Forum doesnt rank

[netminds]

Hey, I have a site which ranks well for a certain term, lets say "books". I added a forum about 6 months ago. I'm optimizing it for "books forum". However, somehow it doesnt get to the top 10, although I placed some quality link to it. It ranks for some long tail keywords... We have daily new posts and use vbulletin + vbseo.

The strange thing is that there a ranking really low-quality sites under the top 10. Hardly any content and low quality links...

Any tips?

[AlanMosley]

are the pages in the index?
what sort of code does your forum produse?

[RyanKent]

To be helpful we need more information. If you can share the exact keyword, along with the page you have optimized for that keyword we can evaluate the ranking a bit.

I can share the competitiveness of a keyword such as "books" or "books forum" is incredibly high and you should not expect to be anywhere near the first page of Google on it without a tremendous amount of off page support such as links from solid sites with good anchor text. I understand you shared the currently listed top 10 results are not very strong, but maybe they have factors you are not seeing which adds to their strength.

[netminds]

yes, we have around 1k pages in the index. the forum is installed in a subfolder.

[netminds]

the keyword isnt as competitive as "books". it's more in a niche market. however, some sites have the keyword in the url and most of the links have the exact anchor text. we on the other hand tried not to use the keyword in the anchortext as often... we are mostly linked like "brand + forum". I guess we need more links with the "keyword forum" and maybe onpage optimize. Thanks for your replies.