by I'm going to give you a quick rundown on what's essential for a search engine optimizer.
Don't be afraid by this word as it is something easy to understand in its most basic form
Obviously, the more links we get to this site the more users we will attract but what I'm going to describe here is a technique to rank high in search engines (and specifically Google) so people who enter contextual keywords can find us.
To give you an example, type in "rational skepticism" (without the quotes) into the Google searchbox.
You'll see we have the #1 spot, even leaving Wikipedia behind...and with 4.4 million search hits for this keyword this is pretty neat
We do actually get a couple hundred visits by that keyword alone on a daily basis.However, "rational skepticism" is an unpopular niche keyword and the overall traffic it generates is not that high...so we need to expand those high ranks to more popular terms but first let me give you a little insight into how this link thing actually works.
Basically every search engine algorithm rates a link based on these 4* main qualities:
*there's more but those are the most important ones
- Trust (Does the site which is being linked from have authority?)
- Popularity (How popular is the site?)
- Linktext (What does the link say?)
- Context (Is the site on-topic? And where does it link to?)
Let's apply this to "rational skepticism". A lot of you guys have linked to this forum with the keyword "rational skepticism" as the linktext, those links come from dynamic blogs, boards, social networks and various other (sometimes authoritative) sites. This has lead to a ranking boost from zero to hero (e.g. No 1 spot). So far so good.
Now let's look -for example- at the term "atheism":
This term (and "atheism" only, so no variations like "agnostic atheism") is being searched approx. 100.000+ times a month on Google alone, worldwide. That gives us ~3333 searches a day. About roughly 50% of searchers click on the very first link that'll pop up on Google, so that's ~1666 unique visitors a day to our site if we'd be the No 1 spot for the term "atheism" in Google. The term "atheist" gives twice as much traffic. "islam" would get 10x as much, "christianity" 5x as much traffic as "atheism". "evolution" 6x as much, resulting in 10.000 visits a day (!) to this board if we'd be No 1 for this term alone. If we would be successful with only these few terms we wouldn't have to worry about new members anymore
Think of all the possibilities 
Now obviously it's almost an impossibility to hit the jackpot with all of these keywords but any of the 10 spots on the first Google page will generate some nic(h)e traffic, so let's be more realistic in our approach and not aim too high (although it's not that improbable to be very successful and hit some #1 spots). Plus I was giving only examples for "single word"-keywords. Anything more than 1 word becomes a "keyphrase", e.g. "agnostic atheism", "richard dawkins", "evolution vs creationism". The exact same formula applies to keyphrases as well and keyphrases are usually more effective since the search terms are more specific, targeted and have overall less competition in search engines.
Q: What does trust or authoritative mean?
A: Easy to imagine, hard to explain. Basically any site that has some popularity in combination with trustfulness, e.g. Wikipedia, Yahoo, CNN, Google are all very authoritative and trustful sites. So are any government sites, schools, universities, libraries, military sites, news sites, anything that has a popular brand attached to it, you get the idea...
Also sites like Pharyngula, RDF.net, carlsagan.com are not only authoritative but also contextual (see below for details).
Q: So how do we get links?
A: If you own a static site, blog or any other webpage that gives you an option to link to us. Or you could ask your teacher, your prof, your friends or write emails (but be humble and modest about your request!) to people you think would be interested in our forum. I did write some mails in the past and you'd be amazed by the positive feedback I've gotten so far
If everybody here would send out a few nice emails informing about this site and asking for a link I'm sure we'd be very effective Q: What exactly do the links have to look like?
A: Ideally the textlink is contextual to the page it is referring to, e.g. the link: "Theism" (without quotes) will link to our respective subforum. Click it and you'll see what I mean. It has to be an actual (key)word or (key)phrase, just an URL like "http://www.ratskep.org" will not help increase the ranking. It also matters where the link is placed at, is it the main page of a webpage (ideally) or is it a link somewhere in an article that is deep within a page and not as good connected as the mainpage?
That's all there is to it, in a nutshell.
Q: What does contextual mean?
A: A link to RatSkep from a site that sells parachutes won't help much. A link from an (a)theist blog though will. Or a science page. Or an educational website. If you run a science blog on biology a link to the Biology-subforum with e.g. the link "Medicine" would be perfect for the greatest impact.
Search engine optimization is a slow and wearisome process though. Usually a few months will pass until any new links will have an effect on our ranking positions in search engines. That's normal and we have a lot of competition to deal with. As a general rule of thumb you could say: The more contextual and authoritative the links are the more impact it will have. But don't be disencouraged by the "authoritative" part, any little link will help to hopefully boost us into mainstream in the long run
Any questions left? Feel free to comment here, I'll help where I can.
Happy hunting!
P.S. I will attach a list with popular keywords and data later on (plus a few images to illustrate this further).
Cheers
Bernhard
Thank you 