SEO Question
 

I'm getting a few search engine results from my keywords in the title of my forum. If I set the forums to private (so you must login to see the content), will I be penalized in anyway and loose my rankings? These search results are from the title tag.. not the forum content.

IMHO backlinks and anchor text is what counts.,and matters.,

good luck.

You'll lose that traffic anyway since the page will be password protected, so why bother?

depends.. if you have a very low bounce rate and very high page views and time on site Google will overlook the lockout.

probably not.

you will likely lose those serps... :2 cents:

Those listing will eventually disappear from the index.

you will get the spider as long as the script doesnt add no-index to the pages. you might want to add or check your site map

If you have enough in-links to support the serp without the majority of the content your ranking will probably stay safe. We are talking about the forum index site right?

backlink the index page and protect the /forum.php page.

best of both worlds

~Ray

What script is running your forum? In the past when I use to mess with vBulletin I was pretty sure there was a setting to make it private but still allow the SE bots to crawl the forum. I never saw any negative results when doing so. :2 cents:

To get lurkers to register and become members.

Hmm... I don't think I have in links... just a bunch of viewers in various city forums which got me these positions I think.

vBulletin but I think you need a mod to do that.