Do you ask your members to link to your forum?

And if so, how? Newsletters, on the forum?

[bouncybunny]

Some of my forum members have their own web sites, or have access to web sites. But I have always been somewhat wary about openly asking for backlinks, either on the forum itself, or via our newsletter.

I supose I feel it is somewhat 'cheap' or tacky? But perhaps not?

I thought about a couple of lines in one of the newsletters, or online asking for members to link to the site. But I am unsure as to how to word this.

Has anyone done this? And if so, what kind of response did you get?

[Regindk]

1. Don't be affraid to ask - just do not make it sound too pathetic ;)
2. Give your users a reason to link back to your forum. Myspace for instance give their users their own myspace url in the style of myspace.com/your_name ...

[rogerd]

Make the request something positive: "Help your fellow widget lovers find the best widget forum on the Web - link to us!"

[bouncybunny]

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Beagle]

If your forum isn't particularly "techie", it doesn't hurt to bring it up. I've had a couple of members ask if it's okay for them to link to the site from their Live Journal pages (for some reason, the place-to-be for people in this particular niche is LJ). I think some have been told not to "hot link", don't understand what it means, and think linking itself is something bad.

So, I'll occasionally bring up the fact that any forum member has my permission to link to it ;) .

[Tearabite]

i've asked my site members to link from their own pages, etc..
I've also asked them to post links in their myspace, digg pages that they like, Stumble pages that they like, etc. we got a pretty good response, and nothing negative at all. It helps if your members like your site our members LOVE ours :-)

[rogerd]

Has anyone tried any clever techniques to further encourage linkage? For example, a member status badge that could be displayed on MySpace, LJ, etc.?

[bouncybunny]

I don't think that sort of stuff would work for my visitors. Too 'professional' or cynical.

[JonSimmonds]

On some of my forums I have ran competitions to the user who can refer the most new users, using vbulletin's refer a user function (which gives a special link for the users to use) This generally gives me a boost of incoming links, as well as promoting a bit more "loyalty"

An alternative would be to create some banners and create a sticky thread in your news area along the lines of "link back to us" etc

[bouncybunny]

I like the idea of the sticky thread JonSimmonds.

But how to phrase it so that it doesn't look like begging? ;)

[Regindk]

Non begging:
"Help your fellow widget lovers find the best widget forum on the Web - link to us!" (Rogerd)

Begging:
"Help my google ranking and link to the forum"
AND
"Help my adsense income and link to the forum"
...
etc...