Hi,

I own a little forum and need some tips to push forward the participation from members.
I'm already planning a contest to offer a travel check (travel niche) but members stay for one or two months and then go.

The forum is 2 years old and these are the stats:
Tópics: 1.800,
Messages: 3500
Members: 760,
Active Members: 130
Note: Some of this topics (+-800) are RSS Feed i use to pull in the beginning.

Yahoo Explorer:
Pages: 5,424
Inlinks: 3,443
External Links: 1,017

Google:
Pages Indexed 2820
Domain search: 4.450

I get 17000 visits/monthly and have 50.000 page views.
I rank well on some important keywords (1st or 2nd google page) and have done almost everything I learn about Seo:

Welcome Headers using gif image
Remove vB from Title
Remove Site Name from title, except home
meta tags optimization
Push most important forums to the 1st position of the page
Robots.txt
Sitemap,
Thread description on the top of each one
h1, h2, h3
and so on ....

i participate as much as I can and almost every thread as some posts made from me.
i have a paid theme, a gallery ...

What else can I do?

Thanks

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Para quem gosta de viagens...

I am going to say something which I am sure wouldn’t go down well with a few admins.

Search Engine Optimization wouldn’t actually help make a forum active!

Sure it will help you pull in visitors; however whether they decided to stay and contribute would depend on the kind of content and community you have.

I have personally seen a forum which has been optimized for search engines like anything and pulls in quite a bit of traffic and even has threads with PR2-3 ranking; however it is still not active, it has no community!

Why?

Because the owner decided to spend all his time and efforts on search engine optimization, rather than on working to develop a friendly community of like minded individuals.

Make sure you work towards building a community and not towards a self running money printing press.

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India Travel Forum | vBulletin Tips and Tricks | Free Travel Directory | Men's Lifestyle Forum

Well, both thinks must be done!
I think my problem is that in this time I couldn't create a community ...
That's the most difficult part of running a board I have found.

As I said, I replay to almost every thread, talk to members using a chat and PM's.
Every time a make a change I talk to then to get feedback and to involve then.

Here is where I need some help.

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Para quem gosta de viagens...

You are absolutely correct. SEO only drives in visitors now if they stay or not is a different question. I think the toughest thing to do is keep the visitors coming back steadily. Mine has been up for 2 years and I have the same members posting daily. I have a lot of registers especially lately but most of them dont come back either.

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GreekRealm

These days, most people join a forum if they want something. They've searched google and found your forum, they've made the relevant posts to get what they want and most of the time they don't return until they want something again.

It usually is the same members that post without wanting anything and that's just the way forums are unfortunately.

You need to offer something else on the forum that's not part of the niche that members will see and decide to take part in. Maybe it's a General Chat section, Freebies, Bargains, Links, etc. anything.

I don't like it when I get mass mails from forums but it's a good way to inform all your members at the same time of any updates or recent improvements on your forum.

You could create a competition for member of the month and offer a prize. This might tempt members into posting more. The prize it up to you.

Try not to have any empty or dead forums. If members see forums that are non-active then they won't stay. Maybe merge some of the forums together to make them more active.

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Digital Kaos | Dreambox Guides

Thanks for you tips
All you've said is true and I've done almost everything you refer.
As a travel forum, people came, as something about a destiny ... get a response & go
There are a few one that came often.

Last week I activate Subscription with response by email so that members came often.

About a contest, I'm planning one but since this is the first one I don't want to spend much.
I was planning a Travel Check for $50 but I would like to start with something cheaper for testing ...

Can you give some ideas?
What would you expect from a prize in a contest like this?

Thanks

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Para quem gosta de viagens...

That is the biggest problem with running a travel forum, people are looking for information to plan their itineraries and when they get it, quite a few don’t bother coming back.

As for prize, well it would be best if you can offer some travel related goodies or something else, giving out money doesn’t actually goes well with every one, especially when it is for US$ 50.

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India Travel Forum | vBulletin Tips and Tricks | Free Travel Directory | Men's Lifestyle Forum

Yogesh is spot on with his assessment of SEO IMO.

nfn, i run a lot of competitions from my site and ive found although the value of the prize is significant whats more significant is the competition itself. the more people have to do to enter the less likely they are to! my competitions typically have 3 prizes coming to a value of about £300, the most I did was a christmas charity raffle with prizes totalling £1500. you need to try and get the prizes donated by companies who may have an interest in your site. what you must remember when getting a retailier/manufacturer to donate a prize is that a £50 product to you is likely only costing them £25, so think a little bigger!

my most successful competition to date was a photo compeition Win A Pair Of Stretch Air Chainsaw Trousers - Arbtalk, discussion forum for arborists successful was a video competition.

Yogesh is spot on with his assessment of SEO IMO.

nfn, i run a lot of competitions from my site and ive found although the value of the prize is significant whats more significant is the competition itself. the more people have to do to enter the less likely they are to! my competitions typically have 3 prizes coming to a value of about £300, the most I did was a christmas charity raffle with prizes totalling £1500. you need to try and get the prizes donated by companies who may have an interest in your site. what you must remember when getting a retailier/manufacturer to donate a prize is that a £50 product to you is likely only costing them £25, so think a little bigger!

my most successful competition to date was a photo compeition Win A Pair Of Stretch Air Chainsaw Trousers - Arbtalk, discussion forum for arborists successful was a video competition.

@Yogesh: It's no live money .. it's a travel check with a $50 value, so people can exchange for what they want. I know that $50 is a lower value, but this is a start and if everything went as expect I'll raise the prize for a next contest.

@stevebullman: the competition is simple ... win the member who posts more between 2 dates. In your experience, do you think this is a good start and that the travel check (small, I know) is enough to get members to participate?

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Para quem gosta de viagens...