Blogs and Forums

Overview:
Blogs and forums can be stand alone websites or they can be added to a content management system. Blogs and forums are simple methods to increase seo because adding text and graphics is very simple and the articles become ordered automatically. However, the installation, setup and maintenance can vary dramatically from one blog or forum to another. One way or another, the blog can be keyworded or an SEO component can be used for SEO.

Blogs:
The most popular blog out there is Wordpress. If Wordpress is used as a blog, it stores all sorts of categories and articles with simple navigation. Some of the keys to good blog writing are to have a good title, keywords and appropriate content containing the desired keywords. Having links to this page using anchor text (the same words in the link as the same words in the article title) does not hurt. The link from another page could be picked too. 

Forums:
Two popular stand alone forums are PHPBB and SMF. These forums can be installed and used right away. However, you may want to use a more styling template than the default template which looks cheap. Forums on their own are a good way to have sections and feedback that the search engines will pick up, but, add on forums for Content Management Systems will allow you to have a website that can do it all. Forums in content management systems can be used with SEO tools so that the pages get an automatic title and keywords. Often, the title, category and content are powerful words that do get picked up by search engines, especially with good wording combinations. Two very good forums for Joomla are Fireboard, CCBoard and PHPBB can be bridged to work with Joomla.