metalcherry

Can someone help me! My website appears to have died a death! Only last year i had a lot of loyal members on my site then all of a sudden they stopped coming despite competitions etc.

I have upgraded the site and make it look a lot neater but i dont seem to get one single member these days - i havent had a proper member for many many months!

I have 3 web domains which i cycle in advertising so at least i can cover all areas to try and pull in more members but it still isnt working

i really dont know what i am doing wrong. Only one member really comes on besides myself to help post but its not enough to kick start the site again.
I have meta tags, i insert all the domains into SEO engines every month etc etc, i have done everything i can find to try and help it but still no luck!

url: www.alterchatter.com (i also have www.alternativeforums.com and www.alternativesounds.co.uk)
Subject: Music discussion forum
It has been running nearly 2 years now and i only have 85+ members and most of them were spam bots before i installed a spambot mod to stop them

I really dont know what i have done to kill the site, and my website renewal is coming up - i dont know if its worth paying all the money to keep it going

someone help me

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mars guitars

MC, you seem to have a well-structured forum, with lots of useful tour dates etc... I'm surprised you're not getting more interest. Is there much competition in alt music forums?

Do you use Google Webmaster Tools? I think the first thing is to think..
1) am I getting enough visitors?
and
2) if I am, why aren't they signing up?

I wonder whether people are coming to you for info, but not registering for the forum? Can you sign up some mates for a bit of general banter? Unfortunately the one thing that puts people off joining forums is when tehy look dead or inactive... kinda a Catch 22

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metalcherry

Tell me about it I had a lot of friends who joined to help out in the beginning but sadly there is a big market in Alt music forums, i purchased alternativeforums.com because it has had a history of being used for alternative music forums, thought that might help.

I do try to use google webmaster tools, but i have not been on this recently, I have absolutely no idea why everything has gone dead all of a sudden, one minute it was busy next it was quiet.
Someone suggested starting up a couple of "members" but even though it can help the site, i would feel like i was cheating members......if you know what i mean lol, im sure many do it.

Thansk for the nice comments, its taken me a while to try and get the structure sorted for the site to keep it from being too cluttered or at one point too minimal!

I dont know if it would put off members, as you said they might use it as an information site, but would restricting forum access might help? Might peak their interests if they cant see everything on the site, but i have been told in the past that this might deter future members.

At the mo i am trying to build up a links directory of link exchanges and links on my site as you can see from the right and bottom of the page as well as the dedicated links page - might need to work on it.

thanks for your help MG xx

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LastRezort

I don’t know much about redirects but I believe the rules are tight ... although it seems your site is indexed in google. But if people click a link that says www.alternativeforums.com and they show up at www.alterchatter.com it might confuse or scare them. Plus you may consider revamping some keywords I noticed 'alternative music tours' is low and no one advertising on it, same for 'alternative music discussion' you may consider a move like this to get new visitors. Also I found the text a little hard to read in some spots and there isn’t a way to increase its size that I found, this may make readers leave since its a forum and you spend a lot of time reading. The only way I found you on google was typing your actual website name ‘alter chatter’ so one of my big questions would be are you getting traffic but no sign ups? Or no traffic at all? Anyway hope it helps maybe if you posted a list of keywords your optimized for we could help a little better. Good Luck though and I hope the best for you.

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metalcherry

thanks i will try the key words.
I seem to get plenty of guests - at one point i had 68 on one day at same time, and i index in digg, but my average guests is maybe 8-10 at a time although round abotu this time its quite quiet.

I think the re-directs thing is correct too, i have always used alterchatter.com though, its my main domain which my host is connected to and its the one i have done most of the advertising with but alternativesounds and alternativeforums are two which i advertise from time to time too just to try and get the word out!

Just thought it would be good to have domains which have some connection with the forum idea - plus my previous forum on an old website was called alternative sounds so i thought maybe i could stir up some old members.

Can you explain a bit more about "size" so i can try and work on it. The portal is newly installed so i am still tinkering with it, the original one was an ezportal but wasnt as user friendly as this one but the new one seems to have a lot more features i can add/remove to suit the site, but i havent had a chance to play about the with settings and might seem a bit busy right now on screen.

I have began putting - when advertising my website on seo's - alternative forums, which i now come up as result no.1 and 2 which is what im looking for but i dont know if im not discribing my site enough to make people want to join.

I have time off over the next few days so i will be trying to take as many suggestions and ideas on how to help the site and start doing something with it. since the members i went on a bit of a downer and lost interest for a while but over the past 5 months i have been trying to re-build it. it was maybe inactive for a month tops but its just confusing me why i am getting so many bots/guests but no one seems to want to sign up.

thanks for the advice xx

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metalcherry

can i just say thanks LastRezort, I took some of your advice, and at the moment trying to alter stuff on my site to try and make it work and i have got my very first new member after 6+ months of nothing. Ok given he is promoting his band but hes posting and it means that i have changed something and people are finally seeing the site! plus i seem to be getting more visitors at the times when it was dead.....better start getting the site up and running again!

hopefully with my next plans to try and enhance the site, i might get proper activity

thanks babe xxx

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