One forum I run is based on the county I live in. I post about news items, events and educational news. Whilst I don't get a lot of activity I do get a lot of traffic. This is because I post new threads with exacting thread titles. I create my titles whilst considering what people may type in search engines. As an example; last year I created a thread advertising an event in a local park, doing a Google search for the park name and the word 'show' returns 2.510,000 results. My forum was 3rd on the first page. A few days ago I received an email from the show organisers as they want me to help the with their advertising campaign for this year. The lesson here? Be creative with your thread titles, they do matter and can improve your search engine results.
The thing to try and remember with thread titles is avoiding using short common words in them like "to, it, me, at, he" and so one, also try and avoid using words which contain commas and such like: they're, wasn't. For example: 1: Instead of writing: The sun is very hot a lot today. 2: I'd write this instead: Sunny Hot Weather Today. I do this always on my Blog, but only out of pure habit. Also, if your adding TAGS for a thread they should be taken from the thread title really, so choose your title keywords wisely for taking tags from. Use good keywords for title that relates most to what the thread is all about!
Totally agree and I've no apprehension in the title of a thread one of my users has made to SEO/readability either.
There's not a lot you can do about it on a forum because you can't control how your members write their thread titles. It's only any real use if your running something like a website or blog we're only your adding the main content so have full control over it all. I don't think people should go crazy over it all though, I mean your site is for enjoying, not becoming a SEO freak at every turn with something posted on it.
