Private or Public Forum?

[astral walker]

Hey there,
I have a small forum that built since 2 years ago.
Now I'm having a plan, It is I will make it as private, I'd like to ask that will make more new members join?
Also, private forum can stop from crawling web pages by search engine bots? does it affect on SEO?

 

[RDO Servers]

Hey there,
I have a small forum that built since 2 years ago.
Now I'm having a plan, It is I will make it as private, I'd like to ask that will make more new members join?
Also, private forum can stop from crawling web pages by search engine bots? does it affect on SEO?

If you mean they much register to post, it may cause more people to register.
If you mean private as in they can't even view the topics, I think most people will just leave and not bother.

If all content is Private, and search engines can't crawl the pages, yes that will have a negative effect on SEO. They can't rank what they can't see.....

 

[KatnissEverdeen]

I am currently running a forum. There are some threads/posts that are not viewable by the public and others that are. In order for say Google to crawl and your SEO to work, something's need to be seen by the public. So a completely private forum would not work well in my opinion.

Good Luck to You.

 

[R44]

Hey there,
I have a small forum that built since 2 years ago.
Now I'm having a plan, It is I will make it as private, I'd like to ask that will make more new members join?
Also, private forum can stop from crawling web pages by search engine bots? does it affect on SEO?

Googlebot is a guest. Well, in it's most simple form anyway. If a guest can't see it; nor can Googlebot. And as has been said; what Googlebot can't see it can't index. Google doesn't - as a rule - index 404 pages.