My community website has no members!

Ask FSB

Get small-business intelligence from the experts. Here's a chance for YOU to ask your pressing small-business questions, and FSB editors will help you get answers from the appropriate experts.

Your name:

* Your e-mail address:

* Your city:

* Your state:
Select Outside U.S. Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Dist. of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

* Your daytime phone #:

* Your questions:

More from FSB

Help wanted for HR firm A CEO and rodeo queen King of the mountain bike

Current Issue

(FORTUNE Small Business) -- Dear FSB: A month ago I launched a Chinese/English language exchange, 247yak.com, for people to practice speaking English and Chinese. The target audience is people in China who want to learn English and Americans who want to learn Chinese. It has 250 members, but only a few log in everyday to chat. Activity is a bit better on weekends. How do I improve the website's usage? Facebook users log in almost everyday!

- Eelin See, New York

Dear Eelin: Your troubles may stem from the difficulty in finding your site through search engines like Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) or MSN. For instance, a search on Google with the words "English Chinese translation" or "learn Chinese" brought up many pages of results. But clicking through ten pages, we had still not come across 247yak.com. That's not good since the percentage of people who actually search through the tenth page of Google's results is miniscule.

Don't fret; there are ways to improve that ranking. Research the words your future members will search with on Yahoo, and then include those words in your title and on your website says Lee Odden, Chief Executive of TopRank, a search engine optimization company, and publisher of MarketingBlog.com.

For example, if you find the word "translation" is often used when searching for your website, then include the word in the title of your site. People should be able to find it more easily, and some will become members.

You could also hire a search engine optimization company to help you with this. There are many out there including Odden's TopRank, as well as submitexpress.com or inteliture.com.

Odden also felt a personal search engine on your site would help keep people there, once they have come across it. "By understanding what community members are looking for, a web site owner can make an effort to create more of that kind of content...and make it easier to find existing content," he said. Do this by downloading an external application or plugin. Even Google offers one at google.com/coop/cse.