I own a MyBB forum. I have installed SEO plugin to make it user friendly and to have a sitemap. These are the features: Google SEO 404: Error pages return HTTP 404 Not Found (and others) instead of 200 OK Custom 404 error pages Google's 404 widget Google SEO Meta: description meta tags for forums / threads / etc. specify canonical pages nofollow links Google SEO Redirect: redirect old URLs to new URLs (or vice versa) avoid URL breakage and double content Google SEO Sitemap: dynamic generation of XML Sitemaps search engines find your content without crawling Google SEO URL: Keyword URLs (e.g. Thread-Some-Subject instead of showthread.php?tid=12345) UTF-8 in URLs is supported Customizable URL styles How to proceed to make the forum raise the position on the search engines? Can I do it without hiring a person? Except to continue to add quality contents of course. I notice that is often online Google and other SE bots but it is not meaning my forum raise positions.
It hard. You need backlinks and good content. WHen was the last time you seen a forum ranking well in Google's search results?
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. But this one (DP) is still holding firm, in fact it's better than it once was. Less scammers, spammers, trolls...though not quite as busy. Quality over quantity and I know which one I prefer.
As I thought. It's so sad, forums are great. So it's a waste of money to buy backlinks or hiring someone to get visitors that write on a forum?
SEO on forums is very limited in the sense you have little control over what content is posted, that's down to the users on your forum. You can of course ensure you have good site structure, template that's well optimized and well-structured titles & descriptions. A good way to boost the domain trust is to have an area with content you have control over by adding in supporting content which has value to users of your site. Ultimately what will define the success of a forum is its users, so it is important to ensure there is a demand for the type of forum you're making and get it out to as many people as you can as quick as you can, social marketing can work well for this, advertising on sites that are related. For example if you're making a forum about radio-controlled cars/boats/planes, then advertise on sites who sell such products to gain users. Try to join clubs on Facebook and twitter and mention your forum on there to get more users.
For a forum what could be an area with content I have control? For example a forum section where I'm the only to write? Or a blog attached to the forum? Also, woorank is a good service to save money repairing/setting up the SEO side of the site?
The best thing you can do for a forum is to grow some activity and stop trying to rank it in the SERP's. They are very hard to rank. You may have a quality topic on your forum with atleast 10 replies with much useful and actionable content but still a blog with very low quality information will outrank you. Get activity. And search engine will come around.
Please could you explain what do you mean to "get activity"? As maybe is the fact that i'm not english motherlanguage that I don't understand.
It means get activity in the forum. Build content as much as you can. Articles, discussion etc. See your forum through the eyes of an outsider and ask yourself this question 'why would you join your forum?'. People don't join a forum because it has a great theme or it is good looking, people join a forum because it has great content.
Ok guys I'll work on it. I'm just so disappointed for Google that not gives the same importance to forums as blogs etc. That's sad cause forums are cool. I hope something will change in the future, for example social less apreciated than forums.
As some people has mentioned, the issue with forums is that you can't control what content members post. Most people on forums start a thread with just one or two lines of content and then each reply is like one or two lines. Content wise, its a lot lower quality than blogs. An alternative is to have a blog on your forum and hire article writers to write high quality SEO Optimized content. This will help you drive traffic to your forum if you can rank the blog articles. This come down to the next point which is building high quality backlinks. You will need to build backlinks in order to increase the rankings of your articles. I do want to mention that there are some large forums that rank well on Google but I rarely see small forums rank well.