How can I increase traffic to my math forum website?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around strategies for increasing visibility and traffic to a newly created math forum website. Participants explore various methods related to search engine optimization (SEO), user engagement, and online marketing techniques.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests getting linked from established sites to improve visibility.
  • Another participant emphasizes the importance of traffic for improving search engine rankings, noting that high-traffic sites tend to rank better for relevant keywords.
  • There is mention of creating a robots.txt file and submitting the site to various search engines to enhance indexing.
  • Some participants discuss the concept of SEO as an art and mention techniques like stealth or phantom pages, although there is caution against using such methods due to potential penalties from search engines.
  • A participant recommends using the SEOpen plugin for Firefox to analyze various SEO metrics and improve site visibility.
  • One participant shares their own experience of losing search ranking due to decreased traffic, highlighting the ongoing nature of SEO efforts.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree that increasing traffic is crucial for improving search engine rankings, but there are differing opinions on the effectiveness and ethics of certain SEO techniques, particularly stealth pages.

Contextual Notes

Some suggestions depend on specific technical knowledge, such as coding for stealth pages, which may not be accessible to all users. Additionally, the discussion does not resolve the effectiveness of various SEO strategies mentioned.

Who May Find This Useful

Webmasters, forum administrators, and individuals interested in improving their website's search engine visibility and traffic may find this discussion beneficial.

Jameson
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About a month ago, I started my own website, and I'm trying to get it more noticeable on search engines. The site is a math forum, similar to this site, but focusing more on solely math. The site is on Google, although typing in anything like "math help, math discussion, math forum, etc." doesn't show my site at all. I've written meta tags on the main page, and I'm running out of ideas.

Any suggestions?
 
Computer science news on Phys.org
get noticed, and get linked to from sites like this.

google's page rank is not as susceptible as it use to be to any finagling from software tools.
 
I can think of a few things: make a http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm" file so that other search engines can index your site, submit your site to more search engines like MSN, Yahoo!, AltaVista, A9, Lycos, etc.

The reason your site doesn't appear toward the top of the search list is because it needs more traffic. You'll notice that a lot of keywords such as "physics help" and "physics discussion" eventually yield PF because of its high traffic.

You can also build a userbase, and by that I mean some loyal members of your site that can help spread the site and advertise it to their friends or on other websites (as long as it is not SPAM).

Good luck on your website! :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This is called SEO and is an art in itself. ComputerGeek gave a good idea, you should get linked to by other sites.. Also you need crawled by the search engine spiders. I have seen a technique, which feeds these spiders pages that are optimised for Search engine algorthims, however pushes users to the correct pages.. The technique is called stealth or phantom pages.. If you are any good at coding then you can code your site to use this technique, but search engines don't like this behaviour... Dont ask me how to do it, cause I don't know..
 
Anttech said:
The technique is called stealth or phantom pages.. If you are any good at coding then you can code your site to use this technique, but search engines don't like this behaviour... Dont ask me how to do it, cause I don't know..

It's a good way to get banned from search engines, don't do this.
 
yeh true, they don't like it...
 
You also might want to check out SEOpen plugin for firefox

Current SEOpen features are all accessed through right-clicking an open area on a web page; they include:
# Yahoo Backlinks
# Pages in Yahoo Index
# Google Backlinks
# Google Cache
# Pages in Google index
# Google Translate to English
# Google Related
# PageRank Check
# MSN Backlinks
# Pages in MSN Index
# Alexa Overview
# Alexa Traffic
# Alexa Related
# Alexa Backlinks
# "Mass Check" multiple sources at once
# Check DMOZ Inclusion
# Keyword Density
# Page Size Checker
# HTML Validator
# Server Header Viewer
# Wayback Machine
# Check robots.txt
# Whois Info

nice tool for the budding web-masters...

http://seopen.com/firefox-extension/index.php
 
What's the url of your site, Jameson? Since we did help you build it, I'd like to at least see it.
 
Heh, it's www.themathforum.com. Right now it just uses phpBB forum, but I hope to upgrade to VBulletin. It's similar to this site, but I really want it to focus
more on solely math and philosophy.

And thanks to everyone for their help!
 
  • #10
The key is traffic. My site, for example, usually appears as the top search for "themodule"; however, due to lack of traffic lately it has been losing that top spot. Today I think it is second.
 

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