Forum SEO Tactics

Forum SEO Tactics​

There aren’t many forum SEO tactics to consider because a forum heavily relies upon member contributions.

Forum members are likely not considering SEO when they post content. You can’t expect or require them to, either. You’ll only scare them away. The idea of requiring will not work. It never has. It never will.

But even though most forum SEO tactics are useless, you can still use some to get you ranked on Google and other search engines.

Forum SEO Tactics to Use on Your Forum​

Let’s look at some Forum SEO Tactics that work for message forums.

Speed Your Forum Up!​

One of the most effective forum SEO tactics to embrace is to speed your forum up.

The faster your forum is, the better.

That might mean changing hosts, upgrading the VPS, or even integrating your forum with Cloudflare.

Sometimes it might mean using addons to help with caching and page speed.

Whatever you can do to speed your forum up, you will be better off.

GTmetrix is an excellent tool for helping to determine if changes you have made to increase page speed have worked or not. The website is free to use, too.

Use Friendly URL Structures​

If the forum software you use has a feature to enable friendly URLs, it will allow it.

If it doesn’t have that feature, look for a plugin to make it possible.

Friendly URLs are great Forum SEO tactics to take advantage of.

It’s best if the URL is completely friendly without adding excessive numbers and letters that don’t belong unless it is a must.

Use Google Search Console​

Add your forum to Google Search Console.

When Google makes suggestions on changes, try your best to meet those recommendations.

Google is effectively trying to help you rank better on their massive search engine.

It’s intelligent to take their advice and monitor your forum’s search engine ranking and rating.

Take advantage of all the tools that Google Search Console offers because they’re all helpful forum SEO tactics.

A Mobile Priority​

Mobile use of your message forum should be a priority.

If you track your analytics, you’ll see that most visitors will use a mobile device.

I even bet that if you have a forum about desktop users, more than half of your members will use their mobile devices to access your forum.

I still use a desktop for forums myself, but we’re getting smaller and smaller compared to mobile device users.

Ensure that your theme is clean and simple enough to be responsive and mobile-ready or that you have an app available.

Keyword Usage​

Put your target keyword in your main title, categories, section titles, section descriptions, and meta description for your forum.

Meta keywords aren’t valuable anymore, to be honest – I would skip that feature. But your description still warrants use.

If you can add alt tags to your images, use your target keyword in those, too.

But don’t overstuff your keyword.

It doesn’t need to be in every category or description. But the ones you put in should integrate with the content and look normal. It should blend in!

Work on Backlinks​

Try to work on Backlinks for your forum.

Get links on other websites, forums, blogs, and social media.

Try to get links to channels that directly relate to your niche and have good content.


But of all the forum SEO tactics out there – your forum content being the best it can be is one of the biggest. We can’t all accomplish that, but if you focus on making fresh content that is quality-driven and engaging topics, you can win the forum SEO hustle.