I haven't checked your code here but anything wrapped in a header tag is instantly more important, and so getting your keywords in there is definitely beneficial...

How about: 'PHP Development - help forums' :D

how about mentioning it twice...

php development - help with your php scripting problems

looking at google results i think that might be the answer ;)

That's a neat idea. The other thing thing would be some and tags on your keywords anywhere else you can find them or even in the titles... Use css to prevent any normal person seeing they're different, but search engines etc would get them emphasized.

I'd suggest more keywords in your title tag too. ;)

If you want to maxmize the benefit use the keyword first in the and minimize all other text there. The biggest bang for your $ is

PHP Development

From what I understand this:

PHP Development Help Forum may be slightly less effective.... but is more useful than:

Daniweb Help Forums - PHP Development

My reason for currently having: PHP at DaniWeb computer help is because I thought I would be able to target the keywords: "php" "php help" "computer help" all in one - bad idea I guess ;) Live 'n' learn. I'll agree that DaniWeb is excessive because no one is going to do a search for "daniweb" ;)

lol, I did yesterday at home when I couldn't remember the URL.

Remember SEO Guy's tutorial. Better to target one keyword per page rather than dilute yourself and try for all of them.

When I posted that I realised how dumb it sounded. But it's what I did and I don't mind having my stupidity on public display. :)

Simple answer to your question, is no, it probably wont. "php dev" gives you a boost for "php dev" and to a smaller extent "php" and "dev". "php" by itself tells a search engine the page is about 'php'. If you have the phrase "php dev" in the body of the page a lot then I imagine the search engine says "this page is also about php dev". The best situation is that the title says "I'm about php dev", the body says "I'm about php dev", and incoming links to the page use 'php dev' as anchor text telling the search engine that some external web site also considers your page to be about 'php dev'.

What keyword is really important though? Aren't you really looking for people who want php help or php forum? the other keywords seem vaguely related to the forum and not really people looking for a forum at all - though I agree it's desirable to get traffic from anywhere!

Use of keyworded titles is definitely a good idea - but be very careful not to contrive the titles too much, as you need the human users to be able to navigate fine.

Ultimately, a lot of traffic generated is going to be generated by secondary keywords - how all the different words on your pages work together. So I should imagine you get a lot of search traffic into Daniweb for various 3+ keyword strings, rather than specifically targeted 2 keyword strongs.

Really, it's going to be the links into specific boards that are going to have more power than the on-page elements. I'd be happy to do some specific link-building for you, in exchange for a vBulletin mod_rewrite solution. :) (Haven't you popped into Morgan's Mod Rewrite forums yet? Excellent Mod Rewrite applied there (as per his real estate and SEO guy forums), and he says it's all down to you. :) )

Sounds great - give me a heads up when you put it online, and then tell me what your preferred keywords are and I'll add daniweb to my list for link-building. :)

I'll also see about writing up a tutorial on how to best shift PR about a vB3 - not sure if you'll actually need it too much here, as your skin is pretty sleek - but the "out of the box" solution definitely could do with some help for using PR more efficiently. :)