Just wrote a post on my blog about this but wanted to post here too for discussion:

I consider myself to be a pretty decent SEO. I’m no expert by a LONG shot and learned to shut my mouth about stuff like that a long time ago (hence I rarely update my blog ) but I’m making pretty decent headway on most keywords I target on all my sites except forums….

Now it’s easy to get a #1 rank with a good domain like for example AgnosticForums.com for the keyword Agnostic Forums. It’s almost child’s play. But why can I never get top rankings for single word or in some cases multi word search terms when it comes to forums?

I mean forums are by nature the absolute BEST type of site to SEO because they have ever changing content and spiders have to visit them every day to stay updated. I know I’m not the only one with this issue because I see plenty of more well established forums never ranking for single keyword competitive terms.

EXAMPLE: ChristianForums.com is one of the top web destinations for christians but a search in Google for Christian doesn’t return ChristianForums.com anywhere on the first few pages… wtf?

But when you put in christian forum not only does ChristianForums.com come up at the top but dozens of of other less established forums pop up as well. Now some might say that’s great, google knows the user is looking for forums and returns all the forums only when the user puts “forums” in the query. But I say it sucks because Google also seems to exclude forums from searches unless the word forum or forums is in the query.

Is it just me?

I see the same thing.

I think while forums are the best type of site for SEO, there is a catch... you can't make sure every post has your keywords in it. Sure, the template/surrounding content has the keywords, but the posts rarely do. This has been my experience.

With enough link development, I've ranked for a few semi-competitive single keyword phrases, but they're pointed at the homepage which is SEOd a little better.

"Christian" is an awful example to use. HUGE search term, MASSIVE religion, and also a very common first name.

Are we strictly talking single-word search terms? I've seen posts on other forums rank very high for 2-3 word search terms. One was my post, in fact, and landed me a Wall Street Journal interview. But, it wasn't a "monetizable" search term. Just an industry-specific topic.

ABestWeb is on the first page of google for "Affiliate marketing"

And for the record, I've got ChristianForums.com on page 2 of Google for "Christian"

Rob, I guess what I'm saying bro is that I start forums all the time then shoot to the top for everything but the main keyword of the site and I see other forum owners struggle to do it all the time as well. Mustangevolution.com keyword mustang. Uhn uh. Notebookforums.com keyword notebooks. No way!

I realize those examples are all really tough competitive keywords but...... we're not talking brand new barely established sites here. Like I said Christianforums is one of the top web destinations for christians and google thinks it's not front page worthy for the keywords christian or christians??

Same with me, I can't rank for crap for the word Agnostic or even Agnosticism. Not very competitive at all and my site is a great resource for info on the topic. I've got great backlinks from authority sites. Maybe not the perfect keywords but related. Even wikipedia has added my link in the related sites section. (no followed but still..)

Point being if any site type should be fairly easy to SEO it would be forums. But it seems the opposite when going for the site's main keyword but they'll rank for anything else.