http://www.bluepearl-design.com

Nice design.. though one major thing that you need to avoid is Flash navigation.. bots have a hard time with those. I think it's changed it abit but it'd be much better if you use HTML or CSS for the menu's.

It can have a impact on rankings yeah, the easier it is for bots to navigate around your site then it would improve alot in helping you rank higher. That's why try to stick to text links with detailed titles.

Very nice looking site. Please remember to take the "Powered by vBulletin" out of your templates for the title section:

[HOW-TO] Remove "Powered by vBulletin" from Your Page Titles

Some suggestions:

• change your style sheet to "linked" instead of inline. this cleans up a lot of code-to-content, and reduces bandwidth. This in the the vboptions menu.
• meta keywords- limit to 10-15. you have a little too many in there.
• change all "pt" font references to px, em, or %. pt's on the screen media is un-reliable, due to pc's being 72 dpi and mac's being 96 dpi. And now with tv's, handhelds, and cellphones, it gets even worse.
• always provde a catch-all family for fonts. for example, in your .header class, it is simply verdana. 20% or more of computers out there do no have this font installed. you should always include sans-serif, serif, monospace, or script (depending on the font types) at the end.
• move
  Code:

  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.bluepearl-design.com/swfobject.js"></script>
  

  out of the body and into the head.
• add an h1 and h2 RIGHT after the body tag. You may be interested in image replacement techniques for your header images. Remember,SE's can't VIEW, they can only READ.
• move this:
  Code:

   <script type="text/javascript"> <!--
  function log_out()
  {
      ht = document.getElementsByTagName("html");
      ht[0].style.filter = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(grayscale=1)";
      if (confirm('Are you sure you want to log out?'))
      {
          return true;
      }
      else
      {
          ht[0].style.filter = "";
          return false;
      }
  } //--> </script>
  

  out of the nav bar and into the global.js file that's included on everypage anyway.
• avoid the use of "spacer.gif" That's what margins and padding are for.

yup, thats the one.

if you view the source of your site, you will see 200+ lines of css code.

when it goes to files, its simply 1 line, <link rel="stylesheet" . . . . /> and helps improve the code to content ratio.

» Improving your “Content to Code Ratioâ€�
Reduce Code to Content Ratio

You want to have heading tags up top in your document. This is a big part of SEO.

If you view the source here, you will see:

Code:

<div id="header"> <h1>SEO</h1> <p>vBulletin Search Engine Optimization Forums</p>

That h1 is key to attracting the SE's to the right "theme" of your site.

How you do this depends greatly on your layout. have a read on the technique:
mezzoblue *§* revised image replacement
Another image replacement technique