Looking for a gentle push in the right direction.

Hello, so I've started a forum around a pretty niche topic that has almost no SEO competition and the only real competitor is a 6,100,000 member forum, but luckily for me, they don't actually do any SEO at all, and it's just sheer traffic that places them anywhere on the rankings at all.

I'm not looking to make any money from getting people to my forum, I just wish to grow a community and was wondering if anyone could just give me some sort of rundown on how I actually get started with SEO because all I could find were guides on using SEO for your blogs to make money and I just want to get my forum on the first page of google, thank you in advance to anyone who replies with some useful information.

There are lots of SEO service providers in the Marketplace ( https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/seo-link-building.43/ & https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/seo-packages.206/ ) and you may have a look there and surely some would fit into what you require. I'm suggesting you to look for a suitable SEO provider, as you are not too aware of how to do SEO and also considering the fact that SEO is ever-evolving and is now a specialized field.

SEO is going to cost you money. In the long run you are going to spend a ton of money on hosting that forum and for SEO, etc. I ran a forum for 12 years (until I just could not take it anymore) and it was mostly at my own expense for several years until I wised up. Do not ever operate anything at a loss. So figure out now how you're going to pay for everything. Whether it be donations, member upgrades for services like chat etc, running ads, affiliate products, merch, etc..

If you dont do this now, you will do it in the future and you will have lost a lot of money not doing it.

SEO is not cheap!!

Initially, you need to kickstart the forum discussions by hiring VA to create meaningful and resourceful topics. Also, address what @Zombie Pop saying, you can share elite resources for elite members who will pay for those resources but that is also not possible in some niches.

SEO has different ways to attract traffic and since you said that you want to build a community a lot of people use back links or PNB but you will have to invest time and sometimes money, other people use vpn, proxies and bots to increase the traffic because most of the people that do SEO is to monetize the page and get earnings check for SEO guides like these ones:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training Course (Simplilearn) – Best for Most.
Complete SEO Training (Udemy) – Best for WordPress Users.
Semrush Academy – Best Free Option.
Yoast SEO Academy – Best for Bloggers.
The Beginner's Guide to SEO (Moz) – Best for Beginners.

The only way to grow a new forum is to write good content on your niche that people would want to read and share. This usually takes time and effort, so post often and reply often in discussions when possible.