The Best Forum Software for SEO : Jatra Is #1

An organic community forum is built on the strong foundation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Forums can attract traffic simply by offering special features that optimize user-generated content for search engines.

Jatra, a modern forum software offers key SEO features out of the box. These features optimize user-generated and editorial content so that search engines can easily understand, index and rank.

Jatra Forum Software: SEO Features Overview

Jatra offers 5 key features to optimise community content. Following is an overview of these features:

#1. Multiple Content-Type Support with SEO Controls

Multiple content-types is the USP of Jatra. Most forum software only restricts users to “discussions”. Jatra, however, goes 10 steps beyond and natively supports-

• long-form articles

• events

• jobs

• changelog

• feedback

• quizzes

• reviews

• group-chats and more

Each of these post-type allows users to create variety of content; turning Jatra into a versatile content management system (CMS).

Why it matters:

By offering variety of content, users and community owners can target short-tail and long-tail keywords better than traditional forum software or CMS. It also allows keeping content fresh by letting users comment on the topics.

#2. Built-in Structured Data and Semantic HTML

Jatra treats each post-type differently, and automatically adds the right type of schema automatically.

For example -

1. Discussion: Automatically receives DiscussionForumPosting structured data.

2. Article: Article receives Article structured data

3. News: A news article is automatically appended with NewsArticle structured data

Why it matters:

Structured data allows search engines to quickly understand the content of the page. Jatra adds JSON-LD structured data with essential components extracted from your text.

Note: Read our announcement about SEO capabilities of Jatra: SEO Booster.

3. Clean, Logically Structured URLs

Jatra pays special attention to URLs. It maintains clean, consistent and logically structured URLs which make it easy for search engines to logically group them.

1. Discussion: /discussion/seo-for-saas

2. Article: /article/best-forum-software-for-seo

3. Quiz: /quiz/which-is-the-best-forum-app-for-seo

A simple URL structure allows Google, Bing and other search engines save on the crawl-budget. A forum software that helps search engines spend less resources boosts the overall crawling of its content. It helps search engine crawlers make frequent visits to your forum and index content.

Why it matters:

Clean URL structure improves crawlability and CTR. It also improves keyword relevance - all of which help with SEO.

#4. Automatic XML Sitemap Generation

Jatra generates XML sitemaps automatically for all content types.Sitemaps are always up to date and follow Google’s best practices.

An updated sitemap allows search engines to discover your content faster. It ensures that the content that does not have any inbound links can be crawled.

Why it matters:

With Jatra, you can be sure that all your content will be discovered by search engines. Getting your content discovered is the first step towards ranking in SERP and generating organic traffic.

#5. Hands-on SEO Support from the Jatra Team

Unlike most forum software vendors, Jatra team offers hands-on SEO support. Jatra team has over 15 years of professional SEO experience. The founding team of Jatra has grown multiple communities and forums from scratch to tens of thousands of unique visitors per month - purely using organic growth techniques.

Why it matters:

With Jatra, you will never build your community alone. You get a partner focused on helping your forum rank and grow.

Practical SEO Growth Results

Jatra’s SEO features synchronize with each other to boost your content in SERPs. One of the forum hosted on Jatra has seen phenomenal rise in the impressions count with very limited content.

Following screenshot is taken from Google Search Console:

You can notice that the impressions are consistently growing. It also means the clicks will follow the trend as soon as Google releases an algorithmic update.

Recommended Reading

Forum owners interested in boosting SEO may read our detailed guide: SEO for Online Communities.