Promoting Forums/Message Boards

[precious]

How does one go about promoting forums on search engines?

As I see it one can either have a separate domain or have it on the current website - which is better? How do you promote it on search engines in both cases.

Thanks.

[agerhart]

I would recommend using an additional domain for the forum that you would like to promote, although I think our Sys. Admin might be able to better assist you. ;)

[EliteWeb]

If the forum is the main focalpoint of your website then have it on its own domain, if for some reasons search engines dont like the board the rest of the site could be penalized with it, but if were on seperate domains there would be less risk of that.

I run message boards (phpBB) on their own domains and on existing sites in a sub directory and it all works well.

BTW, anyone running phpBB 2.0.1 or 2 or anything remove or rename the install.php couz i learned how to exploit it to get a shell on the box when that file still exists. The documentation instructs people to remove it but heh people dont read nemore. ;)

[precious]

Thanks for all the inputs. I need some further help.
Assuming I have a separate domain for the message board. I have a link to this message board from my website. Is that okay?

Also, how do I go about promoting this new domain to search engines...you say search engines don't take kindly to forums. All help will be appreciated.

Thanks

[rogerd]

Precious, you might check a thread I started the other day - [webmasterworld.com...] - about discussion content overwhelming the site.

I think SEs DO like forums if the content is relevant. I have some discussion pages that generate strong traffic. As far as promoting the pages, I'd let the SEs find them. Just be sure your forum pages incorporate similar optimization to the rest of your site so the SEs can figure out what the pages are about.