Hidden forum any use?

I am creating a new website based on my main one and was wondering if I created a forum for contributors to discuss their work would this help my SE ranking even if it was not viewable? Basically it would be a hidden forum just for the contributors but would still be under the same URL.

I assumed having an active forum helped your rankings

Thanks

 

Only if you open up the forum to search engine spiders - otherwise they won't know it exists ;-)

 

you mean like submitting a sitemap to my google account or some other way?

thanks

 

If you made it hidden for normal humans, how are bots expected to spider it.??

 

I want to know how you hide your forum to others. The forum and your main site are 2 different pages or website, so run a forum will not help your SEO, but may be help in traffic.

 

Sorry I have never made a forum before but have several available to use with my hosting. I just presumed I could have something like www.mysite.com/forum for the contributors to go to. Then simply provide them with the link? Then add a sitemap.xml for Google?

 

IF you block it for normal users then the spiders wont see that hidden Forum. You either open it up for public or you make it hidden and then it has no value for your SE ranking.
But why do you want to make it hidden and then readable by spiders? That makes no sense for me...

 

Sorry, I was under the impression that the forum would help my site ranking by (a) making it more active than if there wasn't a forum and (b) help by adding a load of keywords and links in the thread posts?

Or am I talking gibberish?

 

Maybe for seo, I am guessing. But I doubt there is much use

 

Maybe he wants his users to be introduced to an "established" forum that search engines know well of before human visitors get to it. Problem is, once Google indexes a single page on your site, chances are that people will get to it by searching on it. If you restrict the access to the site, you'll lose Google indexes, too. Have to decide what's best for your website, cause if you can restrict bots while still making the website available to human users, the other way round is not possible

 

if you are going to hide the forum there is no popint in creating that forum and you never can improve your page rankings.

 

ok I see what you're saying now. Basically I'm trying to get more traffic to my photo site. Currently it only has my pictures for sale but I'm thinking of selling other photographers shots too. With a wider range of images I was hoping to get a better rank with all the new content, and also take a cut of their sales.

I thought a forum would be good for the other photographers to chat in, whilst also boosting the keywords, links and general content for SEO. The trouble is I wouldn't want joe bloggs seeing it and I don't think they would be interested anyway.

 

Why not use an image gallery that allows comments along each photo submitted. Coppermine gallery can do this well, see my work at www.imgway.net as an example. I have disabled new user registration since I have it on sale and don't want testers to mess up with it but it basically allows members to register, submit their own photos as well as comment on existing photos, personal galleries etc. This will surely be a traffic increase, a forum replacement if you wish..