How long did it take for your forum to receive more then 50% search engine traffic?

My forum has been around for almost 2 months now, and it's currently only getting 1.30% traffic from search engines(analytics), I know it takes awhile for you to rank well in big niches, so I'll be patient. But I'm curious how long did it take your forum to receive more then 50% traffic from search engines?

 

Well, it took about a year or so of building links, getting unique content up, spreading those links, and everything else. But I'm finally at 54% traffic from search and I can see it rising if I build more links, and drive more members in. What I'm thinking about is getting people to blog about it, link us on their journals/blogs, and see where that goes. The more links of quality that you have, the better your chances of getting more traffic from search. It's all about your content as well.

 

Erm, maybe this sounds a bit naive, but am I the only one who thinks that not every site will/should ever receive more than fifty percent of their traffic from search engines? Because as important as Google and co are, there are other sources of traffic for a forum and I'm pretty sure there must be a fair few active sites who get their activity from either word of mouth (maybe locally or among experts in the niche), or social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, or maybe somewhere else.

But I'll check my own stats and come back to you with the answer soon.

 

I seen a post on TAZ awhile ago where a bunch of users posted how much traffic they receive from search engines for their forums, and most of them seemed to be over 50%. That's why I created this thread, because I got the idea from over there.

 

Sure, you can traffic from other sources - sites linking to you - etc. I get about 15% traffic from referrals, but I don't do a whole lot of promoting these days. If I wrote articles on other sites, and linked directly to my site, I could probably get a lot more traffic from that as well, and getting mentioned on online games' news section, etc. I've just been allowing my community to grow on its own - through word of mouth - search - links in my signature, etc. And some pet games link to my site as well, so that's a plus for me. I also get a fair bit of traffic from Twitter, and we're working on building our facebook page. @Iconic

 

I wish I could let my forums grow on there own, but I need to actively promote or we will probably lose the few active members that we do have.

 

Ya, in the beginning it takes time for the forum to nourish. After a month, or three months or so into the community, users are more loyal and prone to stick around, especially if they love/like the community.

 

Mine still doesn't unfortunately, but I'll get there eventually, fingers crossed.

 

Mine hasn't gotten to 50% as of yet, but its sitting around 45%.

 

What's yours at currently?

 

Actually, it's not very hard to get a high % of search engine traffic to a newer forum. Most the small start-ups I've done in the past on assorted platforms like vBulletin, SimpleMachines, MyBB, Kunena, etc.. Haven't really had to hard of a time getting a 50% to 80% organic search average within 2 to 4 weeks. One of the key aspects to consider is if your initial content is optimized good enough or if it's possibly targeting keyword phrases that have way to much competition for each page to rank on page #1 of google.

What you may want to consider doing in the future on fresh start-ups (or even existing forums) is doing some keyword research prior to posting content and optimize it the best you can with content vs. keyword density in mind. It's not uncommon for a forum page to hit page one for low competitive terms and only have the keywords in title and content (a few times). Just keep in mind that if a page only gets 1 organic visit per day, if you have 1000 pages, that's a potential 1000+ organic traffic visits per day. Naturally you'll have some pages pulling WAY more than one visit per day, but 1 a day is a safe starting goal while balancing your keyword research to assist in making it happen.

It does take more time from your day to research before you build content, but it's well worth it in the long run game if you do.

Eric Lyon

 

Actually, just checked analytics and for the past 30 days we've had 69.9% traffic from search engines.

11% referral and 19% direct traffic.