Guest view limit

It is too early to tell but I have been getting a steady traffic in the past few days. There is an average of 10 Guests viewing the board at any given time. Although they may be bots for all I know.

In other news, we are listed on the second page on google when you search for Shameless spoilers, on a lucky day the forum's Google+ page shows up on the first page. Television is hella tough so while it is not something to boast about after two long months, I couldn't help squealing a little when I first saw it.

 

I think a limit is a good thing to have. I.e. guests can see 5 threads per 24 hours, to view more, they must register.

 

I don't limit what guests can see, they just can't reply to anything.

 

Well, could you tell us if it benefits your SEO in anyway by doing this? Because I think it would do more harm than good.

 

A resounding "no" from me too. You don't really want to limit what your guests can see if you can help it - you want people (and search engines) to see your content.

The only exceptions to this are of course your private "members only" forums, or premium content, or perhaps forums where posts and discussions can be a bit contentious (guests won't have a feel for the place and could easily misinterpret some of the banter between friends who've been members for a long while as hostility and it could turn them off).

Cheers,
Shaun

 

Remember, the more quality links you have, the better rankings you'll have in the end. What are you currently doing to drive in new links?

 

Since I posted the above, we've moved to the first page on google with the same keywords. The only thing I've done differently was change domain

I am a regular poster on IMDB so I just added a link in my signature when I created my forum. I made a conscious effort to post more often in the Shameless forum more before the finale

 

I don' do it at all. Let them look and hopefully they'll read somethign to make them register.

There are some forums, however, that they can see the name of and description of and can see thread titles but they have to be memebrs to read the topics. But most forums they can read.

 

85% of the revenue my site draws is because of guests reading. If I were to apply a guest view limit then I could kiss a majority of that revenue gone.

If you ever look at my site you will notice unregistered / not logged in folks see a lot of ads, if they register or log in they see a lot less ads. And if they become a supporter then all the ads go away. This has been working well for me.

 

Exactly. Especially with forums, because there is new content generated everyday, and the more posts and threads you have the more pages that will get indexed by search engines. Search engine traffic will play a huge role in the growth and success of a forum.

 

I let guests see most things, in certain forums I don't let them see images because of one of the members work.