OK -- so I'm in need of some help here, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.
I've been running a baseball site - (Metro's Baseball Boards) running for about 5 months now. I've done practically everything in the book, from submitting the URL to the major search engines (ie, Yahoo!, Google), to swapping links with other big-name sites, to banner exchanging... All of which made sense to me, would help increase the number of visitors to my site.
Negative...
Apparently, my top rankings in the search engines (ie, using the words 'baseball boards' in the search) have done absolutely nothing for me. It's really strange -- because you would really think with such a high ranking in the search engines like this, more visitors would be making their way to the site. Right?.....Wrong.
So, if someone could be so kind -- and give me the slightest clue what the hell I'm doing wrong here? Is my site even visible to the outside (ie, it almost appears as if there are no inbound connections to the my site). Any help/feedback regarding my issue would be extremely helpful, as this has been nothing more than frustrating on my part.
Thanks for the time folks! 
best regards,
-Derek. (MB Boards Founder/Host).
http://mbboards.homelinux.com:100/
http://mbboards.homelinux.com:100/forums/
Old Socks posted this at 18:00 — 9th May 2004.
They have: 77 posts
Joined: Mar 2004
my site is top for the phrase
"the early bird gets the worm but its the 2nd mouse that gets the cheese"
but nobody searches for that phrase so i don't recieve any his for it. got me?
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
tells me that phrase (baseball boards) was only searched for 40 times within overture for the month of march.
40 times in one month? True it is only a rough guide as to how popular a keyword is, but it should give you some idea.
Theres no point being top for a key phrase that nobody searches for.
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Old Socks posted this at 18:13 — 9th May 2004.
They have: 77 posts
Joined: Mar 2004
Oh hell I'll run with it.
I just visited your site, It needs some consistency. The widths are all odd. I am forever scrolling sideways, It needs to fit the screen width.
Also - why would people post on the forums? There is n9o activity, nothing to post about.
there are a million things you need to do to set up a forum and make it popular. The best way usually involves signing up with a heap of different usernames and talking to yourself lol.
People are only going to join if they see activity, they see lots of people going there and visiting. What is real and what they see dont always have to match.
Visit other related forums, get to know people, invite them to be mod your forum and get them to bring people with them. Then your not doing it all on your own.
Don't take what i say to heart - im just throwing suggestions your way.
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ronhollin posted this at 14:56 — 12th May 2004.
They have: 121 posts
Joined: Apr 2003
The design is a little harsh on the eyes. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but.
What promotion efforts have you exhausted?
First thing I see is that you have your keyword in the title. Try to move that as close to the front of the tag as possible.
You have no header tags. I suggest you put 1-2 in there with your keyword in it.
You have empty ALT tags on all of your images. Get your keywords into your ALT tags, IF they apply to the image.
Also try to get your keyword in an anchor text one time on that page. Your main focus should be getting incoming links with your keywords in the anchor text though.
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AfterHim.com posted this at 21:48 — 12th May 2004.
They have: 20 posts
Joined: May 2004
If you are serious, I would also suggest a domain name and some hosting...I would never remember your web address as it is now.
something like baseballboards.com or baseballforums.com would be best.
Brandon
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