what do I need to do to make my forum easy or simple for people to come by?

Hello!

I think the key is what kind of information does your forum contains.

I mean: the main thing you have to be aware is that you have to persevere. This means that you will have to work really hard until you see the first results.

Is really important to keep your forum updated (I mean, posting information almost every day, so the visitors will see that you have "fresh" information)

Another thing I should recommend you is to interact with your members: that means that for example if someone ask you something in your forum, or makes a contribution in your forum, you should answer for thanksgiving her/him to motivate this person to keep contributing on your comunity.

Of course, if we are talking about accesibility, you should keep the registration form the most simple as possible (I mean, don´t make the users to fill lots of profile fields because, you know, people is lazy and doesn´t want to fill all them)

Well, this are just basic recomendations. Hope it helps!

Posting: Users who post many different topics can help your site get noticed on Google,Yahoo, and or Bing.

Images: Posting images (Nothing 18+) on a active topic can have your images displayed on many search engines.

Activity: Higher the activity the higher the bots.