Most forums use phpBB, MYBB or vBulletin. They're so widely used that Google must have special classifiers for extracting info from them. So I doubt much SEO is actually needed, lest it appears the forum is over-optimised.

Xenforo has some nice built in SEO optimization features. Not to mention how Xenforo style forums usually rank very highly in Google search for almost any keyword phrase targeted. Though maybe you could get even a freebie forum done on SMF to rank if you backlinked or had enough good content.

This forum is using vBulletin software. Most threads of this forum got ranked at the top spot of Google for keyphrases which related to internet marketing niche.

I vote vBulletin as best forum software.

I used to use vbulletin 4 script because it's easy to handle and also it's SEO friendly also as you can see this forum is also using vbulletin script.

anyway,i still have that script and if you were interested.
PM me.

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Basically Forum selection is depend on your use, features you required to run your own forum, if you are long time investor than Vbulletin is good else you can go for phpBB

Well.. Really any forum can be "SEO'd" if you want to spend enough time on it, but if you're asking for an out of the box forum with modern code then my answer would be xenforo.

If you want to focus on seo, i suggest vBulletin and after it, you can use IPB. but i myself prefer vBulletin.

vBulletin is top choice cause it also has too many plugins available that are great for seo.

vBulletin and myBB are the best among all softwares out there. But at the end they ain't gonna help you being a Business Tycoon itself, SEO matters a lot.

Hi, In my mind these are the leading players at this moment.
-vBulletin
-IP.Board
-UBB.threads
-SMF
-XenForo
vbSEO is great for the long-term. Your traffic will, in the long run, rise.
The real test with a vbulletin forum is trying to keep the old threads, that may be buried deep down on maybe page 100 of forum display, indexed and not supplemental. That is a whole new level of SEO in itself. Thank you. Have a nice day

VBulletion is the one mostly being used for forums and is SEO friendly.

Do SEOMoz. Top guys from the industry.

If you want to take the software rout then go with VBulletin, however if you got the time or the workers to outsource to do it manually. Seriously much better results, more targetted, etc..

Hi,
I think vBulletin is the best forum software for making a forum.
Few advantages:

• It's very easy to customizable.
• Familiar with CSS and HTML.
• Outstanding customer service and technical support.

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I would vote for MyBB in terms of SEO

I have a close friend who has run a forum with vbulletin for years and years. It has "vbseO", too. Has tens of thousands of users, and about a half million posts, but she got a lot of those users with expensive paid traffic. It doesn't rank too well without hiring on people on sites like this without SEO wizards doing their thing to make it rank.

I don't think Vbulletin ranks nearly as anymore. I was just reading up on this. VBSEO and a lot of other plugins for vbulletin have disappeared. There's lots of complaints on Vbulletin.com and The Admin Zone on what a pain in the butt it can be to get traffic these days.

Not that it was ever a magical solution. It seems to be active SEO efforts that make it rank more than the software itself. Many good threads on unique topics never get well ranked at all. From what I've seen with my own eyes, Vbulletin isn't not search engine candy like a good Wordpress is. You really gotta work it if you want good traffic and participation.

Maybe XenForo, which was started by ex-vbulletin guys, fixes this. If you're a newbie I'd look more in that direction. Vbulletin is still kinda cool now for people who already have one, but it doesn't look it has much of a long term future anymore.

Speaking of vbulletin SEO, though, if anyone here is an expert at getting Vbulletin's well ranked, please shoot me a pm.

Not all vbulletin's rank well, but wow Warrior forum sure does! My friend's forum is completely noncompetitive. Not marketing or business related at all. Ideally I'd love to talk to the same people who help do the SEO for sites like this. I just don't have the SEO expertise to help as much as I'd like, but she does have decent budget. Just needs to know the right people who specifically know how to make the wide multitude of threads rank. SEO for forums seems like a specialty, and she's grown tired of hiring people who don't understand this speciality.

I figure if I'll find a vbulletin SEO expert anywhere these days, I'll find them here.

Vbulletin is 100 times better for forums because of his amazing features.

vBulletin and myBB are nice for forum SEO.

+1 On VBulletin(Although I'm sure I'm overkilling it with my vote, but don't want to feel left out! =p )