Teen Forums

Please review our website:

www.teenforumz.com

Forum Name: Teen Forumz
Launch Date: 15th September 2008 as Ultimateteenforums.com but changed to teenforumz.com three months ago.
Posts/Threads: 116,785, 5,138
Forum Software: vBulletin 3.8
Description: Teen forums is an online teen community where teenagers can come together and gain excellent advice either on our forums or within our Private Support forums where our Support Leaders will privately help teens.

 

First Thoughts

When I first landed on the page, I knew exactly what it was about - teen help/advice and chat. I can see that it is pretty active based on the counter in the upper-right corner, telling me that there are 80+ users online. I am presented with multiple links to register - which is great.

The one thing I wanted to see when I got to your site was a little description of what you offer; something to explain what your forum's intention is and how registering will benefit me. Something like on this site. [Edit: Now that I went into some threads, I see the little registration prompt-box; I guess it's fine to leave your setup how it is since you have it here ]

Your style is superb; easy on the eyes yet very nice-looking. I like the nice graphics you use throughout the site, especially in the header. :yes:
You have a custom favicon which is great, too.

All of your forums look fairly active, so I wouldn't say that you need to condense much.
All of your threads also seem active and most have plenty of replies to them.

Some of the things I cannot find are rules, privacy policy, terms of service or FAQ. Perhaps you must be registered and logged in to see these, but you may want to consider publicizing them or putting a link to them in your footer.

Overall, I am really impressed. It's a great site and I wish you the best of luck.

If you'd like me to comment on any specific aspect, let me know and I'd be glad to share my thoughts.

 

I like it!

I think you would benefit from having the latest album shots show on the top of the forum listing, rather than a click away. I think teens love seeing photos, esp of each other and this will boost activity there.

Also, think about adding 'who visited last 24 hrs' hack - as again I think the social side will help - as people on your site are probably more interested in each other than the actual topics/content: capitalise on that

Keep up the good work!

 

Thank you both for the great reviews!

We used to have the welcome message on the index too but hid it so that the first thing you would see is the forums without having to scroll. I will add the Terms link back in the footer again for guests which includes our privacy policy etc in just a moment. The FAQ is always hidden but we do have a site help area with information we see as needed.

We done a survey recently and asked our members if they like seeing pictures of members on the site and they actually said no surprisingly, me and my girlfriend thought it would be the other way around but it turned out they really didnt like it.

I am not so keen on the 24hr hack as sometimes we have bad days with not many people log on so it could end up looking a little dead to outsiders, I know it can be easily tweaked to even a month if wanted but not too sure about adding it back up.

We are definitely trying to capitalise on the whole "Social" thing hence the facebook like image where you register and not referring to it as "registering" on the homepage and instead pointing people to "create an account" or "signing up".

We are both happy that you like it.

Any chance of a SEO review too if possible if any of you guys are good with SEO etc We are using pro software to help us with this and we do rank high according to the software.

Any suggestions on gaining new members and getting some traffic?

Thank you!

 

I think having the 24hr mod would be good, but you make a good point that some days are dead. On my other forum, I use the mod but it is only displayed to logged in users - not guests.
I like that you display how many users are currently online though - it certainly proved to me that there is activity going on.

As for SEO, I think you are doing substantially well. You forum is PR 4 (which is certainly superb!!!) and you have about 1500 backlinks (according to Backlinks Checker Tool - Backlink Watch). Looking at your backlinks, it appears as though you have your link put up on a few other sites, some of which are similar to yours, which is great. Try to get backlinks up on as many other websites as you can, particularly those similar to yours and in the same niche.

You are using vBSEO, which is a huge step toward great SEO - which IMO you already have! PR 4 is certainly something to brag about!

I think you're doing a great job; just keep doing whatever it is that you are and you'll attain pleasing SERPs in Google.

Are you using vBSEO's sitemap generator, and have you submitted the sitemap in Google's Webmaster Tools?

 

Of course I have lol I was using that before we had vbseo Thanks for the extra review Nick. Well it seems like our backlinks are kinda low which we are constantly working on gaining but gaining relevant ones is hard. I am a regular poster on arg.com which ranks high but has rel="nofollow" applied to the signature but still helps bring in new members here and there and the rest of the teen sites on page 1 dont allow us to have sig links back to teenforumz so it is tough. I am hoping to get some linkbacks from a few teenage blogs but that is quite hard too as their is a lack of them.

 

If you think there is a lack of them, how about expand your horizons to teenblogz too?

 

lol I was just about to say that as well if there are a lack in teenblogz you should add them and let your members blog away!

 

Sweeks, what worked for me to get backlinks was to install the Yet Another Awards System with some snazzy award graphics. Members might not bother to link to your site on their own, but give them an award for it and they've got some motivation.