The Net Impact Roadmap

Every internet user has probably seen a message board at one point or another.  Message boards have easily outlasted the early internet fad of chat rooms, and remain quite popular for community development on some of the internet’s most popular websites. 

You also probably know the benefits of starting a message board within your own website.  Message boards allow websites to develop a community for their users and keep users coming back to the website.  But did you know that message boards can also help people find your website on ordinary search engines? 

Most message board programs and formats are spidered by search engines.  That means message board contributors are giving your website more keywords without any major effort on your part other than moderating your message boards, if necessary.  Very rarely do message boards float to the top of keyword searches on search engines, but they are often listed on the first page of searches since there are plenty of word sequences appearing in message board postings that are hardly found elsewhere in internet content. 

In rare instances, other websites will even backlink to your message board.  For example, some very informative message board threads make for great resources on particular topics, and other websites will sometimes backlink to these threads as a resource for their users. 

Before you worry about any of the message board advantages previously mentioned, you need to develop a message board where users will actually post — and post often.  Even some popular websites have a tough time turning website viewers into message board contributors. If you feel that you already have a substantial regular readership and/or viewers on your website, developing a helpful message board that will bring in more visits is a realistic possibility. 

This threshold of visits is sometimes difficult to determine and can be different for every topic of your website.  If your website is more content and service-based, the amount of visitors that you need for your site to develop an active message board is probably lower than a website that is only product-based.  In most cases, these content and service-based websites offer more topics for discussion and debate than an online store with a listing of products and prices.  Still, product-based websites can develop viable message board communities in rare instances if there are enough visits and customers.

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