One of the best way's to promote your forum is to set up text, or anchor text, exchanges.

You may not have heard this said before because if you ask people about promoting a forum most people will talk about search engine optimisation, CPC or CPM advertising and of course banner exchanges. Although these forms of advertising do work I have personally found that the best form of advertising is thru text exchanges.

In case you don't know what a anchor text exchange is, well to put it simply you put a small text link on your forum and somebody else places a small text link on their forum or website (for an example look at the bottom right hand side of this site).

This form of advertising is only affective if you exchange links with the right sites. Although there aren't any exact rules on deciding which sites to exchange with, I find it important to consider the points;

Pick a site that has a similar content to your own but not the same. This is because you want the people looking at your link to have an interest in the content of your forum but you also don't want people who should be using your forum to leave and go to somebody else's.

Consider the wording of your link. If for example your link say's 'MLB forum' and your forum I about football people will look at your site and leave instantly. Also if your link say's 'NASF' because your forum is called 'North American Sports Forum' people will look at the link and not understand what it means so in most cases they will not visit your forum.

The placement of your link on other forums and/or websites is key. The easiest way to make the exchange fair is for you to both place the links in the same place of your forums and/or sites. It would be unfair if you placed their link on your homepage and they place your link on a page which is hard to find and has no real relevance to the site, for example a links pages.

If you agree on where to place your link and what it should say make sure that they stick to the agreement. If they brake the agreement don't automatically remove their, they could have a good reason, contact them and ask them to uphold their part of the deal or re-negotiate terms.

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