It is my understanding that the number one thing that drives search engine ranking is good content. I see a lot of good, thought provoking threads here addressing issues that any Christian would find interesting and compelling. Our users have done very well in this regard, I would say.
Josiah brings up a very good point about how much harder it is now to get a forum to grow these days, given the saturation of the discussion board market. We (MHB) faced a very similar issue when starting a math help site 4 years ago...there were already so many such sites around, and we made it even harder on ourselves by deciding we would not be a site that simply spoonfeeds answers to users, but we would try to guide users instead to do the heavy lifting themselves. We get so many users who register, and when they see we ask them to show what they've tried, or we give a suggestion on how to continue rather than lazily posting up the full solution, we never hear from them again.
It can be discouraging to visit other math help sites, and see them bustling with activity even though they have little or no custom features, are overrun with spam, no active administration, simply because they have been around for much longer. But, we keep fighting the good fight, and keeping alive the hope that we will succeed in the end.
The same is true of CH...as long as we don't give up, keep making efforts to give our users the best experience we can, we will succeed. :thumbsup: