Search Engine Optimization

[bsm]

Didn't see a topic on this - and I did drop a post in "how to build a successful forum".

There's a wide range of techniques that can be used in SEO to help bring (drag?) members to your forum.

Just finished 3 books on the subject.

More than happy to exchange views, tips and techniques on the subject.

Do we need a new board?

Cheers all

[Noddegamra]

the "pretty urls" is a good mod to have, it's what I use on my site.

Forums aren't the best sort of site to try and optimise. They are very messy. Your best bet is to have a main site/blog and optimise that, and have your forum as a sort of add-on or compliment to the main site.

[青山 素子]

the "pretty urls" is a good mod to have, it's what I use on my site.

Too bad "SEO friendly URLs" actually make no difference in rankings. They look pretty, that's about it.

Forums aren't the best sort of site to try and optimise. They are very messy. Your best bet is to have a main site/blog and optimise that, and have your forum as a sort of add-on or compliment to the main site.

Agreed. Forums are very free-form. Unless you have a very big and topical forum with good content in posts, you'll have a hard time getting rankings for individual posts. You'll certainly not get very good deep-linking going on.

[Noddegamra]

the "pretty urls" is a good mod to have, it's what I use on my site.

Too bad "SEO friendly URLs" actually make no difference in rankings. They look pretty, that's about it.

They do help. The new format makes them easier and more likely to get indexed in search engines. It's a well known fact, that's why they are called SEF Url's (Search Engine Friendly). Spiders tend to be wary of ".php?example=something&.." URLs because they often get stuck in loops. There are other benefits too. Whats easier to remember? forum.com/gaming/xbox.htm or forum.com/index.php?topic=038937467&id=873&post=3838.. etc, etc.

I've found the plugin useful. It has put many of my topics in search results. My forum also went up to PageRank 2. Not bad considering I have low traffic and backlinks (compared to many forums out there).

[青山 素子]

They do help. The new format makes them easier and more likely to get indexed in search engines. It's a well known fact, that's why they are called SEF Url's (Search Engine Friendly). Spiders tend to be wary of ".php?example=something&.." URLs because they often get stuck in loops. There are other benefits too. Whats easier to remember? forum.com/gaming/xbox.htm or forum.com/index.php?topic=038937467&id=873&post=3838.. etc, etc.

While the whole query string argument might have been true way back in 1998, it isn't now. The fact of the matter is that keyword-rich URLs give little to no help on rankings.

It is a common misconception that keywords in URLs are somehow helpful to search engine rankings, when in reality, they have very little (if any) effect on rankings.

What has happened over the years is that the mixer-uppers have spread the word that keywords in URLs will help with rankings, so others believe it and make changes to their own URLs, making more and more keyword-rich URLs appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Which, of course, feeds the myth-monster even more!

Changing URLs (High Rankings - November 28, 2007)

Please read the whole article, it has more info than I quoted (obviously).

I will agree that the "friendly" URLs are easier to remember, but I can't recall the last time I tried to remember something like "hxxp://www.somesite.com/forum/why-pizza-is-better-than-any-other-food-and-how-you-can-determine-this" so I could type it in directly.

I've found the plugin useful. It has put many of my topics in search results. My forum also went up to PageRank 2. Not bad considering I have low traffic and backlinks (compared to many forums out there).

PageRank is based on the sites linking to you, nothing else. An increase in rank just means that the sites linking to you got a rank increase, you got more sites liking, or you got some new higher-ranked sites linking to you. That's all. It has nothing to do with anything else.

How new is your site? If it's under one year old you likely would have seen many of your topics pop up anyway. Search engines take time to index and categorize sites. It isn't unheard of for sites to take a year for their content to bubble to the top.

[Noddegamra]

hmm, im not too sure i believe their opinion. Especially when the opinion of many SEO specialists go along with what I'm trying to say. Infact, a google search for "search engine optimisation techniques" brings up no end of sites with "pretty urls". These pretty URLS are actually called SEF URLs (Search Engine Friendly). Why call them that? I thought it was because they help spiders view your site and you are given more weighting. I've heard that they don't like dynamic URLs as much as they can cause infinate loops, causing spiders to get stuck. So surely this "making it easier to get indexed" is a form of SEO, or goes with the whole process?

Also, PageRank is based on more than just backlinks. It's based on a mix of LOADS of things. Otherwise I could just buy 5000 backlinks for a keyword and come on top. That's the old method. Since then google have evolved.

[青山 素子]

hmm, im not too sure i believe their opinion. Especially when the opinion of many SEO specialists go along with what I'm trying to say. Infact, a google search for "search engine optimisation techniques" brings up no end of sites with "pretty urls".

Because people have convinced themselves that these things actually make a difference, so they turn it into cargo cult programming. It's similar to those people who believe that removing visible version numbers from their software actually protects them from hacking attempts (it doesn't the kiddies just try all the scripts they can find). While both things might have a basis in reality (back in the beginning of engine technology many search engines couldn't index dynamic URLs and also removing the version number used to be helpful when scripts were stupid and checked the version before trying), they have long since passed their usefulness.

there has long been a myth out there that search engine crawlers don't like dynamic web pages. A better way to say it is that search engine crawlers don't really like lots of parameters on URLs.

Dynamic web pages are perfectly fine. All that is really required is that any time you to go a given URL, your web application will serve up the same content over and over again. As long as this is the case, and your URL is clean looking, the crawler will have no problem with your dynamic web page.

Dynamic URLs and Crawlers (Search Engine Watch - August 15, 2007)

These pretty URLS are actually called SEF URLs (Search Engine Friendly). Why call them that? I thought it was because they help spiders view your site and you are given more weighting. I've heard that they don't like dynamic URLs as much as they can cause infinate loops, causing spiders to get stuck. So surely this "making it easier to get indexed" is a form of SEO, or goes with the whole process?

That was the old argument for why dynamic pages wouldn't get indexed. Modern spiders used by all the major search engines (and most of the second-tier engines) are smart enough to avoid that.

Also, PageRank is based on more than just backlinks. It's based on a mix of LOADS of things. Otherwise I could just buy 5000 backlinks for a keyword and come on top. That's the old method. Since then google have evolved.

PageRank is all about the votes. While a lot of complexity is involved in determining the value of the link, it is still very much link-based. Buying 5000 backlinks doesn't matter anymore unless those 5000 links are all on sites with similar content and are themselves highly ranked (at least to start).

In addition, PageRank is much less important in results ranking than it used to be as many other factors influence the returned results for a search.

[Kiphaas7]

Because people have convinced themselves that these things actually make a difference, so they turn it into cargo cult programming. It's similar to those people who believe that removing visible version numbers from their software actually protects them from hacking attempts (it doesn't the kiddies just try all the scripts they can find). While both things might have a basis in reality (back in the beginning of engine technology many search engines couldn't index dynamic URLs and also removing the version number used to be helpful when scripts were stupid and checked the version before trying), they have long since passed their usefulness.

Old versions usually have known security issues. If you for example banned a person from your forum, or just having a fight with him, he knows the location of your board, and since he also knows the forum version, his search to make your life more painfull is much easier. That's at least why I remove version info.

[青山 素子]

Old versions usually have known security issues. If you for example banned a person from your forum, or just having a fight with him, he knows the location of your board, and since he also knows the forum version, his search to make your life more painfull is much easier. That's at least why I remove version info.

Does it really matter? It's easy enough to grab scripts for all vulnerabilities and just run them. No need to target a version.

[Niteblade]

Basically, the best SEO you can do is have properly formed meta tags that reflect the page content. (Which means that quality content must be present in the first place.)

I've even read some stuff from different blogs that Google doesn't care much about <meta keywords=""> anymore. (I still use 'em!) <title></title> is important, though.

Read Google's Blog for Webmasters

[Kiphaas7]

Old versions usually have known security issues. If you for example banned a person from your forum, or just having a fight with him, he knows the location of your board, and since he also knows the forum version, his search to make your life more painfull is much easier. That's at least why I remove version info.

Does it really matter? It's easy enough to grab scripts for all vulnerabilities and just run them. No need to target a version.

It's not world changing, but it matters a bit. As I said, it makes it easier for them.