This would seem to be as good a place as any to 'spill' some of this....and I'm confident that Bryan and Dave - if still engaged - (with their forum/gambling industry backgrounds) will know all this.
But...on the subject of trying to gain enhanced search engine visibility...
Things have changed a lot in recent year(s) around how search engines 'work'. That's an understatement, it's a complex topic that would take a lot of writing to cover fully (and there are lots of grey areas/unknowns/nuances and myriad shenanigans alongside what
is known).
But, having said that, there are some generally accepted principles/approaches where current evidence suggests they still hold true (to varying extents that are pretty much unproveable. The extents, I mean).
And how those apply to forum threads/posts (as opposed to 'normal' web pages) and whether they would enhance the prospects of ranking is questionable....where the 'brand name' (ie in this case 'TalkingHorses') may also play a large part, alongside how the search engines 'want' to treat forum-based user-generated content.
The principles/approaches (high level)?
It's simplistic, and maybe overly simplistic now (although, as I say, there's lots of evidence to suggest they're still important)
But, there are three key places where you want the topic of your page/thread to be, so that when a search engine 'analyzes' it (to determine whether it will give the searcher useful information that
ties in with their search intent), the SE has some up-front 'clues' about what it's reading and can (hopefully) 'decide' that it's valuable, on topic, and worth 'storing' in a place where it can retrieve it from and show to searchers.
The Title of the page/thread
The main heading of the page/thread (known as the H1)
The body content
(and, a personal belief but goes against general accepted 'wisdom') - the Description of the page/thread.
There probably isn't a lot of debate to be had around the last one - search engines often choose their own description to show anway, which
suggests that what you have in there is irrelevant. But, still, it
might play a part in some circumstances.
There are further beliefs that the subsequent headings h2, h3 etc, may play a part as well. But it appears (from analysis of this thread's code) those don't work the same way on forum pages that they do elsewhere.
If we take the thread we're on. Right-click anywhere in the grey borders (the few cm either side of the content frame) and you will see 'view page source' near the bottom.
Click that and a new window will open, showing the html construct of the thread (assume html is the code that makes the page 'work')
Now, if you know where to look, you will see what the Title, Description, H1, and any other headings (if applicable) are.
On a 'normal' webpage, these entries would typically be entered by the website administrator (manually, normally when a new page is added)
On a forum, it looks like they take the thread creator's entry/words.
So, on this page, the title is 'Big Race Threads' - suffixed by 'Talking Horses - UK's Largest Horse Racing Forum' (which I imagine is preconfigured somewhere so it gets auto-added, note it's 'flawed' and could do with the addition of 'Ireland')
The H1 is the same, purely 'Big Race Threads'
But the description is basically an auto-inserted reproduction of the first 30-40 words of the opening post, which may or may not be fully representative of the 'intent' behind the thread.
*********
Reason for all this...
If you are going to create a new thread/section which is focused on a specific topic (in this case - big (horse) race discussions/analysis/thoughts/predictions) - with the underlying desire to get it in front of eyeballs that may land on it and think 'these guys seem to know a bit about horses and horse racing, I think I'll join' - then it
may pay to be thinking 'OK, so what do punters looking for this type of information actually search?'
Then, you construct the aforementioned elements in the appropriate way. The body content will get taken care of by the general discussion in the threads (which, theoretically, the search engine should be clever enough to 'work out')...but you have given it a 'helping hand' to understand the main intent (remember, it's a robot. A clever one, but a robot nonetheless)
In my head, the most likely search would be 'big horse races analysis', or maybe just plain 'horse races analysis' (these are straight out of my head, but there are tools where, with 10-20 mins data analysis, you could work out the most likely search intents).
Will that actually help? Quite likely it would have a positive impact, yes. Though some of that will be because of the TalkingHorses 'brand recognition' (as it likely is with the other forums) - the search engines 'know' what they are and what they do, which is why you'll often see the same names pop up at the top of search results.
From what I can see (and without deepish analysis), TH does seem to have a 'recognized brand' standing (though probably a little lower in strength than one or two others).
And, once you have the brand recognition, you're often fairly well-placed to capitalize on it. It's possible that small things could make a difference. If they don't, then you have to start going deeper into other 'helping-hands'. That's a story for another time (if anyone is remotely interested, I do realize that many wouldn't give a toss about all this
- are a bit "Marmite" with forumites, but in the last few weeks there has been lively discussion, lots of detailed analysis and no shortage of winners at prices.
