As far as I know, the url does nothing to increase ranking. What it can do, though, is to make it easier to find the site if you lose your bookmarks after a system crash or when migrating to a new computer.
The board is just a little something I do in my spare time. While it would be nice to increase my page ranking in the search engines so that more people would find the site, it would also be more work. It just has not been something that I want to spend the time on. Hobbies are fun until they begin to take too much of your time. Then they just become unpaid work.
The best thing members can do to increase page ranking is to link to this site from their websites. If you have a scooter related site, post up a link to the board. It will help people find us, and assist in raising the page ranking.
I suspect that one reason the board is slow is because it is so specialized. We concentrate on one particular model of scooter for the most part, so it limites the number of visitors.
Another reason, in my opinion, is that the typical Helix rider is older from my observations. Older people are less likely to use the internet than younger folks. If this was a website dedicated to the Ruckus, or another scooter favored by younger riders, we would be more likely to draw a crowd. We had a discussion a while back regarding the age of the riders here, and I was one of the younger members. I'm in my early 40s.
Patrick