Why can't I find any big affiliates?

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Acorn

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I look and look and they either don't affiliate at all {and I never see them advertising anywhere either so where are they getting all their people?} or flat out refuse or often just never respond.

What am I doing wrong and where can I look that I'm not already looking? I want to affiliate with other LARGE RPGs. Multi or single, just about any genre would do. Non RPG, fandom/anime sites are also welcome, we have a lot of anime fans on our site. I've had it up to here with dead ends, wasted time and rejections. And it's not like I'm a site that never gets any hits and just wants to take without giving any hits back. I have proof we get hits on our affiliates. The largest two sites I've ever managed to become affiliated with were about a quarter our size.

Where are all the other big games and uh...what do I need to do? What's going on?
 
Well, for starters, you have no (Google) page rank to speak of. Not to mention, you have a bagillion links on the page you display your affiliates on.

To break that down, let's just say your site's home page has a Google page rank of 2. Cool! Now, you've got, let's just say, 500 links on that page- any links (links to a sections on your site, faq, links to affiliates, etc, etc). That page rank of 2 is now divided by 500. So, basically, your link "power" is extremely weak. Not many people are going to want to give you a relatively strong link in exchange for a link that is *almost* worthless. No offense.

You should try to reduce the amount of links on your main page. That will help entice people, and also help improve your own sites internal link structure.

Hope that helps 😉
 
Actually, it does! Thanks 🙂 So you're saying that the fewer links out I have, the higher the page rank? Hm, I have about 50 affilates right now. But most of the links are to other places on my forum. I can't really do anything about that, that's how a forum works and how any forum is going to work. But do you mean that links out of the forum altogether weaken it, or links that just go to my other boards do the same thing?

Is that why some forums esp. large ones have affiliate pages that are separate, rather than on the main page?

I have never been able to lift my google rank. Tried very hard, but nothing ever changed. You seem to know a lot about it though so if you see how I could optimise my site in any way I'd be quite grateful.
 
Other big ass forums just don't need affiliates anymore. they're done with advertising... the easy way.
 
Well, looking at your affiliates, you have at least 20, so why would someone place their small 88*31 amongst all the others? What hope do they have of it being seen?

And, big forums actually pay for advertising, domain, and reviews, so they know how to attract people.
 
So there is absolutely nothing I can do at my end to at least up my rank a little on google? I still don't know whether removing most of our affiliates, maybe all except 10 to 20 {we had over 150 before we wiped most of them a couple weeks ago} would up our rank or not. So is it that links incoming to a site add to your rank, but links outgoing from it reduce the rank? And we don't just want untargeted hits, we're an RPG so would only really be interested in attracting people who wanted to roleplay.

Paying for a domain wouldn't kill me. That by itself isn't much of a cost. Are domains ranked higher than subdomains? Because on a search for "warrior cats" I see several subdomains higher than us, and very high up in general.

I mean if there's a better way to get hits than affiliating with other big sites, I'm all ears.
 
I think investing in a domain will increase your chances. Also note that those above you are sites, not forums so that does have an effect.

Also, going to the owner of a forum that you think would help you, and asking for affiliation, won't hurt. I think you need to approach them, as they definitely won't approach you. Why would someone who is successful approach someone who isn't as successful (general question; not directed at you)?
 
Yes I have noticed this, but there are also forums above us, at least one. Registering for a domain is pretty easy, I'd just need to know how to set that domain up to attach itself to our forum. I guess there are instructions somewhere.

If we can become successful without the need for other large affiliates, then I wouldn't be pulling my hair out trying to attract any.

Would putting all or at least the majority of our affiliates onto a table on a separate thread on a sub board and then providing a link directly to that thread right in or below the table "Click here to view all our affiliates" help to not reduce our rank through outbound links? I have no plans to do such unless it would.

I want to thank you guys for helping me by giving advice. I guess you could say that I've had a successful year of modest growth on my board but want to try taking it to "the next level" if you know what I mean.
 
I don't have to remove links at all..

Just add rel="nofollow" to the links you don't want affecting your page rank.

so...

<a href="link address" rel="nofollow">link title</a>

Depending on what forum software you use, there is probably some SEO or other mod that will parse links for you.

This doesn't just help affiliates but it helps you make the pages you want appear higher up on google in expense of the others.

http://www.seoconsultants.com/html/links/nofollow.asp
 
Thanks, I'll apply that right away. I didn't know that links outward even affected it.

Edit: I have added the tag to all my links; for now, anyway. I'll wait and see if it actually does anything. Probably will take like 3 weeks to show as any kind of change on Google?
 
Acorn, I suggest no scrolling at all. The V-Scroll is any advertisers worst-nightmare. Who is going to scroll down for a small piece of graphics? Not too sure about this one, as you have collected quite a number of affiliates.

To improve your PR, get more backlinks. You currently have 82 backlinks from here :: http://www.backlinkwatch.com/index.php (actually reliable). For my forum, I had 2000+, and I was only on PR1. Boosting that PR will boost people in seeing your forum.
 
Really! Wow, thank you again! How do I get backlinks, though? 😛 I mean, without affiliation? Part of why I wanted to affiliate in the first place was to get backlinks, though my main aim was targeted hits by people interested in joining the game.

....Um, all that site told me was this:

"Out of Yahoo quota for today. Total 50,000 queries executed already.


Copyright 2007 "

All I did was input my site's URL. Did I do it wrong?
 
Can I ask how many large forums you are on?

A simple link on that forum, in your signature or profile (text link, with alt text) will gain you one backlink, if google indexes that page. Did you know filling in your profile is beneficial?

I'm on a few large forums, and they have all shown up on the backlink checker. One forum, I have 5000 posts, and only a certain proportion have been indexed, so its not always that easy, but it will boost your PR.

Edit: just hit the refresh and do it again.
 
Oh I'm on here, and two other large forums. Don't have any more time to devote to forums than that, since I got my site to run, lol. That takes a few hours' time every day to keep it running, especially since I love roleplaying on it so much.

Lemme go see the backlink checker again...

It worked! That was amazing! Apparently, some places I've advertised have a nofollow. Do outbound links in sub boards also count against a forum's rank? I know there's likely a way to blanket certain boards or the whole site with nofollow, but I don't know how.

Ok update on everything: Still haven't found any directories I can add my site to yet, but I'm not giving up yet. I'll check my backlinks after a few days of working at this all, and see how it goes. In the meantime I want to do more research on the nofollow tag and whether it helps, or harms.

I thank EVERYBODY for their contributions of help so far!
 
Note the date on that - 2007 and google has changed its ways a bit since then. Wikipedia's article, the one I read, is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow

Quote:

"On June 15 2009, Matt Cutts, a well known software engineer of Google, announced that Google Bot will no longer treat nofollowed links in the same way, in order to prevent SEOs from using nofollow for PageRank Sculpting. As a result of this change the usage of nofollow leads to evaporation of pagerank. In order to avoid the above, SEOs developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated Javascript and thus permit PageRank Scuplting. Additionally several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, flash and javascript."

So yeah, I was thinking of using an iframe or better yet, just a separate page on a thread on a sub board my forum for all but a few of my best affiliates, but linked to directly on the main page. What would this do?

I know that if nothing else, it'd lessen the load time of the main page.

...Now, I've read conflicting information. I don't know whether using nofollow would help or hurt my situation. However I guess I can at lesat get started by submitting my site to as many free directories as I can find.

...Okay, after hunting around a bit I can't find where to actually submit my site to any of these places. Are they for real?
 
My forum host provides such a submission for free, but it's tied into cPanel, so I really can't help you out there. I really wouldn't bother with directories anyway, though.

Now, Acorn (gawd, I hate your name! lol), I am by no means an SEO "expert," but I have picked up a few tidbits of knowledge over the years. I think I can help you out a little.

Do NOT use nofollow rules. Why? Because Google is going to follow the urls, anyway, and instead of it showing up as you "vouching" for that link, it just goes there, and you loose any potential link power. Outbound linking is just as important as incoming links.

If you have any php or html know-how, you could, instead, provide a "splash page" when users follow a link on your site that links to another. Sort of what MySpace uses:

myspace-external-link-warning.gif


On this splash page, you can place links going back to your site. So, basically, all those outbound links, while still counting for the other site, also go right back to you. Win-win.

Additionally, like I said before, REDUCE the amount of links on your main page (or whatever page you want to focus on for Google's page rank).
  • Condense some of your forums.
  • Hide some of the community stuff, like links to Search, Calander, and Help. Some of the community boards, maybe, like the staff forums and off-topic boards. Hide those from guests, and make them visable for regular members only.
  • Disable profile viewing for guests.

Those changes alone will not only help your page rank, but will most likely improve your site's overall performance 😉

You're not going to like the sound of this, but get rid of your host. If possible, obtain a database of your forums (back-up), buy a domain and cheap (or even free if you can find it) hosting, and a free forum solution, like SMF, and port your forums over. All that is dependent on being able to get a back-up of your database, though. If you can't, you're stuck where you're at.

Bottom line, reduce your links on the main page, and if you're wanting to optimize for search engines, you're going to have to spend *some* money. There are ways to do it without spending a fortune, but you *are* going to have to cough up some cash if you want the results.

Hope this helps 🙂
 
Thank you so much, for the long post of advice, I know you guys just help people out of your own free time and I appreciate it a lot.

I can't do most of what you've said. I can't get rid of my host at this time, it is still under someone else's name anyway, besides which, moving a forum and using paid hosting can cost over $200 a month and even then they like to stick you for everything and restrict your bandwidth, I've seen it, it's awful.

Also, we don't hide our stuff from guests, it makes it appear unwelcoming. I can possibly reduce links on the main page though. But part of the problem is Proboards doesn't yet allow sub sub boards. Maybe they never will, they've been promising them for almost two years now...

Some money is fine, a lot isn't.

I can go see about disabling guest profile viewing though...might help actually with security. I'm going to do all I can. There's no need for guests to view people's profiles really. They can already view our site freely and see from there. But I've seen hits for our site come in through images on people's profiles so it makes me nervous.

We're up at the top of the 2nd page of google for "Warrior cats" so we're not in a hopelessly lost location. And the site that's up in #3 overall is a tiny free site with, like 15 backlinks, that hasn't updated since October, yeah i checked. Why them, and not us. They're not paying a dime for their spot, any more than we are.

I really want to do the splash page! That also seems like it's a safe move for the minors that populate the forum too. I have no know how though.
 
Perhaps you can get someone to do it for you. I need to do that myself, actually, lol. I just don't have the time or patience to actually sit down and learn the scripting language like I should before I start messing around with stuff like that.

Simple manipulation and editing of the code, I can do. Major stuff, I cannot. Yet.
 
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