To cut a long story short, I used to have my forum hosted on Forumer. Then I developed a proper website and forum, and hosted it using paid-for hosting. However, my new site is ranked below the old site on most search engines. Here are the two sites... http://namcocentral.8.forumer.com/ http://www.namcocentral.com Not only that, but neither site is particularly easy to find in search engines. My site is pretty much the only fan-site dedicated to Namco games in general. Yet it is still hard to find even when searching for terms such as "Namco". I've got to admit... I am a beginner when it comes to search engine optimisation. Other than META tags, I don't know any other ways of improving my search engine ranking. Could you guys give me advice?
Check out Stymiee's Search Engine Optimization FAQ on Sitepoint, it's a great place to start your research. You'll probably also want to look into different methods for optimizing your forum. Check out phpBB SEO to find mods and learn more about optimizing phpbb.