Forums
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. Unlike chat rooms, forums can archive discussions for future reading. Given that the first online forums date as far as 1994, they carry a lot of search engine equity. The longer that a site has been online, the more weight that a search engine gives to it.
Your strategy should be to target reputable and well-established Internet forums, which discuss relevant topics to your site. For example, if you are a computer services vendor you would do well to invest time in participating in forums dedicated to topics such as cloud computing, hardware and software troubleshooting and IT server configuration. In most forums, you are allowed to post your sites link in your signature, which will appear on all of your posts.
When participating in forums, make sure to respect the rules set by forum administrators and moderators. Particularly, you want to avoid forum spamming and double posting. Forum spamming is a breach of netiquette in which users repeat the same word or phrase over and over. Double posting is posting the same content over and over but with slight modifications. Just like nobody wants to hear the same story over and over at a cocktail party, forum participants have no interest in the same content. The key is to contribute positively to the forum and link back to your site, only when appropriate. By helping other users, you will position yourself as a subject matter expert and gain traffic to your site.
Online Directories
Another way to get a search engines attention is by submitting your sites link to online directories. An online directory or web directory aims to accumulate several links within a specific category. Unlike a search engine, an online directory does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. Think of a site curator, who selects the sites that he or she finds to be relevant within a topic or series of topics.
Some directories are general, while others are very specific. For example, Aviva is a directory that focuses on a few topics such as arts & literature and politics and government. Within the directory, there is a subcategory called Aviva Regional, which focuses on listing sites according to their location in the world. Admins from online directories such as Aviva work hard in providing useful information to their visitors. Search engines often reward these types of efforts by giving them clout within their search results. Therefore, it makes sense that you submit your site to directories.
This technique is efficient for those site owners that dont have neither the time nor the talent for composing articles.
