Ultimate noob thread: How to rank for certain keywords

[t-rent]

I am brand new to SEO. I have been running my forum since 2003 and have been using vBSEO since 2006. I just installed vbSEO and let it do its think at all default settings.

I have almost 190,000 pages indexed, but I am not ranking at all for some of the keywords I would like to.

How do I go about getting ranked for certain keywords? I understand how to rank for keywords on a normal website but when it comes to forums I'm lost. Where do I place the keywords I want to try to rank for?

Sorry for such a noob question, but I'm probably not the only noob on these forums wondering this.

Thanks for any help.

[Joe Ward]

Well, keep in mind that vBSEO plays a very big factor in long tail search traffic:
What is the Search Long Tail? - vBulletin SEO Forums

To try to target specific keywords, you need to several things well:

• Make sure you have great content related to those keywords.
• Make sure you try to get links to those content pages with your target keywords from other sites, and using anchor text that contains the keywords as well as closely related keywords (i.e. varied anchor text)
• Make sure you highlight the target content on your site as much as possible.

Some specific things you can do to improve:

• I like your homepage. It is creative. However, you should add a small snippet of text for each of your main sections you include there.
• You can use vBSEO Custom Rewrite Rules on your gallery URLs.
• Do you absolutely have to have that links page linked from your homepage?
• In general, try not to create pages with no text (i.e. links only).
• Why not link to all of your on-topic forums at the bottom of your homepage?
• You have no welcome/intro text at all on your forum homepage.
• I think your forum titles and descriptions (not displayed) can be significantly improved:
  
  • Strategy for Optimizing Keywords in Your vBulletin Forum Title and Descriptions
• Preferably those top target terms should have their own sub-forums.
  
  • You can create footer links that appear on every page, linking to, and promoting all of those top terms on your site.

Make sure you remember to get external links wherever you can (IF it's a relevant site).