I've started a forum and it's already doing quite well on Google. It's only a week old and on the first page for one set of keywords, about 6 spots down. I'm wondering though if there's some sort of mod I can install to make it a little more search engine friendly. I've already registered at vbulletin.org.
There's a program called VBSEO that some moderators use. But I think the newest version of VB is pretty good right out of the box. Just make sure to fill in your meta tags and use tags on the postings.
I saw vbseo, but I was hoping there might be an alternative, as I just dropped 200 on vbulletin ha, but I suppose I'll break down and buy it.
I heard there is a mod available for url rewriting. You can search for it, I don't know the url of that.
VBSEO is an obvious pick, but there's a few things you can tweak to make your VBulletin more SEO friendly. Remove the "Powered by Vbulletin" portion of the header, change your "Welcome to..." message into an image, etc.
vbseo seem to do make a lot difference. I did a research on the forums that are using it. Many of them got very good ranking on competitive keywords. Like you I am paused by the price as well