Search Engine Optimize your Online Forum

If you have an online discussion forum, chances are that Google indexes only a handful of the pages. The problem with most forums is that they use dynamic pages and have too many variables in their URL for Googlebot to understand. Googlebot can handle dynamic pages with only one variable.

If you have phpBB2, a popular forum software, then there is an excellent mod that you can do that will greatly increase the amount of direct search engine traffic that your forum gets.

You can download the Able to Know SEO 2.0 Mod from the second post in a lengthy discussion of how to optimize phpBB2.

The mod is relatively simple to do, though a little time consuming. Basically you open several files, search for text, replace it, and the upload it back to your server.

If you want the full power of the mod, you need to have access to do mod rewrite. This will allow you to make your forum look like it is running on static html pages. Google loves those!