When you are trying to promote your website, forum marketing is one of the easiest and most productive ways to do it. It pulls in a targeted audience for people actively looking for your services, products, or information. You can get many visitors, and potential customers, just from one post in a forum. But with all the suspicious people out there on forums it can be very easy to get reported and banned from the forum all together.

I have seen some big names get banned on online communities and forums just for conducting themselves in a hard sale manner. So keep in mind some tips to help you avoid getting banned, and instead keep getting your website new visitors.

Tip 1 - Do not post just links to your website.

I see this all the time. Someone will ask a question in a forum and someone else will answer with a link. People go to forums for answers, not links. Links should be an afterthought to help them receive more information from your answer. So make sure you answer the question with an actual answer, and try to make it a really detailed answer, and then point to your website for even more detailed information.

Tip 2 - Do not post the same generic response over and over.

This is extremely common. The answer will go something like "I have experienced this also and I found that this website at (website link) helped me out quite a bit, good luck!" They then proceed to plug this into every question they find.

This will not only get you banned but you will not get clicks to your website from this behavior. If you are going from question to question then you can imagine how many other people are doing the same thing. And I can guarantee that they notice your generic answer in each question. So even if they wouldn't have reported you after the first time they saw your answer, they would now.

Tip 3 - Keep it relevant

Many people will take the above generic response and put it into every forum possible. But the problem with this is that your website is most likely only about one niche, and when people come to your website expecting to read about making money online, but instead find out it's about losing belly fat, you can bet they will never be back. You will lose readers and customers in abundance this way, and your website will be labeled as spammy and non-useful.

This means when you get banned, and you try to join the forum with another name, your website will instantly be recognized as that spammy website and you will get banned again. You won't even get a chance to give a few answers or posts. And your efforts will be for nothing!

Remember that forum posting is a great way to drive traffic to your website and your goal should be to stay on these forums to help you do so. When you make a post or answer a question always contemplate whether it may get you banned or not. This will help you make the best of your forum experience by avoiding a stupid mistake that can cost you thousands of visitors.