Does anybody actually read chat rooms?

The answer is a resounding “yes”.

Recently, our client Hooker Cockram received a spike in their Google Analytics Report. The report shows that they have accumulated almost 18,000 visitors in one day.

Where did they come from?

All of the visitors who visited the Hooker Cockram website that day were referred by a third party discussion forum. It all started when a participant in the forum opened up a discussion topic of the construction company Hooker Cockram. The name ‘Hooker Cockram’ generated enough curiosity from another participant to search for the company’s website. When the website was found, this curious person shared the link with everyone who participated in the discussion. Inevitably, the participants clicked on the link to reward their curiosity.

Inbound links are links that are linked to your website from other websites. Including chartooms, blogs and forums. In order words, it is a website referring their visitors to you. This is one of the top 10 techniques we encourage our clients to employ on their websites. However, this does not mean the more inbound links you have, the more visitors you will get. The reason is obvious – they have to be curious enough to want to visit your website. So it is important to get links within your niche, to target people who wants to know about you.

What can you do?

We are not encouraging you to sit back and wait for someone to start a discussion about your business. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Participating in forums within your niche will generate enough curiosity for a percentage of participants to click on your link. Start a conversation. Leave comments. Show up enough for them to know you exist, and want to find out more about you. Being seen as a regular contributor and authority will lead to traffic by Osmosis – just make sure you have your weblink in your signature.

If you need more advice, talk to SWiM.