Building a forum around your blog is one of the best ways to build a solid, dynamic community that will go on even with you not being involved. I am not suggesting that you should set up a forum and just take a 6 month vacation. At the same time, having a community that goes beyond your posts and allows people to get involved and make their own content can certainly be beneficial to you and your blog. If you take a look at the top blogs around, you’ll see that those that have gone to become major media sources have built up their base through their forums. These folks usually register both .com and .net version of their domains. They dedicate the .com version to a blog whereas the .net domain is usually reserved for forums, online communities, and beyond.

There are two ways to use your vBulletin software. You can just choose the forum software (which is what I recommend). That makes it possible for you to use WordPress as your main CMS and integrate your vBulletin forum into your community without too much trouble. vBulletin’s publishing suite is a premium package that you may not need, especially if your community is based on WordPress. There are many reasons to adopt vBulletin, but here are 5 reasons that stand out:

• SEO: vBulletin forums are search engine friendly. You can easily customize your URLs and on page factors to give your forum the best chance to get ranked on Google. The fact that you don’t have to look for additional plugins to get the job done is a big plus.
• Security: I can’t tell you how many times I have installed a free forum software only to realize that it can’t hold up against security attacks that you get every once in a while, especially when your website becomes popular. Don’t forget that your forum can expose you to liabilities if you don’t address these security issues. With vBulletin you are always covered, and you get updates on a consistent basis as well.
• Applications: vBulletin may not be as user friendly as WordPress. It may not have as many plugins as WordPress does. At the same time, it does come with a set of built in applications that let you and your users get more out of forums. Your visitors can start photo albums, check out your events, and you can create groups as well.
• Member Management: managing members is one of the most difficult things to do, especially if you have a couple of thousands of them on your forum. How you moderate them, ban them, and reward them is up to you. But it’s nice to have the option to do those things without spending5 any additional money.
• Customization: vBulletin forums are as easy to customize as WordPress websites. So if you know your CSS, you can easily change things around and give your forum a similar look to your blog. Skinning vBulletin can’t be any easier.

All in all, vBulletin is a great software package to add a forum to your blog. You can always change the CSS to keep the look and feel consistent across your properties. I do recommend using a separate domain for your forum just to be on the safe side. If you have registered both .com and .net versions of your domain, you can dedicate one to your blog and the other to your forum. Managing a forum next to your WordPress blog can add to your daily work, but if your forum gets popular, you are going to get a lot of free traffic and hits, that could help your blog as well. A premium forum script such as vBulletin certainly makes things easy.

What’s your favorite forum software?

SpyFu: one of the best tools I have ever tried. This tool helps you figure out what other sites are trying to get ranked for and how you can too. Download your competitors keywords in minutes and get an edge over them fast.

Wordze: one of the better “classic” keyword research tools on the market. It tells you what keywords are getting how much traffic. A great way to find those hidden gems and optimize for keywords that are not too tough to get ranked for.

WordTracker: has been around for years. It’s a great tool if you are looking to expand your keyword list and find new keywords to target on your website.

Keyword Discovery: another useful keyword research tool for bloggers and marketers. It uses a different set of data than WordTracker. Most professional SEOs have a subscription to both of them.

Keyword Country: this is one of those tools that is not getting too much attention but is very powerful. Since a lot of marketers uses this tool to find keywords to bid on Adwords and other search engines, this is a must try for those who intend to make money from Adsense.

Keyword Spy: one of the most powerful keyword spying tools on the market. It’s a bit more pricey than SpyFu, but it provides you with a more useful set of data. If you intend to promote affiliate products on your blog or just want to find out what keywords people are bidding on, this tool comes in handy.

What’s your favorite keyword research tool?

I have talked about in the past about the importance of using the right keywords on your WordPress blog to make sure you get ranked high on Google and don’t have to burn money on PPC. Using a good keyword tool not only allows you to find the keywords that will drive traffic to your blog, but also find new ideas for your future blog posts.

I have talked about my love for WordTracker in the past. It’s a great keyword research tool that allows you to find thousands of cool keyword phrases for your blog posts. But the truth is WordTracker can be expensive for many folks. After all, paying $330 a year or $59+ monthly for keyword research service may not be for everyone. That’s why I recommend using tools such as Keyword Elite. 

Keyword Elite only requires a one time fee, but provides you with awesome features that you can use to dig up valuable keywords. Here are the features you can expect to get with KE Elite:

The first option is very powerful. All you have to do is enter a keyword or domain (recommended), and it shows you the phrases that you can go for.

I usually use Ask and Yahoo!, but for the purpose of demonstration, I have only used Ask! here. Once you click OK, you are going to get a bunch of phrases that you can rank for. I recommend you enter your main competitor’s domain in the box to see what keywords they are ranking for that you should as well.

I entered the term making money online with blogging, and as you can see I have got some long-tail keywords that I can use in my blog posts. But more than that, you can use these money making ideas and blog about them.

The other features that KE Elite has to offer are useful as well. You can do the same process for pay per click listings, and also spy on pay per click ads. Watching out for your keyword competition allows you to go for keywords that are less competitive or “rankable.” 

The reason I like KE-Elite is due to the fact that you only make one payment, and you are set for updates for the life of the product. With WordTracker, you will have to spend $60 a month or pay up $330 right up front, and let’s not forget WordTracker does not cover PPC listings and the whole spying features like KE Elite does. There are of course other tools out there, but I have not seen one that provides as much blogging value as KE Elite.

Your take: feel free to share your experience with KE Elite or other software packages here.