Hi all,
I'm trying to SEO my forum. is this a good way to go?
SEO4SMF
I tried installing it and it says it's not compatible with the forum.
"The package you are trying to download or install is either corrupt or not compatible with this version of SMF. "
I tried installing this through the Packages section of the forum. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
BTW my forum is at http://www.godaycare.com/daycareforum (http://www.godaycare.com/daycareforum) in case you need to look at it
I think seo4smf is good. I particularly like its sitemap feature and the option to generate meta keywords and description based on page content. If you're having problems installing it, make sure you're using the latest version (from webmasterstalk.com) and then post on the support boards (same site) if it still won't work.
Thatnk for your reply. I'll try that. There is also another package out there (SMFSEO I believe). Has anyone used it? It's still in the beta from what I can gather.
There is MUCH more to SEO than simply applying a mod.
Search engine bots have gotten quite smart (if you can believe that).
One of the simplest things you can do is turn on the "search engine friendly" switch.
The next biggest factor would be to revise your meta-tags (keywords) to utilize the topics and board on you have on your forum. Since the topics and board subjects all appear as text, the search engine will find them and relate them to your keywords. This tells the search engine that "hey, this really is a website about suchandsuch".
There's so much more though....
Cheers
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 04, 2008, 06:09:40 IP
One of the simplest things you can do is turn on the "search engine friendly" switch.
Which has been proven to have no effect on rankings at all. At least among the top-tier engines.
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 04, 2008, 06:09:40 IP
The next biggest factor would be to revise your meta-tags (keywords) to utilize the topics and board on you have on your forum. Since the topics and board subjects all appear as text, the search engine will find them and relate them to your keywords. This tells the search engine that "hey, this really is a website about suchandsuch".
This hasn't had much to any effect since people found out they could lie in the tags, which was about 6 years ago at least.
The biggest SEO tactics right now that you can do easily is get good quality sites linking to you and put good content on your forums. If you set up a portal and
actually use it then it helps even more as you can have the portal front page link directly to topics as well.
There are several other tactics, but most of them involve a lot of content and site manipulation.
I must disagree with some of what you said. :)
Meta-tags are the first thing search engines look at. Descriptions are second, third is the html tags (e.g. headers) on the website. This is how the search engines evaluate "content relation". It is impossible to "fool" a search engine spider with tags alone. Matching the tags to your "text" on your forum (e.g. your topics / board subjects) helps as the spider sees that what you say in your tags is actually on your site.
Search engine "friendly" URLs do help, and it is the simplest thing one can do. Admittedly, it doesn't do much to affect rankings - but it does help to a minor degree (and its the easiest thing someone can do).
As for linking, yes, this is used to "weigh" the prominence of the website (i.e. how high is the rank). What the spider is trying to do here is determine what other people think of your website. So, the more sites that link to yours the better... EXCEPT that the spider then prances over to the sites that link to yours and does its evaluation of THAT site. It then weighs that value as a "vote" for your site. For example, if you have a pop-up heavy, browser grabbing website linking to yours it may apply a negative vote rather than positive. (I actually have the formulas for both google and yahoo).
Suffice to say that there is far more to SEO than meta-tags and links. Content is supreme for the search engines. They are constantly updating them to ensure that if someone searches for "widgets", it will return those websites that really deal with widgets.
So, its not just one or two things for SEO - its everything melded together with just the right "pinch of this" and "dash of that" which will help in your rankings.
Right now, I'm in the midst of reading my third book on the subject. I'm awaiting one more that is due to hit the streets in July (all about google rankings).
One thing for sure though, a "mod" isn't going to "do it all", and a LOT of the SEO stuff available on the net is pure bogus. Most of them use "black hat" SEO, which the spiders are able to see through for the most part. Your rank may jump initially, but then you also run the risk of being ignored by the search engines due to the SEO techniques applied.
If you have a good website, good subject matter related to your tags, you're halfway there.
Look forward to hearing back.
Cheers
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 05, 2008, 07:13:49 IP
I must disagree with some of what you said. :)
Fine with me. I'll provide some references to back up my points, however. I do SEO work as part of my job, so I try to keep updated on what does and doesn't matter.
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 05, 2008, 07:13:49 IP
Meta-tags are the first thing search engines look at. Descriptions are second, third is the html tags (e.g. headers) on the website. This is how the search engines evaluate "content relation". It is impossible to "fool" a search engine spider with tags alone. Matching the tags to your "text" on your forum (e.g. your topics / board subjects) helps as the spider sees that what you say in your tags is actually on your site.
Tags make no difference on ranking. While the description meta element is used for snippets in results, neither it nor the keywords element is used to determine ranking.
Lainaa
Now supported by only one major crawler-based search engine -- Inktomi -- the value of adding meta keywords tags to pages seems little worth the time. In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead.
Death Of A Meta Tag (Search Engine Watch - October 1, 2002) (http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2165061)
Lainaa
Search engines began dropping support for metadata provided by the meta element in 1998, and by the early 2000s, most search engines had veered completely away from reliance on meta elements. In July 2002 AltaVista, one of the last major search engines to still offer support, finally stopped considering them.
No consensus exist whether or not the keywords attribute has any impact on ranking at any of the major search engine today. It is speculated that it does, if the keywords used in the meta can also be found in the page copy itself. 37 leaders in search engine optimization concluded in April 2007 that the relevance of having your keywords in the meta-attribute keywords is little to none.
Meta element (Wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element#The_keywords_attribute)
Lainaa
Google does not use HTML keyword or metatag elements for indexing. The Director of Research at Google, Monika Henziger, was quoted (in 2002) as saying, "Currently we don't trust metadata".
Meta element (Wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element#Academic_studies) (Referenced from
Journal of Internet Cataloging, Volume 5(1), 2002)
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 05, 2008, 07:13:49 IP
Search engine "friendly" URLs do help, and it is the simplest thing one can do. Admittedly, it doesn't do much to affect rankings - but it does help to a minor degree (and its the easiest thing someone can do).
Lainaa
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.
Lainaa
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) (http://www.highrankings.com/changing-urls/)
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 05, 2008, 07:13:49 IP
As for linking, yes, this is used to "weigh" the prominence of the website (i.e. how high is the rank). What the spider is trying to do here is determine what other people think of your website. So, the more sites that link to yours the better... EXCEPT that the spider then prances over to the sites that link to yours and does its evaluation of THAT site. It then weighs that value as a "vote" for your site. For example, if you have a pop-up heavy, browser grabbing website linking to yours it may apply a negative vote rather than positive. (I actually have the formulas for both google and yahoo).
Well, Google's original PageRank algorithm has been published, so that's easy to find. The fun thing with trying to determine things like that is that you can't find the value of one site (theoretically) until all the other sites have been calculated. I don't know of any negative valuations being applied except for paid links and link farms.
Votes are important as they determine what sites are most relevant. This is why Wikipedia ranks high so often. It gets lots of inbound links (even from this post!) and has very keyword dense content.
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 05, 2008, 07:13:49 IP
Suffice to say that there is far more to SEO than meta-tags and links. Content is supreme for the search engines. They are constantly updating them to ensure that if someone searches for "widgets", it will return those websites that really deal with widgets.
So, its not just one or two things for SEO - its everything melded together with just the right "pinch of this" and "dash of that" which will help in your rankings.
Right now, I'm in the midst of reading my third book on the subject. I'm awaiting one more that is due to hit the streets in July (all about google rankings).
Glad you are studying things. Do try to get more updated books, however. Heck, try reading the various forums out there for some updated stuff. Of course, a lot is speculation, but it is easy to see trends and pick who actually knows their stuff. Are you up to date on how to determine KEI, work with microformats, and the like?
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 05, 2008, 07:13:49 IP
One thing for sure though, a "mod" isn't going to "do it all", and a LOT of the SEO stuff available on the net is pure bogus. Most of them use "black hat" SEO, which the spiders are able to see through for the most part. Your rank may jump initially, but then you also run the risk of being ignored by the search engines due to the SEO techniques applied.
Agreed about the bogus techniques out there. Most of them are easy to spot, however. Special content for search engines only (cloaking), text the same color as the background (also cloaking), link farms, doorway pages, etc are the most-used and most obvious techniques.
Of course, if you are serious about rankings, find a good SEO firm to analyse things for you. SEO is very much a marketing strategy that has to work with you and how you want to position yourself. One-size-fits-all doesn't in this area.
Well, I'm certainly big enough to admit my shortcomings.
Looks like I could learn a lot from you!
At least we seem to have (you) and getting (me) much of the same information.
BTW: There is a new SEO book coming out in July (I've advance ordered it) on SEO for google.
Cheers :D
Lainaus käyttäjältä: bsm - helmikuu 06, 2008, 05:41:05 AP
BTW: There is a new SEO book coming out in July (I've advance ordered it) on SEO for google.
Do you happen to know the ISBN for it?
Content is King and will ever be King! ;D
So it's probably the best "SEO" you can get....