Using forums with signature files allows you to advertise in an indirect, nonthreatening way. Signature files are messages you create that will automatically appear below each of your forum posts, and typically allow you to link to your website or blog. It's quite a simple way to promote your products or services, but there are many people who aren't making the best use of this online marketing method.

Here are the steps to getting started in marketing your website or business using online discussion forums.

Find Popular Forums

The first stage of using forums to effectively bring traffic to your website is to do a search for forums in your niche that get a lot of traffic. You can use Google or Yahoo or any other search engine to search for forums using keywords related to your niche. For example, if you have a website about debt management, you could type “debt forum” into a search engine to get related forums.

Bookmark the forums that are relevant to your site and check their traffic ranking in http://Alexa.com. You simply click on “traffic rankings” and enter the URL of the debt forums you want to check and it will give you an idea of how much web traffic the forum receives. The lower the traffic ranking the better in terms of how much traffic the forum gets.

Sign Up For Forums

Once you've narrowed down your list to forums in your niche area that get a decent amount of website traffic, you can begin creating your accounts. In order to post messages on forums you must have an account set up. In your profile within each forum, you'll want to set up your “sig” file. Your signature file should use keywords that you want your website to appear in search engine listings for as the link text.

Post Messages

Once you have created accounts on popular forums in your niche, created your profile with sig files, you can start posting messages. You have to be careful that you don't just spam the forums by posting worthless comments just to get your sig files printed. You want to be sure your posts are contributing to the conversation as this is the only way people would be interested in clicking on your links to begin with! A good rule of thumb is to just have fun and make friends. Don't even think about advertising your business or website. Let your signature file do that for you.

Use your forum posts and comments to answer questions from other forum users and establish yourself as an expert in your niche. People will start to recognize you on the forums and will likely want to learn more about you. They will begin clicking on your sig file links to find out more, and they would already be considered a “warm” lead on your website because they've established some sort of relationship and trust with you through the forum posts.

Above all, be polite and treat others like you would want to be treated and very soon you will have a flood of visitors coming back to your website!