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Formatting your forum signatures for best exposure
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By Dax Christopher
[Hits: 26435]
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Online forums are now a common feature on the Internet. Somewebsites have even broken the traditional definitions of awebsite and feature only forum, where the main index page is alist of forums and active discussions (an example athttp://www.buildtolearn.com). These websites offer content notin the traditional form of static webpages but dynamic usersubmitted posts and content. With an active communitycontinuously contributing to the content of the website, thewebsite develops into popular place for the latest news and actsas a grapevine for forum members.
In addition to participating on forums and gaining new knowledgefrom other members, forums are an excellent place to promoteyour websites. This is done through the forum signaturesthat most forums will allow each member to have. These forumsignatures are automatically attached into the post made by themember. Forum signatures have traditionally been used inmails and then in electronic mails and then inbulletin-board/newsgroups discussions. It is no surprise thatthe signature system also progressed into the online forum andis widely supported by popular forum software such as VBulletin,phpbb, Invisionboard, etc.
Your forum signature can be a useful tool to do a bit ofadvertising for your website and products. Most forums will havesome regulations on forum signature lengths or forumsignature formatting. Common forum signature formats that areapproved by mature forums are text-only forum signatures andspecifying a maximum of number of lines in the forum signature(see an example of forum signature rules athttp://www.buildtolearn.com/showthread.php?t=206 ). Always abideby the forum rules and especially in the forum signature rulesas many forums are particular about members not joining theirforums for the specific purpose of spamming their links throughtheir forum signatures or posts.
So, as a contributing member to the forum discussions, you havethe priviledges of including your forum signature in yourposts. How do you ensure that your forum signature is read andnot ignored like the tens of forum signatures of the othermembers who have posted in the same discussion? How do you useyour forum signature for maximum benefit?
Here are some tips for optimizing forum sigatures:
1. Do not post more than 3 links. Anything more than that iscertaintly viewed as spam and most people will ignore your forumsignature.
2. Do not post something like: " http://www.buildtolearn.com -Webmaster community ". Instead, if possible, post your link with"anchor text". The word "webmaster community"should be the link enclosed by the tags. This wouldbenefit your link in SEO.
3. Include more than just a link. Be more descriptive aroundyour forum signature and links. For example, use something like"Over 10,000 members in the best webmaster community"(with link from the keyword 'webmaster community'). Or somethingto entice the viewer to click through to your website, eg."Submit articles to our article libraryand stand to win $100".
4. Use at most 3 colors in your forum signature. It is a goodidea to highlight the keyword/link with color such as blue orred. Leave the rest of the text in black.
It takes some experimenting to find the best forum signatureformat for each forum. With these 4 tips in mind, your chancesof improving click-through rates from your forum signature willincrease tremendously.
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