AWS

Store the css in a file. It cuts down on the code to content ratio and makes the site load faster. The skin fits the topic. Make the changes that Mike suggested and you should be good. Your welcome message. Make it more descriptive. Use a few sentences to describe your site and make sure to use the keywords you want to target. Logout and take a look at my guest message to get an idea. Use that intro to target your keywords. Only show it on the index page and the forum home. Showing it on all pages doesn't help rankings. To see the reason why you should remove it from all pages instead of the 2 I mentioned check out your Google site results. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS338&q=site%3Ailskywarn.com%2Fforum&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq= Notice the descriptions of your threads. They get the title. They miss the content of the threads. That's not good. Looking at the results again. Disallow search.php, member.php, memberlist.php, online.php, showpost.php and anything else that isn't leading to the threads. There is not enough conetnt to any good on those pages. Take a look at the results to one of my sites: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS338&=&q=site%3Acomputerhelpforums.net&aq=f&aqi=&oq= Notice the difference? This is what builds the longtail search. Make these few changes and you'll notice an increase in traffic.

I like what you did to further customize that skin. I have the IPB version on one of my sites. That said the only real problem I see with it is also one of my pet peeves so it's not specific to your site. I hate the stats box. I always have. For one it doesn't add anything to any community. Users don't get any benefit and if they did it would be negative. It highlights the users with the most posts and the most viewed or discussed threads. 99 out 100 times the person with the most posts is the admin of the site. Do your users really have to see that you post the most? It's ok to show the hottest topics or most viewed threads. I just don't like the user stats. It could lead to bad feelings. If there was a way to highlight the most intelligent user then I'm all for that stat also.

I like what you did to further customize that skin. I have the IPB version on one of my sites. That said the only real problem I see with it is also one of my pet peeves so it's not specific to your site. I hate the stats box. I always have. For one it doesn't add anything to any community. Users don't get any benefit and if they did it would be negative. It highlights the users with the most posts and the most viewed or discussed threads. 99 out 100 times the person with the most posts is the admin of the site. Do your users really have to see that you post the most? It's ok to show the hottest topics or most viewed threads. I just don't like the user stats. It could lead to bad feelings. If there was a way to highlight the most intelligent user then I'm all for that stat also.

Pagerank means very little as far as how it affects traffic. At least I've never see any benefit from having high pagerank. I have a PR 7 site and it gets no more traffic than my sites with PR 2. About the only benefit I've seen to it is I can sell my ads at a higher price and can sell links on the site at a higher price. Everyone wants a link on a PR 6 or higher site. As far as selling ads. Sell them even if you have no rank. As the site does increase rank then raise the prices. That's how I do it when I monetize sites. I have a rule of thumb that I follow. I place no ads on new sites until I get a steady stream of traffic. Then I place one ad under the nav for guests. One adlink in the footer and one in the sidebar for all. When I sell links or banner space I remove Adsense. I never show more than 3 ads per page and none of them except for the guest ad is above the fold. This works well for me and is unobtrusive to the users.

Pagerank means very little as far as how it affects traffic. At least I've never see any benefit from having high pagerank. I have a PR 7 site and it gets no more traffic than my sites with PR 2. About the only benefit I've seen to it is I can sell my ads at a higher price and can sell links on the site at a higher price. Everyone wants a link on a PR 6 or higher site. As far as selling ads. Sell them even if you have no rank. As the site does increase rank then raise the prices. That's how I do it when I monetize sites. I have a rule of thumb that I follow. I place no ads on new sites until I get a steady stream of traffic. Then I place one ad under the nav for guests. One adlink in the footer and one in the sidebar for all. When I sell links or banner space I remove Adsense. I never show more than 3 ads per page and none of them except for the guest ad is above the fold. This works well for me and is unobtrusive to the users.

I already posted my response to your IM on my Illinois Forum. I'm up for an exchange. I'll add an affiliate box in the sidebar and add your link there. Then you can put a link some where on your site.

I already posted my response to your IM on my Illinois Forum. I'm up for an exchange. I'll add an affiliate box in the sidebar and add your link there. Then you can put a link some where on your site.

A link anywhere is good. I would first and foremost get listed in http://dmoz.org. It's not easy getting in, but once you do you get a link and thousands of sites that use the data. Years ago a Yahoo listing was worth a lot. The goal back then of every webmaster was to get in the Yahoo directory. While it still generates a nice amount of traffic for the sites I have in it it's no where near what it used to be. After those 2 concentrate on getting in directories that are specific to your topic. Instead of submitting to every where target sites similiar as your own.

A link anywhere is good. I would first and foremost get listed in http://dmoz.org. It's not easy getting in, but once you do you get a link and thousands of sites that use the data. Years ago a Yahoo listing was worth a lot. The goal back then of every webmaster was to get in the Yahoo directory. While it still generates a nice amount of traffic for the sites I have in it it's no where near what it used to be. After those 2 concentrate on getting in directories that are specific to your topic. Instead of submitting to every where target sites similiar as your own.

I've never used Facebook ads. I am just starting the leverage the power of the social networks. I see much value in the social networks. The problem I am seeing is I can traget traffic on Twitter and Facebook and get the people to the sites. I just can't crack the nut of getting them to register and stay. It is beter than it was a couple years ago. The Facebook login does help, but, it's no where near what I think it should. The question that I want to answer is how do we convert the traffic we get from the social networks into members?

I've never used Facebook ads. I am just starting the leverage the power of the social networks. I see much value in the social networks. The problem I am seeing is I can traget traffic on Twitter and Facebook and get the people to the sites. I just can't crack the nut of getting them to register and stay. It is beter than it was a couple years ago. The Facebook login does help, but, it's no where near what I think it should. The question that I want to answer is how do we convert the traffic we get from the social networks into members?

Howdy Shawn. There's a lot of corn in Illinois too. Indiana didn't corner the whole market.

Howdy Shawn. There's a lot of corn in Illinois too. Indiana didn't corner the whole market.

Thanks. I got to get to those spelling mistakes and everything will be good. Oliver does good work. Interesting enough the columns are done with just templates mods. Can't do that with vbulletin. I think I got all the spelling mistakes corrected. Can't believe I was throwing a discus instead if discussing something. LOL.

Hey Mike. I started out on 300baud also. Had a BBS setup on a commodore 64. I'd been thinking about an seo forum that was for forum owners. I always had other sites to tend with. Since I merged all my tech sites together and merged my private communities together I have the time to dedicate to this site and UPB Setup. I am going to put a lot into those 2 sites. I have good people running my others.

Hey Mike. I started out on 300baud also. Had a BBS setup on a commodore 64. I'd been thinking about an seo forum that was for forum owners. I always had other sites to tend with. Since I merged all my tech sites together and merged my private communities together I have the time to dedicate to this site and UPB Setup. I am going to put a lot into those 2 sites. I have good people running my others.

Nice to see you here Matt.

Nice to see you here Matt.

If you want to suggest a category in our links directory you can use this thread.

Post your sites Twitter account. I'll start my sites all have Twitter accounts. Here is my list. [twitter]forumseohelp[/twitter] [twitter]8forum[/twitter] [twitter]pchelpforums[/twitter] [twitter]schwarznetwork[/twitter] [twitter]macminiforums[/twitter] [twitter]ipbsetup[/twitter] [twitter]ipbhelp[/twitter] Twitter does bring in users. The trick is get them to stay.

Post your sites Twitter account. I'll start my sites all have Twitter accounts. Here is my list. [twitter]forumseohelp[/twitter] [twitter]8forum[/twitter] [twitter]pchelpforums[/twitter] [twitter]schwarznetwork[/twitter] [twitter]macminiforums[/twitter] [twitter]ipbsetup[/twitter] [twitter]ipbhelp[/twitter] Twitter does bring in users. The trick is get them to stay.

My name is Bob. I've been developing and selling forums for 15 years. Over that time I learned a bunch about what it takes to get traffic to a site and what it takes to keep users coming back. I opened this community to share my SEO tips and learn new SEO techniques from the users. You can never learn too much.

My name is Bob. I've been developing and selling forums for 15 years. Over that time I learned a bunch about what it takes to get traffic to a site and what it takes to keep users coming back. I opened this community to share my SEO tips and learn new SEO techniques from the users. You can never learn too much.

If you run a link directory start a thread and let us know. You can also list it in our link directory.

If you run a link directory start a thread and let us know. You can also list it in our link directory.