Keyword Footer & PR0

keyword

[RogerZF]

I run a forum which has tons of posts...but for some reason is still PR0. Should I include a keyword footer or would that actually hurt my rankings?

Thanks.

[tedster]

There are two different items that you should keep very straight from each other. PR (PageRank) is Google's measure of how well the rest of the web values a given page -- actually how well other urls value your specific urls. As such it is one part, but ONLY one part of a complex formula or algorithm that they use to create their search results -- your page's "ranking" as opposed to its PR ot PageRank.

The only factor that PageRank depends on is inbound links from other quality pages. But raising PR alone is not going to make any page get good rankings.

A "keyword footer" is, in my opinion, a poor idea. Matt Cutts has pointed out this technique several times as something that Google does NOT like, because it's only there to try to influence search ranking and it's not there to make the visitor's experience better.

Instead, I suggest you study many posts in this forum and elsewhere, with particular attention to things like title tags, meta description, and particularly UNIQUE urls. Forum software is notorious for creating a problem in the area of unique urls unless it is appropriately modified.

[RogerZF]

The problem is I've been experimenting with title and meta tags for months now with no results. My competition has been ahead of me and is now even further ahead of me. I'm in desperate need of help before they become even more impossible to beat!

[tedster]

A couple points:

1. Have you been ensuring that title tags and meta descriptions are unique and specific to their page content?

2. Check out this thread for some detailed information about getting forums well indexed:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Pay particular attention to the points that g1smd makes toward the end of the discussion.