If you want this forum to appear higher up the rankings on Google or any of the other major search engines, feel welcome to send to me a pm message and I'll advise you from my professional experience.
I have many clients and companies large and small that ask for my advice regularly upon this very topic, search engine optimization is one of my key areas of expertise.
Can also tell you what not to do, which can affect your positions or SERP's as it is known (Search Engine Ranking Position).
One of the easiest things you could do straight away though is to ask all of your members here to bookmark the site and to submit it to the social bookmarking sites, in particular StumbleUpon, Delicious, Technorati, Digg etc etc plus Twitter it of course too.
If you managed to get 50 of your forum members doing this for you with excellent anchor text, targeting specific high search volume / low competition keywords, your traffic would go through the roof and your ranking overall would increase pretty rapidly.
Although someone above me stated this, "Start including items that are most searched on the Internet including movie and music stars, latest gadgets, and world holidays and events." - This isn't really very good advice, no offense to that poster.
If possible you want targeted traffic and to rank highly within this niche, that is in the broadest sense - religion or religious topical areas. Linking to other unrelated subject matters with no direct relavance to the subject matter overall in hand will just be a waste of time and could actually hurt your ranking and position.
Your first step as forum admin would be to use the Google Keyword Tool, it's free to use.
In a nutshell, go to Google, type in: Google Keyword Tool, it'll be in the first position at the top.
You don't need to adjust anything on the page that comes up, keep all the settings as they are.
Now, see where it says: Enter one keyword or phrase per line:
Just enter one longtail keyword, that is two or more words in that box, for example: Jehovahs Witness, or whatever you like. Fill in the Captcha Code and hit the button that says, Get Keyword Ideas. Wait a couple of seconds for the results to appear.
Ignore the first column (Advertiser Competition), in your case this has no relevance at all.
The next column will show how many times any particular keyword phrase has been typed into Google in the last month, you want this figure to be an absolute minimum of 500 searches in the last month.
The next column will display the number of searches globally, pay this one less heed, but still it is of some benefit and again you want to see for any keyword, a minimum number of searches of at the very least 500.
Now, make a note of a keyword / long tailed keyword directly relevant to this forums overall purpose or the audience that you are trying to target online.
Open up a new tab and go to Google.com
Now whatever that keyword phrase is, you want to type that into the Google search engine box inside inverted comma's.
Let's just say off the top of my head, that Cult Recovery gets 4,500 searches per month ok, just as an example, picking a number from thin air.
So, I would go to Google and in the search box, I would type in "cult recovery" exactly as I have shown here. Click ENTER.
The results will appear of course. Now, see that blue bar at the top of the page, you'll see something like this:
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,880 for "CultRecovery". (0.18 seconds)
That 5,880 is the number of other websites that are vying to use the keyword: Cult Recovery - directly, in other words they are targeting this keyword in their text and want to rank highly for it.
Generally speaking, for any given keyword / long tailed keyword (LTK), you want that number on that blue bar to be under a certain number, it's ideal for it to be under 30,000 - 50,000 competing websites, though with some SEO experience and depending on the keyword targeted, under 200k.
You might then write articles about the forum and submit these to the article directories manually, starting of course with EzineArticles. It will take your article as an expert author around 7 days for it to be accepted. Make sure it is original and unique and targets the keyword/s that you are going after.
For example, if the keyword was: Cult Recovery:
Your headline / title might start off something like this....
Cult Recovery Advice, Tips and Guidance
There then would follow your introductory text, again, you would want the two words (LTK) to appear as close as possible to the beginning of this introductory text, so in this case, I would just repeat the title, followed by a 3-5 short sentences, enticing others to read on for further information.
Example: Cult recovery advice, tips and guidance comes in many shapes and forms online, but not all of the cult recovery advice that you see may be the best cult recovery advice for you. Cult recovery is a very delicate matter for every individual concerned and cult recovery in all it's permutations from the hundreds of sects and cults around the world today, affects every individual differently blah blah blah ...
You next have the main body of text, repeat the introductory text again and of course go past the introductory number of words used emphasizing your main keyword/s as many times as you can get away with, whilst maintaining perfect sense and sentence structure.
Only use 400-600 words within the body of your article and DO NOT EVER mention or reference here your own website, write purely for the benefit of your audience, giving them the high quality information that they need and want to read. You'll need then a short punchy introduction, the middle part, the beef of the subject matter at hand and of course a decent conclusion to tie it all together nicely.
Short sentences and short paragraphs are the order of the day - avoid long paragraphs!
There's a biography box at the bottom, this is where you get to 'sell' your forum to other people and the positive benefits of registering etc.
Make it inviting, emotionalize the words used, deliver them from a position of pain to one of pleasure, using psychological triggers that are a direct call to action. Finally, place in your link to the forum immediately after the direct call to action.
When your article/s have been submitted and approved by EA (Ezine Articles), you can then do the same for the other leading article directory sites following the same kind of format. Some will have a shorter admission time, others longer.
Good ones to submit to, are those one's with the highest PR (Page Rank). To gauge the accurate page rank of any site, get the FireFox Addon - SEOquake. http://SEOQuake.com - It's free to use.
Good article sites off the top of my head, GoArticles.com / Buzzle.com / Amazines.com and many others, the most up to date list with latest PR rankings can be found at MasonWorld - http://www.masonworld.com/masonworld-article-directory-rank/
Obviously getting backlinks, other sites linking to this site will help your search engine ranking and position, again the higher the page rank the better.
If you want to know how to get 30 high PR6 - PR10 backlinks straightaway, let me know by pm and I'll put you in contact with someone who will be able to assist you with this at low cost.
For example, there's one extraordinarily simple and easy way to get a PR10 backlink within 30 seconds that I can share with you and it's completely and utterly free. Typically, the higher the links from related websites pointing to this forum, this will be doing your forum a great deal of good from a search engine optimization perspective.
My best Google One so far was in a very strong competitive niche with website competition in the low hundreds of millions and I kept that position for a full 10 months until I nuked that site, didn't cost me a penny either, just bit of whitehat SEO in a certain sequence over a period of time.
As I said, if ever you guys need help just let me know, I'm a walking encyclopedia on the subject and there's a hell of a lot more information I could share with you beyond the basics shared here.
Wishing you guys all the very best!
Mark
P.S. If you don't want to use the Google Keyword Tool, use WordTracker instead.
