i have in hands one of the biggest forum on the internet, with more than 8 millions threads (without counting what we have in archives...) and i can tell you that after all this time, the SEO is one of the last thing we need to implement...

the thing that will increase your trafic is the mouth to ear... contacts, friends, links, sharing, good references... if your site is about poodles, go to all sites talking about poodles and become their friends... if your site is about politics, invite the politicians that can have a voice... and advertise these events...

one thing that brings a lot of related links is a wordpress blog that talk about the content of your site, even if it is not related to the forum itself... i have a blog in my siggy, my own place, and it brings more than 1000 hits per day from google... imagine if you have interesting content... if your forum is advertised directly on that blog, let's say you have a link for each category of your forum on it, you will have that much multiplication of links from google to your forum...

SEO is a way to tell things.. if the page title is descriptive of the content, that's good... if it is just keywords, forget it, most of the keywords are already used by Microsoft.

it's an addition of things... well used seo, a good circle of contacts, and welll.. content !!!

Just out of curiosity - what's your forum url?

Jacquii.

Thanks man...!

You got a great setup, Keep up the good work!

SEO is good for long term traffic. Short term you need word of mouth. For word of mouth you need something worth visiting... something other forums don't offer.

And on my forum, Thats hard to do.. :D