How to Get People to Register on My Forum?

Izagar

Izagar

Active member
Okay, this is stumping me. I have a decently good website when compared to the rest of the Legend of Zelda sites out there. I'm #3 for "Zelda News", #13 for "Zelda Forums"/#14 for "Legend of Zelda Forums", and various other ranks on Google for other pages. I advertise my forums on my Facebook on other forums (through my signature), and other things. I even have a few of my staff who are willing to advertise in their signatures!

Yet, for some reason, there are people who view the forums as a guest and don't really register on my forums. We're active at times, but I fall into the pit of "I gotta make all the topics and get people to post." So I end up flooding the main page of the forums with my name. :/

So I'm wondering if some people can throw me some ideas to help get it more lively? Please?
 
Give things away........
That's one way...I had a contest and picked from new members with at least one post.

I also gave away free copies of a short ebook I wrote.
 
Probably the best thing you can do is to step back and just pretend you are an end user that knows nothing about your site and stumbles upon it via Google search... what sort of problem are you solving for them that would make them want to sign up? Are you giving them something they want that they can't get elsewhere?
 
My suggestion is to find this in PAGE_CONTAINER:
Code: 
<title><xen:if is="{$title}">{xen:raw $title} | {$xenOptions.boardTitle}<xen:else />{$xenOptions.boardTitle} | Call of Duty Forums</xen:if></title>
Replace "Call of Duty Forums" with whatever keyword you want to rank really high on. e.g. "Legend of Zelda Forums"

In "board details" remove the "Zelda Forums" part in "Zelda Forums - Zelda Sanctuary" to show just "Zelda Sanctuary"

So when your visitors come over to your site, they'll see this title:

"Zelda Sanctuary | Legend of Zelda Forums"

google will see it, and index it in there. But it won't rank it at the top for the keyword, you have to do the work - that your visitors and/or members link to your site elsewhere.

And hopefully you have a twitter handle to advertise your threads (ahem Zelda news). Google+ wouldn't hurt, either. :)

Good luck! :D Nice site, btw! :)
AtrumLevis said:
We're active at times, but I fall into the pit of "I gotta make all the topics and get people to post." So I end up flooding the main page of the forums with my name. :/
Click to expand...
CODForums is currently the same way, too but I don't care about the whole "I end up flooding the mainpage with my name on it." Your visitors don't care, just as long as you have something to give them - something to make them go like "I like this site, let's register."

50% of the time it's news. The other 50% is because something is happening that day, like DLC being released. Or leaks of a new title in the series. So, get with the times.
 
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digitalpoint said:
Probably the best thing you can do is to step back and just pretend you are an end user that knows nothing about your site and stumbles upon it via Google search... what sort of problem are you solving for them that would make them want to sign up? Are you giving them something they want that they can't get elsewhere?
Click to expand...
Word up, best advice ever. I'm always doing that, stepping away from the site and looking at it as a guest or using a noob or regular account to see what it's like browsing the site. When you stop doing stuff like that, you start losing touch with your target audience. I need to spend more time browsing as a noob tho. I mainly just do it as a guest but it's important to browse as a noob because after they sign up, it's even harder to keep them coming back if the site doesn't have what they joined for.
 
Okay your first problem is no one's online. I usually won't join a forum no matter how good it looks if no one's online. Work on getting at least 5 people to be online at a time either by creating alias accounts or hide your users online list for now or get that fake online users addon or hire some peeps.

My site varies from 5 to 15 users online at a time. If there only 5 users online most lurkers won't stay logged in, that's why I've hidden it from guests. If there are 15 users online then most lurkers who login out of curiosity will stay logged in. You gotta think of it as a club atmosphere. People hate going into empty clubs.
 
Put a small budget aside and get some paid posters from somewhere like postloop.. or trade posts with someone at forumpromotion.net.. when visitors go there, if there's no content or users online, they'll go look for a forum that's more busy.
 
DRE said:
Okay your first problem is no one's online. I usually won't join a forum no matter how good it looks if no one's online. Work on getting at least 5 people to be online at a time either by creating alias accounts or hide your users online list for now or get that fake online users addon or hire some peeps.

My site varies from 5 to 15 users online at a time. If there only 5 users online most lurkers won't stay logged in, that's why I've hidden it from guests. If there are 15 users online then most lurkers who login out of curiosity will stay logged in. You gotta think of it as a club atmosphere. People hate going into empty clubs.
Click to expand...

How do you hide the users online thing from guests at least? I like to keep it on for members.

Edit: NVM, found it here: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/hide-online-users-for-guests.10466/
 
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Carlos said:
My suggestion is to find this in PAGE_CONTAINER:
Code: 
<title><xen:if is="{$title}">{xen:raw $title} | {$xenOptions.boardTitle}<xen:else />{$xenOptions.boardTitle} | Call of Duty Forums</xen:if></title>
Replace "Call of Duty Forums" with whatever keyword you want to rank really high on. e.g. "Legend of Zelda Forums"

In "board details" remove the "Zelda Forums" part in "Zelda Forums - Zelda Sanctuary" to show just "Zelda Sanctuary"

So when your visitors come over to your site, they'll see this title:

"Zelda Sanctuary | Legend of Zelda Forums"

google will see it, and index it in there. But it won't rank it at the top for the keyword, you have to do the work - that your visitors and/or members link to your site elsewhere.

And hopefully you have a twitter handle to advertise your threads (ahem Zelda news). Google+ wouldn't hurt, either. :)

Good luck! :D Nice site, btw! :)

CODForums is currently the same way, too but I don't care about the whole "I end up flooding the mainpage with my name on it." Your visitors don't care, just as long as you have something to give them - something to make them go like "I like this site, let's register."

50% of the time it's news. The other 50% is because something is happening that day, like DLC being released. Or leaks of a new title in the series. So, get with the times.
Click to expand...


What is the point of making this change? What does this do that the basic board info title doesn't?
 
Another problem that i do see is you have the default MyBB logo too. Try to create a new logo and put it in. It makes the forums look better. Another side note on your news site you need to separate the links at the top some how. They all run together and it makes everything look really tacky.
 
cdub said:
What is the point of making this change? What does this do that the basic board info title doesn't?
Click to expand...
Go to www.codforums.com and see an example of this being used. If your domain has a short name, but identifies the niche in a subtle way, then the best way to tell people is by putting a description next to the board title WITHOUT having to put description in board titles. I see people putting description in board titles, and it looks bad. Not just on forum index, the entire board title appears in thread titles. You don't want that.

You don't want description to appear in every thread title. No, you don't. Mostly because google omits the last 10 letters or the last 10 words in the description.

So, you end up losing keywords from it.
 
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Carlos said:
My suggestion is to find this in PAGE_CONTAINER:
Code: 
<title><xen:if is="{$title}">{xen:raw $title} | {$xenOptions.boardTitle}<xen:else />{$xenOptions.boardTitle} | Call of Duty Forums</xen:if></title>
Replace "Call of Duty Forums" with whatever keyword you want to rank really high on. e.g. "Legend of Zelda Forums"

In "board details" remove the "Zelda Forums" part in "Zelda Forums - Zelda Sanctuary" to show just "Zelda Sanctuary"

So when your visitors come over to your site, they'll see this title:

"Zelda Sanctuary | Legend of Zelda Forums"

google will see it, and index it in there. But it won't rank it at the top for the keyword, you have to do the work - that your visitors and/or members link to your site elsewhere.

And hopefully you have a twitter handle to advertise your threads (ahem Zelda news). Google+ wouldn't hurt, either. :)

Good luck! :D Nice site, btw! :)

CODForums is currently the same way, too but I don't care about the whole "I end up flooding the mainpage with my name on it." Your visitors don't care, just as long as you have something to give them - something to make them go like "I like this site, let's register."

50% of the time it's news. The other 50% is because something is happening that day, like DLC being released. Or leaks of a new title in the series. So, get with the times.
Click to expand...

Would you recommend this on my forum? I rank #1 on google if you search for the specifics on my niche - example if you search "cat forum" (just an example) you would get me #1 for my forum niche (only one of its kind really), however, if you search just "cat" you will not find me. If I add "cat" in place of "call of duty" - would that help if one searched "cat?"
 
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