New Forum: SEO considerations.
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We're going to add a new forum to our website.
We don't anticipate very large volumes of users.
I read somewhere in The Art of SEO that forums should be 'built in bbPress'. I'm very much a programming novice so I'm still trying to get to grip with the basics of forums.
I'd be grateful to know the main SEO considerations (however basic) that I should tell my web developer who is building the new forum.
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I think that is not an question for a q&a Forum. Its basic SeoKnowledge
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo
If your content is public(crawlable). Its important that the dynamic content ist optimized automatically. (Title, Meta Description, Html Markup, and so on)
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Not sure on the bbPress recommendation as an SEO factor. If your current site is built in WP it makes sense to use bbPress as forum though. As to SEO considerations for a forum versus a web page I do not believe there is a marked difference. You want to be sure that your Forum Title, etc. relates to the content in the posts. So, if your forum is about chevy corvettes, having posts about cake recipes, etc. is not helpful. My personal opinion is that you want to watch for those who are posting just to drive traffic to their unrelated sites, etc.
Lastly, when you say not a large volume of users, remember there is no reason to have a blog if there are going to be two or three initial posts and then two years from now nothing has changed. I see tons of blogs with one or two aged entries. So, ask yourself what is it going to do for you or your customers and is the development and monitoring commitment worth the result you want to attain.
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