Have you ever wondered how you can generate more traffic to your blog/websites using forum signature area? I have wondered that myself for awhile now and finally found a few ways to optimize it. It took a bunch of trial and error but here are a few points I came up with that have help me generate traffic to my blogs:
1. Install Google Analytics
You have to have Google Analytics installed on your websites to be able to optimize your signature. Without having it installed you cannot tell where the traffic is going. So once you have Analytics installed on your websites what you do is login and go to Traffic Source > forum_name (referral) > looks for Dimension: and select Landing Page instead of Referral Path. In here you can tell exactly where all your traffic is coming from in your forum signature. So if you have say have 3 keywords in your signature and they all link to different pages on your blog you can tell which keywords get clicked on more than others. This is very important in choosing which keywords to put in your signature. In addition to putting keywords in your signature you need to make sure these keywords relate to the topic of the forums. If the keywords do not relate then the likelyhood of someone clicking on the links will decrease significantly.
2. Create Threads with useful information
You need to create threads with useful information for people to notice your forum signature. If all you do is respond to other peoples threads with your 2 cents which isn’t that exciting and useful like “thanks” you aren’t going to have people noticing your forum signature. You need to start threads that people like and are intrigued by and lots of people will view and respond to it. Those people are than more likely to view your forum signature and click on your links.
3. Make the keywords in you signature catchy / interesting
People have a very short attention span so you need to grab their attention quickly. So if you have a very interesting keyword in your forum signature they are more likely to click on it than pass it by. If they can live without clicking on it than you haven’t chosen the right keywords.
4. Make the keywords in your signature colorful and attractive
People like colors! They will notice it a lot more if it has colors and is bold. If it just blends in with the rest of the posts in the thread it doesn’t stick out and therefore will not get clicked. Play with the appearance of the forum signature and make sure it stands out so people will see it right off the bat!
5. Formatting is important
In addition to above you need to make sure the formatting is good. You can play with alignment (centered / right aligned / left aligned). You can play with adding in smiley faces or other emoticons to see if that helps. You can play with underlines, *, !, etc to help grab the readers attentions.
So hopefully this list will help you optimize your forum signatures so you get the traffic you are looking for to your blog/website!
Very nice site!
hmm. cognitively
This is quite a up-to-date info. I think I’ll share it on Facebook.
@Ex Girlfiend – sure you can share this information on Facebook as long as you give a link back to my blog. Thanks!