SEO Tips for Your Forum: How to Rank Your Forums with Search Engine Optimization

[dojo]

This is going to be a sticky article and I'll add to it as we get more questions and ideas. Here is how you can use SEO to boost your forum's traffic.

SET UP YOUR FORUM FOR THE SEARCH ENGINES​

We'll mainly cover Google, but, doing proper SEO will allow your forums to rank for Bing, Duck-Duck-Go and other search engines.

In order to help Google index your website you will need to install Google Analytics and then set up your Google Search Console.

SET UP GOOGLE ANALYTICS​

Go to analytics.google.com and set up your property. Get the ID and set it up in Xenforo (go to OPTIONS > STATISTICS AND METRICS and add your Google Analytics web property ID. Example: G-D1HL5U360R)

You don't need to add the entire code in PAGE CONTAINER as before, so no hard coding on your part.

As soon as the ID is properly set in Xenforo, you should start seeing some "movement" in the REAL TIME data.

SET UP GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE

Go to search.google.com and create a property for your forum's URL. Ask for verification and it should instantly show as verified, as your Analytics code is already in place.

SUBMIT YOUR SITEMAP​

Now that you have set up your GSC property, go to yourforums/sitemap.xml and copy-paste the sitemap.xml bit in Google Search Console SITEMAP section. Should look like this:



Give it a few days to start gathering data.

In the meantime, promote your forums and keep on posting HIGH QUALITY content.

... more to come ...

 

[Nomad]

The main criteria for search engine ranking is quality content. Your forum needs to offer quality content for it to appear on search results. The forum topics need to use long tail search terms or search queries on the title, the replies also need to use primary and secondary keywords. Using appropriate keywords and meta tags are very important for search engine ranking.