How to Compete against the Big Boys VBulletins

[Stevegriswold]

Hi,

I launched a Disney Fan Xen Foro site. It looks great, super clean, great discussion topics, and I am very excited that it is using Xen Foro.

My problem is my Disney Fan Forums is brand new and I am going up against the big VBulletin boys that have been around for 10+ years. When you search on Disney Forums, Disney Discussion Boards, Disney Vacation Forums, etc. All their VBulletin sites show up on Google.

I am over here with my free lemon aid stand while they are on the main drag in a shinny new building with hundreds of thousands of users.

How to I get the word out? How do you compete when these large VBulletin boards have so much of the user market and are also free?

Thanks for all your tips and marketing advice,

http://www.WDWTravelGuide.com

 

[Reeve of Shinra]

Find a niche they are filling and go all out to corner it.

 

[CTXMedia]

Erm, your site says "travel" not "fan" - all of the forums appear to be focused on travelling to/staying at Disney resorts and about Disney attractions.

A Disney "fan" site would be about the company and the cartoons/characters - surely - with maybe one forum dedicate to the various resorts?

If I was taking my family to a Disney resort I might find it useful, but it's coming across - to me at least - as a side aimed at pushing offers for holidays, or advice for visitors to Disney resorts; and whilst that information is probably good and useful, it's not really going to get people coming back regularly as those are often "once in a lifetime" trips for anyone who doesn't live locally.

Paste the URLs for your competitors so we can see what they are doing, and we might be able to offer some advice - but so far your site wouldn't attract many repeat visitors from me, even if I was a Disney afficionado, because it doesn't appear to be focused on Disney fans.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[HannahP]

The forum software has nothing to do with it, but you knew that, right? The question is, "How does my brand new forum compete with forums on a similar subject that have been around for more than a decade?"

The answer is, it can't. But you knew that, right?

It will take a long time and a lot of effort to build up the link juice that the established sites have. The playing field will never be even, so you have to take extra SEO measures if you ever want to be in their league. With a generic, popular subject like "Disney," you have your work cut out for you.

A good shortcut would be to allocate a budget of $10,000 to $20,000 a month to spend on Google AdWords. Short of that my advice would be to be very patient and diligent, work on site promotion every day and see where your search ranking are in ten years or so. Then you can go from there.

 

[Carlos]

What I'd do if I were you would be to change board name from this:

WDW Travel Guide - Disney Vacation Planning Discussion Forums

To this:

WDW Travel Guide - Disney Fan Forums

You already have "Travel" so this "Vacation Planning Discussion" is unnecessary. I would only use "Vacation Planning Discussion" in a node.

Discussion is a word that's not really, keyword heavy from my research.

 

[steven s]

I can't believe that Disney would allow such sites using their name.