Do SMF posts appear in search engines? (Something to be concerned about)

Started by geezmo, September 06, 2006, 09:16:08 PM

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klra

I have quite a few sites that link the forums main index page.

Like I said earlier, it's really not that important to me if the threads are indexed.

What is important is that the forum shows up when "klr650 forum" (or similar) is searched in Google. Google isn't even showing it as a result & it should.

As far as the guests go, the thing that makes this forum atypical in this community is it's contemt. It's setup like a maintenance manual with dedicated reference sections. One of my mods had a bunch of his material stolen from an open forum (anyone could see the content) and it was being sold on ebay without his consent.

By restricting access to registered members only, they are bound by the user agreement which states that they cannot publish or use any of the content without the permission of the Admin or the author.

青山 素子

If you haven't already, get your site set up in Google's Webmaster Tools. You can check on reports about how your site is being indexed along with any problems being encountered when it crawls.

(I just did a random text by searching based on post text in one of my forums and the posts came up at the top of returned results.)
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


klra


khoking

Hi klra,

Now that after seeing your post, I check my site which is http://pentaxworld.com for search keyword "pentax forum" and after more than 10 pages in Google, I still can't find it...

If you got a solution, I would love to know!
Kho King
www.ShaShinKi.com
www.PentaxWorld.com


青山 素子

Quote from: klra on November 03, 2007, 11:28:39 AM
already done, and a sitemap submitted-

Great. Check that the sitemap is being pulled (and is accurate) and that pages are being included in the index. Also see what errors are being found, if any. Also look to get incoming links with the text including search terms you want. Search engine re-ranking takes time (especially Google - it can take months to see results of work).


Quote from: khoking on November 03, 2007, 11:29:53 AM
Hi klra,

Now that after seeing your post, I check my site which is http://pentaxworld.com for search keyword "pentax forum" and after more than 10 pages in Google, I still can't find it...

If you got a solution, I would love to know!

I see a few things here. If you search for "PentaxWorld", your site is #1 on the results. If you, however, search "Pentax Community" then your site isn't on the first page. You are up against what looks like some well-linked and established sites. PentaxForums is PR4 and looks to be very established. Likewise, you have a site with that term as the domain (which counts quite a bit).

Searching for "Pentax Forum" gives us two sites with that term in their domain names. You also have dpreview.net with a PR of 6, photo.net with a PR of 7, another dpreview page with a PR of 5, etc. You are fighting in an established territory, your ranking will increase slowly. Work on building backlinks.


I'd suggest you remove the "welcome" page and go to the community index directly. The alt text for the image you must click doesn't have anything to do with the image or link, and that is probably hurting you since search engines only have that to go by. Put an introduction text on the community index explaining what your site is about while including the terms you want to rank for. Don't stuff the terms though, that will hurt you. Make everything as natural-sounding as possible.

Also, I'd update your forum title to include more of the terms you want to rank for. Perhaps "Pentax World - A community forum for Pentax users". Title text counts for a non-trivial amount of score, after all.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


klra

QuoteSearch engine re-ranking takes time (especially Google - it can take months to see results of work).

Well, I think that this is beyond that, because my Joomla pages (KLRWorld.com) index overnight & this forum has been around for over a year.

Many of the same keywords.

Now if I type in KLRWorld or KLRWorld.com Forums, they both pop up as the 1st result.

ndr

i creat sitemap.xml using sitemap mod
i submitted in google webmaster page
it says :
Sitemap statistics:
Total URLs: 5076
Indexed URLs: 1

after months i have 1 indexed URLs only :-(

青山 素子

Are there any things listed on the problem report? That type of thing usually indicates that their crawler is having troubles accessing the site.

Do you block guests from accessing the board? That will keep the search engines from accessing things as well.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


ndr

Quote from: Motoko-chan on January 26, 2008, 06:49:08 PM
Are there any things listed on the problem report? That type of thing usually indicates that their crawler is having troubles accessing the site.

Do you block guests from accessing the board? That will keep the search engines from accessing things as well.


no !
guests have permission to see topics & posts
you can see my forum at : *removed for illegal content*
& sitemap : *removed for illegal content*/sitemap.xml

what can i do ?
please explain.

i created robots.txt & submitted it to google yesterday

why profile links is fast to submitt but topics & post is very slow ?

sorry for bad english
thanks


青山 素子

I removed your links as they pointed to a forum that dealt with illegal activities.

Have you checked the "Web crawl errors" section on Google's webmaster tools site?
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


ndr

I can't find "Web crawl errors" on google's webmaster tools
but i See "Set crawl rate" & "Crawl stats"

青山 素子

It's the bottom box on the overview page. You can also find more details in Diagnostics > Web Crawl
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


ndr

i have no error !
google found 400 URLs last week
it's better
i think robots.txt solved this problam

Farmacija

ok, but what with duplicate title  tags and short and duplicate meta tags???
for duplicate title tags i have these urls :
/forum/index.php?topic=9665.0;imode
/forum/index.php?topic=9665.100;imode
/forum/index.php?topic=9665.15;imode
/forum/index.php?topic=9665.30;imode
/forum/index.php?topic=9665.5;imode
/forum/index.php?topic=9665.95;imode
www.farmaceuti.com
www.farmaceuti.com/tekstovi

ndr

i'm confused !
google automatically indexed my urls
but on google webmaster page i have this results :
Sitemap statistics:
Total URLs: 5085
Indexed URLs: 1

青山 素子

It says that for one of my sites as well, but when doing a "site:" search, I see a lot of results for topics.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


Sverre

Quote from: Motoko-chan on January 28, 2008, 06:46:48 PMIt says that for one of my sites as well, but when doing a "site:" search, I see a lot of results for topics.

One thing which concerns me a bit regarding how search engines index SMF is that topics spanning over multiple pages often don't appear to be indexed properly. Take this thread for example. If you search Google for a phrase found on each page, you'll see that most of the pages in the last half of the thread are indexed, while only a few pages from the thread's first half seems to be indexed. Another example can be seen using phrases from this randomly selected multi-page topic, OMG Package manager = ignoring., where only the second page (of two) is indexed by Google. The same behaviour has also been seen using Yahoo or Live Search.

Ricky.

Just to add here..
I switched from phpBB to SMF becz of SEO.. no to mention, now my SMF forum tops loads of keywords in google and yahoo.

arya6000

I like SMF in every way, but I'm sure that it has a problem with search engines, and when I use the search function within my own site some things don't show up the first time, sometimes I have to search it 3 times for it to show up. I'm not sure if thats related to the search engines tho. Just wanted to bring it up to see if they are related or not.

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