Can someone give me some pointers before I bang my head against the wall???

Opening a website (forum based) and SEO is all new ground for me. I've handled the development of the site well thus far (everything lokos great, the premise behind the site WILL be a success) but when hitting the part of actually getting people to it - I feel like my brain is about to explode

So if anyone out there would care to take a moment of their time to shed some light on my next move, I will throw 100 years of good karma vibes your way.

The site is fully built, customized, and all forums and subforums are set. The only thing I lack now is SEO. But I have a million different things to learn and a million and one ways to go.

I've done as much as I personally can for SEO (I'm no expert - just a newbie who wants to get this down!), renaming titles and links to 'catch' more searches, etc.



Considering the nature of my site, gaining users NOW is very important. Here are the steps I'm about to take, if I'm wrong please please correct me!

1)Opening a Wordpress blog that will be updated daily (FREE).

2)Link-Exchange/Purchasing link space. Already have 2 sports betting sites, and am joining LinkMaster ($25 for 6 Months).

3)Decided to purchase vBSEO software. After all I've seen/read, it appears that program optimizes a vbulletin site better than anything I'll learn in the next year ($149 + $79 for customization and sitemap creation).

4)Yahoo! Search Submit (plus Yahoo!s version of Adwords) ($49).

5)Purchase links on ESPN.com's College Football section (my niche). Minimum is $100/Month, but it should help with my SEO because it's a quality backlink.

6)Google Adwords - Hesitant here because from what I've read, even if you set a budget, you could still end up owing far more than that.


I know it's a stretch because this is common sense to some of you vets, but I'm stressed now and just want to figure this out.

Thank you in advance!

Put a pillow on the wall then when you need to bang your head against it it wont hurt that bad! Just kidding!



Good



Don't do it. Its age that matters and buying links is becoming increasingly more of a problem. SE's know its not natural. They will be heavily devalued links.



Fair enough



There is no need to pay for your site to be submitted. IF SEO is done properly the amount of back links you have will get your site regularly indexed.
It is a common mis conception that submitting a site more than once some how magically makes the search engine see a different site and rank it higher - it is a waste of money. You don't even need to submit your site, a link is all it takes.



This is tricky. A link on a relevant page on ESPN.com would be great but its better to get it in naturally on an article.
Im 50 / 50 on tha tone.



If you do keyword research right then you will be good with this. You can set a daily budget that will not be exceeded. There is no reason to spend more than you want on AdWords it just takes a bit of care setting up the account.

A lot of people fall down on Google AdWords by targetting the wrong term. I will give you 10 to 1 that targetting the term College Football would be the wrong keyword to target. The idea is to find 3 - 4 word niches that have some searches but virtually no competition. Get lots of these and you will reap the rewards.

Can I have my Karma Vibes now please?

Karam vibes thrown my friend. Thank you

The only problem Im running into is getting link-backs. The only places that would get people in either already have forums (they're horrible thus the reason Im doing mine), or they have a blog and/or don't want to link :/

ESPN.com and CNNSI.com were my best shots at getting decent link-backs, oter than my blog of course.

As for Adwords: Good advice on not using 'college football' as my key word, I think ill focus on 'college football + blog/message board/forum/chat/talk'.

Never assume you know your keywords.

Keyword Research is of paramount importance. It is the single most important thing in SEO you will do. Get it right and you will do well. Get it wrong and you will spend a lot of time and money on terms that won't convert.

You probably don't want just traffic you probably want conversions to so you want targetted traffic - the two are very different.

Read up on Keyword Research before deciding on specific terms. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, I can't stress that enough.

Secondly on linking, yes it is difficult. Link Baiting is important. You might do well to create an E-book or Guide or Flash game or put on some funny videos for example (just off the top of my head) that are related to your topic. People will naturally want to link to these and that is how you will naturally get lots of links. This is called Link Bait.

To get the ball rolling, write soem related articles and Bookmark them on Socail Bookmarking sites like digg.com.

Definately go to DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory for links.

Always ask on this forum before doing something, even if it seems trivial, ask as this board can save you a lot of time and money.

Can you suggest a free keyword search tracker? I searched for a few hours but most end up charging for the full version.

I did find Good Keywords - but it says b/c of software changes it won't be showing results any longer :/

There is also Wordpot BUT you can't search phrases, only single words which really doesn't help me.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool, that's what you are after. Free aswell

Very cool. Am curious though, I ran my site vs a competing site in the 'enter URL' section.

Their site came up hitting keywords left and right, but mine = NONE.

Given my site is BRAND NEW but my title has my keywords, my metas have them, the content on my site is loaded with all of the words, yet nothing comes up.

I just can't understand why nothings coming up if it's scanning it on the spot when I click 'get keywords'.