What does your forum's success depend on?

There are different factors that will determine the success of our forums. Each specific case is different. For you, how much of your success depends on the technical aspect of things (your software, SEO, features, etc.) and how much depends on content/activity (active members, posts per day, etc.)?

For me, I would say that it mostly depends on SEO - about 70%, because very rarely do I get a new member that didn't find us through Google or another search engine.
The other 30% would be content, of course... and active members.

 

Right now I'd say mostly Google and referrals from existing members.

 

<....this guy!

It's probably just me but it all comes down to the site owner in my opinion...that and some friends. I spend most of my day looking for content, programs, and advertising. I've got my site listed on a gun blog the other day, now I'm having a banner done for another advertisement. Then I got someone looking to pay me to advertise my site...you can't beat that deal During this time I'm working with my IT guy to install/setup Site maps, vbcredits, and VBSEO...they don't install them selves unfortunately. There isn't a time that doesn't go by that I'm not working on something or thinking of things to do to my site...I need to tweet some site stuff here in a minute before I forget lol

 

95% direct referrals from other "real live" people. 5% from search engines.

I may do vbseo at some point but I'm concentrating on building a quality membership base right now. People finding my site via a search engine are not as good as "real live" friends of existing members.

 

Mostly referrals and advertising on places of the same interest

 

Elliquiy gets about half its new memberships from referrals, a third from Google and a sixth from everyone else - other search engines, sites like Big Boards, etc.

 

I'd say it depends on your staff and how dedicated they are