Simple search engine optimization for your SMF website

[KitCar]

Hey Everyone,
I just finished writing up a blog post on some simple SEO measures one can take to increase the "searchability" of their forums. Although the information is fairly basic, it might be new for some readers, so I thought some of you may find the information useful, so I thought I'd post the info here.

- Implement search engine friendly URLs using .htaccess & the SEO4SMF plugin.

- Prevent duplicate content from being indexed by using a robots.txt file and robot tags (content="noindex,follow").

- Add a sitemap, both (.xml) and HTML(SMF Sitemap Mod helps)

- Add alt tags to your image logo with your forum's name and a short explanation of its topics

- Ensure meta description and keyword tags are properly generated (part of SEO4SMF plugin)

Once I Made the above changes my pagerank actually increase by 1 (It took Google four days to recognize the impact!).

You can find the original post here:
http://www.newmediaist.com/2007/07/15/a-basic-guide-to-seo-and-online-forums/ [nofollow]

Cheers

[halfpint]

Hey Everyone,
I just finished writing up a blog post on some simple SEO measures one can take to increase the "searchability" of their forums. Although the information is fairly basic, it might be new for some readers, so I thought some of you may find the information useful, so I thought I'd post the info here.

- Implement search engine friendly URLs using .htaccess & the SEO4SMF plugin.

- Prevent duplicate content from being indexed by using a robots.txt file and robot tags (content="noindex,follow").

- Add a sitemap, both (.xml) and HTML(SMF Sitemap Mod helps)

- Add alt tags to your image logo with your forum's name and a short explanation of its topics

- Ensure meta description and keyword tags are properly generated (part of SEO4SMF plugin)

Once I Made the above changes my pagerank actually increase by 1 (It took Google four days to recognize the impact!).

You can find the original post here:
http://www.newmediaist.com/2007/07/15/a-basic-guide-to-seo-and-online-forums/

Cheers

Hi just installed the seo mod, but im not to sure what to put in th htacces, is this where the meta tags go, and do i just type them in with text or use the tags

Regards

[halfpint]

Just want to say thanks to newmediast .com for the reply,

Regards

[SlammedDime]

Glad to know one of my mods is getting some attention and helping people geared for SEO.

[AON21]

Does anyone know of where in the database the SEO4SMF functions might be?

I need to disable to find out which of its functions is causing all links to become 404 error pages

Thanks for reading

[Coldfx]

Does anyone know of where in the database the SEO4SMF functions might be?

I need to disable to find out which of its functions is causing all links to become 404 error pages

Thanks for reading

It'd be in the PHP files, not SEO; and you should be posting in the SEO topic.

But I'll help you anyways:  Did you upload an edited .htaccess as it's REQUIRED?

The one in the package will install as "htaccess.txt" but should be renamed to ".htaccess" (No file name, just ".htaccess").

[AON21]

It'd be in the PHP files, not SEO; and you should be posting in the SEO topic.

Sorry to be a bother -  first time here, used the search and found this :|

But I'll help you anyways:  Did you upload an edited .htaccess as it's REQUIRED?

The one in the package will install as "htaccess.txt" but should be renamed to ".htaccess" (No file name, just ".htaccess").

Yes I caught that one in one of the readme files along the way.

So I guess I need to go through each file altered/uploaded to override the admin setting to "off" for SEO4SMF.

Thanks for the quick reply