachariah]

* New quality content regularly (something another site would link to and talk about)
* maintained spam
* social networking
* markup validity of web code
* Online staff

[MarcInJapan]

Whatever you think, posting it on vB.org is not the way as we do not allow advertising.

I know that. Exactly why I didn't put a link or even mention the name of my site. I am not looking to spam the board. Legitimate question.

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* New quality content regularly (something another site would link to and talk about)
* maintained spam
* social networking
* markup validity of web code
* Online staff

"Markup validity of web code"? What is this?

[popowich]

Answer questions about mustangs at answers.yahoo.com and link back to your site in the resources section.

-Raymond

[Zachariah]

"Markup validity of web code"? What is this?

http://validator.w3.org/ - use it to clean up html code.

[Digital Jedi]

"Markup validity of web code"? What is this?
It helps to ensure that your code is working across all browser types.

[MarcInJapan]

Answer questions about mustangs at answers.yahoo.com and link back to your site in the resources section.

-Raymond

Thanks for the info! I signed up to Yahoo, posted some questions about forums and answered other questions.

Where is this "Resources" section you talk about? I didn't see it.

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http://validator.w3.org/ - use it to clean up html code.

Holy Crap! I had about 1200 errors...I don't even know where to go. I was going to post it up here, but its 100K plus characters, more than 5x allowed in a post here.

[Digital Jedi]

Enable the option in your Admin CP to display where templates begin and end in your HTML, set the validator to Show Source and then go through your errors in order line by line. You'll find that errors tend to cascade, and one fix to an & that should be an & can correct hundreds of other errors.

[Caddyman]

post at sites related to yours with a link back to your site in your signature.

[popowich]

Where is this "Resources" section you talk about? I didn't see it.

When you are answering a question it is the box below the box you type your answer in. Also, google adwords was a great and cheap way for me to advertise my site and generate many of my first 300 members. I've since stopped my adwords campaign but am still running at over 700 real human visitors (does not include spiders) per day. Trying google adwords has worked far better for me, and cheaper than, other services such as posting services and offline advertising. Most of my clicks cost me less than a nickel and I had 7% CTR's with lots (don't know the %) of registrations.

-Raymond

[MarcInJapan]

When you are answering a question it is the box below the box you type your answer in. Also, google adwords was a great and cheap way for me to advertise my site and generate many of my first 300 members. I've since stopped my adwords campaign but am still running at over 700 real human visitors (does not include spiders) per day. Trying google adwords has worked far better for me, and cheaper than, other services such as posting services and offline advertising. Most of my clicks cost me less than a nickel and I had 7% CTR's with lots (don't know the %) of registrations.

-Raymond
Thanks for the info. I have looked around and around...but, where the heck is the button to actually post a "answer" to someone's question?

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Enable the option in your Admin CP to display where templates begin and end in your HTML, set the validator to Show Source and then go through your errors in order line by line. You'll find that errors tend to cascade, and one fix to an & that should be an & can correct hundreds of other errors.

Thank you. Let me try that.

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Enable the option in your Admin CP to display where templates begin and end in your HTML, set the validator to Show Source and then go through your errors in order line by line. You'll find that errors tend to cascade, and one fix to an & that should be an & can correct hundreds of other errors.

Where in the Admin CP do you ensure templates begin and end in HTML? sorry, really new to this stuff.

[EWGF]

vBulletin Options - General Settings - Add Template Name in HTML Comments

[Brandon Sheley]

You have many ways to promote a forum, you mentioned that you posted or traded links on other related sites, that's a good start!
you should also get into the social bookmarking scene, you can get loads of targeted traffic from social bookmarks
you should also submit your sites to link directories and get some good articles out with your links in article directories
Work on your SEO, and you'll see the traffic double and triple

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Moved out of Community Lounge as we are now discusing technical solutions within vB.

[MarcInJapan]

vBulletin Options - General Settings - Add Template Name in HTML Comments

Well, after doing this it dropped from 1200 errors to: 303 Errors, 23 warning(s)

Man, thats still alot. Is there a place where I can post these up so people can tell me where to go and how to fix these errors line by line?

[Digital Jedi]

Well, after doing this it dropped from 1200 errors to: 303 Errors, 23 warning(s)

Man, thats still alot. Is there a place where I can post these up so people can tell me where to go and how to fix these errors line by line?
The FAQ links within the validator are what helped me to understand things. If you start with the first error and then do a little Google searching, then you can up with the solutions to most of them pretty quick. I started out with 600+, and eventually dropped them to 0. Really, your the best one to diagnose your problems, because you have access to the source, and can tweak things and revalidate as you go.