SEO like that is basically useless on a forum
i like kindred about as much as kindred likes me- but notions of emotions aside, kindred is right about this. kindred, when bereft of emotion, is usually right.
I used to think the search engines, especially google, played some sort of rigged game with those trying to get themselves noticed, but that was and is hogwash. what they ARE trying to do, by my reckoning based on observation over the years, is create a 'standard'. pretty simple, actually.
what, in my humble opinion, it takes are these measures:
1- clean and operational site- meaning free of malware of any kind and any kind of affiliation (link share) with sites that practice that crap. A site that functions with few 4xx or 5xx results on crawls.
2- time, and time while clearly identifying target market. time includes actively changing and increasing content related to target market.
3- properly formed explanations which doesn't have as much to do with the search engine but how a potential user sees the webpage on search results- and where YOU can make it right.. h1's, h2's, h3's, and even h4's are important in this realm... it used to be solely to format your page with proper headings and so you can reuse the format over and over with simplicity- and it's still important for that... but it seems the engines have moved away from meta descriptions and keywords and parse content with as much or more weight, now. so... your index may bring traffic, but your THREADS are what has potential to get you noticed.
arranging your display.template to have the main site name as an h1, the thread title as an h2, and the content as h3's will serve you well. in this manner, the search engine can see the importance of the CONTENT and that is what draws folks. a result on the engine will be, for instance, (h1)YOUR PAGE TITLE and right below it (h2) The Thread Title and trailing off the result the (h3)blahblahblah this is a blurb of what is the content of the post...
traffic on a niche (small and clearly defined) can get you noticed quickly, but that has to be expounded upon, and leveraged for momentum- SO LONG AS YOU AREN'T GUILTY OF BAD PRACTICES such as 'link sharing' through sites that run the usual nefarious BS along with their 'links for sale'. that's a good way to get google ignoring you.
i aim to help, that is all... the above represents my own experiences.
