Increasing Forum Traffic

[Dennis]

I found this forum by accident quite a while ago. It was not easily found on a search engine. IT is not my specialty so I'm not sure if it can be fixed, but it seems that if "Honda Helix Discussion Board" was first in the URL instead of slonaker.net that it would be found by many more people much easier. After leaving this board for a while and not having it bookmarked I had a devil of a time finding it again. Am I just an idiot or do you think that might be part of the reason for the lower traffic and can it be made simpler to find???

OK, I'm rambling, sorry.

Dennis

[bear]

I'm no IT person either. So I do not know how to raise the page rank of this site.

But I did just check, and when you google the words Helix and Forum this slonaker site is the 13 hit down. First is

http://www.honda-helix.com/english/

But I'm glad to see the traffic here increase. I regularly monitor the yahoo group. But I'm not much of a fan of the yahoo forum system. Too clunky and disorganized. It's a pain to few or post photos. And there are no sub categories. Ect ect ect.

Bear

[slonaker]

As far as I know, the url does nothing to increase ranking. What it can do, though, is to make it easier to find the site if you lose your bookmarks after a system crash or when migrating to a new computer.

The board is just a little something I do in my spare time. While it would be nice to increase my page ranking in the search engines so that more people would find the site, it would also be more work. It just has not been something that I want to spend the time on. Hobbies are fun until they begin to take too much of your time. Then they just become unpaid work.

The best thing members can do to increase page ranking is to link to this site from their websites. If you have a scooter related site, post up a link to the board. It will help people find us, and assist in raising the page ranking.

I suspect that one reason the board is slow is because it is so specialized. We concentrate on one particular model of scooter for the most part, so it limites the number of visitors.

Another reason, in my opinion, is that the typical Helix rider is older from my observations. Older people are less likely to use the internet than younger folks. If this was a website dedicated to the Ruckus, or another scooter favored by younger riders, we would be more likely to draw a crowd. We had a discussion a while back regarding the age of the riders here, and I was one of the younger members. I'm in my early 40s.

Patrick

[Hoggy]

Yeah - I think I read somewhere that the Google algorithm tends to go by how many links come to one page and vice-versa to a lesser extent.

I thank you though to point out:
http://www.honda-helix.com/english/
That at least gives me another resource for info on the Helix.

I find I kind of like the low traffic so far.. I'm joined on an Ubuntu Linux forum in which if you post something now - it's guaranteed to be on page 2 or later within a half-hour. Try to get a question answered on there!

Well - Pat - you are more 'middle aged', I guess. I'm 36 and just (VERY) recently dug my Helix out of the grave.
It's no longer a garage platform to lay everything under the sun on top of!
It might also please you to know that I've had an ex-friend's ex-boyfriend ask me just about every year to buy my Helix for the last 10 years - he's about 33 or so now.. He asked again about a month ago - but THIS time I actually WAS going to get it fixed up!

Brian