I've recently made some modifications to the forum which should make it easier for us to be found and indexed by search engines.
Here are just a few of the mods:
1. Installed Google Analytics. It allows me to track site statistics, etc.
2. Google Webmaster Tools. Many things there such as crawler bot error codes, etc. Helped me find errors and had suggestions for improvement.
3. Installed forum Sitemap and submitted to Google. They only had 2 URL's indexed? Now 3244 submitted URL's. We may see some traffic from this alone.
4. Upgraded the forum software and more bot friendly URLS. May experiment a bit more in this area
5. Changed and added Meta Tags. Was very difficult to do with the older software but easier now for me to change.
6. Installed and modified a Robots.txt file on the server. This tells bots what they should look at. Also put a sitemap there in case it helped. I didn't want bots to index any more extra info then needed so I disallowed some areas to be indexed.
Have been monitoring these changes I've made in the last week and it appears that we are going to have an easier time getting found. With the old IPB forum software many of our posts were getting found and indexed. I knew we were at a bit of a disadvantage using SMF forum software but really didn't know how bad until recently. Fortunately many other SMF users have the same issue and came up with some great mods to help in this area. "Out of the box" the sofware is terrible in the SEO area. The newer version is the best so far but has a long way to go still. That's why many forums us IPB or Vbulletin. They are decent right out of the gate. The only problem is the cost for the software.
Another mod I installed was an Anti Spam module. It checks new registrants against a spammer list and puts them in a Que to be reviewed instead of automatically allowing them. Has cut down tremendously in the amount of "fake" bot registrants. Another great anti spam thing is included with this latest forum software. It allows you to add 3 questions that must be answered in addition to the skewed image. Haven't had a single one even get by that to the anti spammer mod since I did that. Now I can spend more time working on the site, etc.
I've only had time to work on this recently after I sold my cleaning business. Hopefully you can use a few of these ideas for your website. Like everyone else I'm learning as I go.
