Assuming you're using the paid/licensed version of IPB, they have a good user forum which is usually the best place to ask questions like that - and you'll also learn a lot of things you weren't looking for. If you haven't found the forum yet, use the "Support" button on your admin panel to get to the client area and see the options. You do have to have an active license in order to use the support services.

ETA: In other words, no, I don't know the answer myself. ;)

[edited by: Beagle at 1:23 am (utc) on July 10, 2008]

I'm not an IPG expert either, but I have heard of mods like CommunitySEO, Minerva SEO, IPB SEO, and somthing called FURL.

There was also an indication that Crawlability, the guys who do the vBSEO package for vBulletin, might release something for IPB, but I haven't heard anything about this lately.

Out of the box, IPB's reputation for SEO doesn't seem to be very good.

One thing you should check are your content browsing settings. Since the only page that is being indexed is a login request, it could be that you don't let guests (non-logged in users) see the content. If they can't see it, neither can Google.

Here's a suggestion:

If you use IPB and it's not open to the public, but you want the SEO value of the content...

Snip off an abstract of the thread, e.g.-

How to Improve the SEO of IP.Board Forums
by Community Member

By snipping an abstract of the thread which is loaded with SEO improvement related keywords and phrases you can get Google to index the pages which contain the abstracts, without opening up the forum to everyone.

By strategically placing a few topic related abstracts on a static web page, (or as links in an online Newsletter), e.g.- "SEO for IP.Board" or "Do Search Engines Index Forum Messages", etc.. You can gain the SEO value without opening up the content... [Join to Read More]

You could put leaders like this on your home page or any other page and I'm sure you'd get good SEO bang for the buck, (in effect harvesting your own un-indexed content for SEO gains). Scrape your own site, it's legal!

Good idea, lexipixel. Walling off forum content, though, really kills the long-tail search traffic that forums are best at generating. Unless a business model absolutely demands registration with or without payment, I'd recommend allowing all or most content be viewable by everyone.

I'm am an expert in SEO for the Invision software and have worked extensively on removing dupe content etc etc. I can't post the link here but I have compiled it all in a place on the net. In fact, a few of my mods are being incorporated into the next version of the software.
It's worth noting that I strongly recommend against using third party FURL software for IPB as the next version of the software (version 3.0) will have it's own friendly URL system integrated into the core of the software.

[edited by: Asia_Expat at 11:33 am (utc) on July 17, 2008]