My forum is already optimized for SEO. I, however don't let SE bots to index my archive pages because I fear that SEs see it as duplicate pages. Will allowing SEs to index archive pages increase my traffic?. Will I get penalized for duplicate pages? Thx!
I think the best thing to do is to archive the posts only. In Wordpress I allow the spiders to index only single posts and homepage. Archives, Categories etc are not useful for site visitors.
Are you serious? First, Categories have a huge use for a site user they help them find related content easily without dealing with a search box. Second as a webmaster you want a user to browse your site and the easiest way to promote that is with categories, they read your post, think hey thats good I want to know more about Basket weaving so they click the category, weaving. This not only helps the user find all your posts but it also increases pageviews.
I understand your point. However let us consider this scenario. A user enters my site through search engine. If he/she wants to browse other posts they can click on the category and look at the other posts. The categories are still there for the visitors, just not for the search engines. Anyway, if more people agree then I will change my view. What do rest of DP members think?