Site wont rank for anything... any ideas?

Before I say anything let me say this isn't a vbseo issue and I understand that. I just wanted to ask the pros here and see if they had any ideas on how to fix an issue I'm having.

Back in February we purchased a domain name from an individual. This domain was not currently in use but has been used over the years as a forum just like we wanted to use it. We installed vBulletin and vbseo and thought after getting some content going and back links that it would rank just like all our other sites had. Well... it's been 10 months now and still nothing.

Here is the site: Ford Ranger Forum - Ford Truck Fans

We have a DMOZ, dir.yahoo.com, botw, and other links back to this site. All using the keywords in the title which is also what we want to rank for. But even with that we rank at about 450 (and some days not listed at all) for the title of our site. In fact, we don't seem to rank well for anything and I'm convinced there is some sort of penalty on the domain.

I've submitted a reinsertion request in Google Webmaster Tools and they responded but only said they reviewed it and if there were no problems found that they would index the site.

The site is indexed fine but just doesn't rank. Also, it doesn't show most back links.

Any thoughts or ideas on what's wrong here?

Thanks.

I think a big part of it is your long tail. You're flooding page titles and hurting relvancy by including your title sentence. see: [How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy

The next thing i would change are your meta keywords. they scream pure spam.
ford, ranger, forum, truck, f100, board, tech, help
is about all i'd use plus add chassis codes and motor codes (ie, j-body, 4.0, 351W .... i don't know much about the truck obviously, but you get the idea)

[How To] Move CSS to file system

[How To] Add H1 Tags to your vBulletin Templates for Long Tail Search Optimization

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...erforum.com%2F

Yea, if those points where valid none of my sites would rank for anything. This domain obviously had a penalty on it when we took it over and we haven't been able to get out from under that. I think we have plenty of links at this point and some good quality content to where we should at least be ranking for something.

I guess I'm looking for anyone who has had experience getting a penalized domain in good standing again. Obviously the Google Webmaster Tools system doesn't work.

I see no evidence of a penalty on the domain. The site IS indexed, just poorly.

Your other forums also also long-time established, have a lot more content, and probably have been IN the index for a lot longer.

A quick site: command on your site gives me 80% member profile and tag pages. Most of your true content simply hasn't been indexed yet.
I would remove members and tags from your sitemap and just given them your forumdisplay and showthread pages so they start indexing those pages.

Along with the on-site optimization tips offered above, that should get your content in there to start ranking.

You're competing with a LOT of well established ranger forum sites. As the new guy, you need to work harder to improve rankings.

I have several newer sites with less content and more competition that rank fine in Google. One is two weeks old and I'm already in spot #11. I'm not looking for first page placement BTW but when a site spends most of it's time ranking between 400 - 1000+ for very highly relevant terms that tells me there is something wrong.

This is not the first time I've run into this problem. I had another domain that I purchased at the same time from BuyDomains.com in February. It's a wordpress site with about 200 articles written just for that site. After 9 months the site didn't rank for one term in Google although Google indexed every bit of the content just fine. About a month ago I switched domain names and did a direct copy of the site with no changes. Within 3 days I was getting traffic from Google and ranked fine. Traffic has been growing to that site ever since.

Google seems to have a problem with domain names that are purchased that have a previous history. I'm just trying to figure out how to get rid of that penalty.

BTW, I'm not saying your points are totally invalid Brian. Every site can be improved. But there is something beyond best practices that is going on here. I'm just on a search for anyone who may have insight.

Worst case we will change the domain name and I'm sure that will correct the problem just like it did with the other site. This is just a solid domain so we are wanting to try and keep it.