SEO Step By Step Guide – 119. Dealing with Membership Sites

One of the main aims or purposes of membership sites is to increase the number of members. Here it is not enough just to get visitors but we need to get visitors that will signup in your website. The success here also depends on the quality of your website and what you are offering your members. If you have a compelling business model then you can expect a lot of people that visit your website to sign up.

Another important factor is to target the right audience and to get the right audience to your website. If you are running a students social networking site then you must try to send student traffic to your website and not people that are interested in finding travel tips. So your promotional efforts should be in the right direction. Always keep in mind your website’s goal and its business model.

One of the best ways of finding highly targeted audience for your website is to make use of forums. We can find thousands of forums where people come and share their views and opinions about the topic under consideration. Make a list of all top forums in your business niche and pick the right discussion thread in each forum and contribute something positive without spamming them and add your link to your signature. If the topic should permit, add a comment or two about your own website. This will make your website get enough visibility among the right audience and it will also get you the most wanted back links.

You should also try to use blogs that are relevant to your niche and post genuine comments to blog entries. This will also help people find your website. So, it is important that you place your website among the right audience to get visitors that will perform the required action in your website.

Most of the membership sites make their membership accounts free. Even if they do not allow all the features and facilities under free membership, they will allow the users to have a taste of their paid membership features on trial basis to entice them to sign up. This often works out well for many sites. This will not only increase the free membership count, but it will also increase your paid membership count.

Until you have gained enough popularity and membership level, you can also use managed PPC campaigns that will help you get some prospective visitors to your website. However, if your entire membership program is free then you need to take into consideration the fact whether you need to pay to get visitors that will signup for your free account. Here you are not making any profit out of the clicks directly. However, if you have a bigger picture in which these free members are likely to turnout to be your profit then it is worthwhile to hire an experienced company to handle your PPC.

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