How to add meta name keywords from the post that is being read in SMF

[ladynada]

Preliminary discussion and WARNINGS!

This is going to be a TIP which I will post in the next message.

Two threads you can consult concerning this tip have links here:

Create a standalone HTML version of your messageboard - beta

quick mod edits that add pretty keywords to your messages for SEO


What this will do:

This tip will cause SMF to insert the

Code Select Expand



<meta name="keywords" content="'blah blah blah'" />



into the top of your html code ONLY when a user is reading a message that has been retrieved by a call to the Sources/Display.php.  In all other cases, your default meta name keywords will be used, per normal.

About me:

I am not that good at programming.  I do not use the most efficient code sequences.  For example, instead of

$counter ++

I still use $counter = $counter +1

My philosophy is, if it works, and has no bugs, then I am cool.

Also, I may sometimes end up with redundant ( not needed ) code, that does not harm the functionality of the solution, but may not actually be needed.

okay now that the caveats are out of the way.

SEO philosophy:

I am a rank noob when it comes to SEO.  Also, my forum is so unique, in that I post most of the messages myself, and my content is very unique such that the meta name keywords DO help my pages to rank higher.  Therefore, this tip and the others in those links, are very useful to my TYPE of forum, but may not be for yours.

USE THESE TIPS AT YOUR OWN RISK!  make backups.

Be advised, that this tip will AFFECT your SEO, since you will be changing the keywords that a robot from a search engine sees while it is reading messages.  This affect to your SEO can not be reversed... in case that fact is not clear.

What does this mean?  well, for an example.  You have a new forum, and have not researched 'pretty urls' but you saw this tip and used it, and you have oodles of your message links in search engines. Then, months later you add a mod to make pretty urls.  Well, now the search engines already have links to your messages based on the old urls.. and you might not like that.

So you need to understand that this tip changes your SEO in a way that can not be taken back, if search engines crawl and make changes based on these new keywords.


To see an example:

How to add meta name keywords from the post that is being read in SMF

and view the source of the page to see the meta name keywords

okay, now for the tip!

nada

[ladynada]

NOTE: EDITED to fix bug at 6:27pm est may 14 2007
How to add meta name keywords from the post that is being read in SMF

First, make a backup of your Sources/Display.php
I named mine, Display_051407_1442.php

Pick the theme you want this to work for and make a backup of your
theme_dir/index.template.php
I named mine, index.template_051407_1452.php

okay now you can play.

In Display.php look for:

Code Select Expand



function Display()
{
global $scripturl, $txt, $db_prefix, $modSettings, $context, $settings;


Change to:

Code Select Expand


// The central part of the board - topic display.
function Display()
{
global $scripturl, $txt, $db_prefix, $modSettings, $context, $keywords, $settings;



Notice that all we did was add the var $keywords to the global command so that it's value will be
held between function calls.

okay we need another one, In Display.php look for:

Code Select Expand



// Callback for the message display.
function prepareDisplayContext($reset = false)
{
global $settings, $txt, $modSettings, $scripturl, $options, $user_info;


Change to:

Code Select Expand



// Callback for the message display.
function prepareDisplayContext($reset = false)
{
global $settings, $txt, $modSettings, $scripturl, $options, $keywords, $user_info;



Nice.. this is gonna be real easy to do.

next, In the bottom of Display.php look for:

Code Select Expand



return $attachmentData;
}


and then ADD AFTER the last bracket

Code Select Expand



function trunc($phrase, $max_words)
{
   $phrase_array = explode(' ',$phrase);
   $phrase = implode(' ',array_slice($phrase_array, 0, $max_words)).'';
   return $phrase;
}


Thanks go out to inthe80s who's code this is from his mod at this thread:
Create a standalone HTML version of your messageboard - beta

This function will be used to  cut the number of keywords, now set to 40.

Ok now in Dispaly.php look for:

Code Select Expand



}

// Callback for the message display.



And ADD BEFORE the closing } the following:

Code Select Expand



// Routine to prime the var $keywords with words from the message body being viewed by user
$junk = prepareDisplayContext(false);




// Replace some junky codes that end up in the keywords sometimes
$postBody = $junk['body'];
$description = trim(un_htmlspecialchars(strip_tags(htmlspecialchars($postBody))));
$description = preg_replace( '!\s*<br(\s*/)?>\s*!i', " ", $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/<[^>]+>/', '', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '!</[a-z]+>!i', '', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/&nbsp;/', ' ', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/&#124;/', ' ', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/&quot;/', ' ', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/&#039;/', '\'', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/’/', '\'', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/.../', '-', $description);
$keywords = $description;
$keywords = trunc($description, 40);



// RESET the message display function or else it will be blank!
$junk = prepareDisplayContext(true);



If you did it right, then the last bit of code you see, BEFORE the stuff you added is:

Code Select Expand



// Load up the "double post" sequencing magic.
if (!empty($options['display_quick_reply']))
checkSubmitOnce('register');


In the part that you added, you can EDIT the $hotKeywords string, the stuff between the apostrophe quote marks
to the best keywords for your forum.  This code is also from inthe80s' great mod.

Okay you are all done modifying Display.php.

next we edit index.template.php

Look for:

Code Select Expand



function template_init()
{
global $context, $settings, $options, $txt;


And REPLACE with:

Code Select Expand


function template_init()
{
global $context, $settings, $options, $keywords, $txt;
$keywords = 'none';



Here we added $keywords to the global command so it will not lose it's value, and gave it the initial value of 'none'.
For example, if your user clicks on SEARCH, then SMF does NOT call Display.php, and therefore the $keywords is
NOT changed, and your default keywords will be used, as normal.  So this TIP only works when Display.php is called,
AND a message is retrieved.

next edit is, again in index.template.php, look for:

Code Select Expand



function template_main_above()
{
global $context, $settings, $options, $scripturl, $txt, $modSettings;



REPLACE with:

Code Select Expand



function template_main_above()
{
global $context, $settings, $options, $scripturl, $txt, $keywords, $modSettings;
if ($keywords == 'none')
{
$keywords = 'RUOW,the two witnesses,who are the two witnesses,daniel,daniel\'s 70th week,revelation,ezekiel,magog,ruow,elijah,moses,antichrist,2012,conspiracy,nwo,rapture,zion,zionists,jesus christ,holy spirit,god,trinity,ladynada,me114,last days,end times,apocalypse,jews,new jerusalem,zechariah,olive trees,israel,judah,manchild,sananda,germaine,carnal,666,salvation,witnesses,enoch,heart son,father of manifestation, heart daughter,the mother,FOM';
}



That adds $keywords, and you need to put in your default keywords in there.

now look for:

Code Select Expand


<meta name="keywords" content="PHP, MySQL, bulletin, board, free, open, source, smf, simple, machines, forum" />


Please note, that this is the default line of code; you may have changed yours. It is usually right after this code:

Code Select Expand


<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />', '


okay, so REPLACE the one I told you to look for with:

Code Select Expand


<meta name="keywords" content="', $keywords, '" />


Believe it or not, that is it!

Now if you wanted to add the ability to post keywords at the beginning of a new topic, or anywhere in any message,
then please see my tip posted here:

quick mod edits that add pretty keywords to your messages for SEO

If you have that, and you or your users add keywords, at the BEGINNING of a message, then this new tip will pick those
up and make them the keywords in the meta name section.


regards,
nada

[ladynada]

More tips for the brave!



here is another tip.

in the code in Display.php that we added that strips junk, you can add more lines if you see junk in your meta name keywords.

here is part of the section to which I am referring:

Code Select Expand


$description = preg_replace( '/ /', ' ', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/|/', ' ', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/"/', ' ', $description);
$description = preg_replace( '/'/', '\' ', $description);



for example.. maybe user you have puts something silly all the time, like 9--6  and this is just a made up example to show you how and where to add a new line

so you would add

Code Select Expand



$description = preg_replace( '/9--6/', ' ', $description);



This would replace the 9--6 with a space

nada

[ladynada]

I remembered another edit that you can make according to your preference!

in that code we put in Display.php look for:

Code Select Expand



$keywords = trunc($description, 40);



the 40 is how many keywords to add!  I was greedy and put 40 in mine.  Maybe you like less?  or more?

nada

[ladynada]

HOLD OFF

I forgot to check the forum log for undefined index, a common error, and there are some...
wait til I post a fix here
thanks,
nada

[ladynada]

I am still working on it, but I narrowed down the bug to this line of code

Code Select Expand



$keywords = truncKeywords($keywords, 40, $hotKeywords);



the problem is in the truncKeywords function, so I will work on that now... hold on..

I love Debugging!

nada

p.s. pray for me.. yea I pray over everything!

[ladynada]

Okay it is fixed.

so, I figure the best way to not confuse anyone, since I found it so soon, was to MODIFY the original message, and note at the very beginning the time that I fixed the code... for any early birds..

so the code in this message IS CORRECT.

I used a different function, that just cuts the number of keywords to 40, and you can change the 40.  the other function that had the bug, was too complicated to fix quickly, but it had an offset and undefined index problem.. the function was supposed to compare the message with your list of keywords and make sure that if a match was found, that at least that keyword would be used.. but!  I took it out.. we dont need it right now for the main function of the tip to work, which is to add keywords from the message into your meta tag keywords.

sorry about that.

I always tell myself, check the forum log, before you post a tip or upload a theme... aaaarrrrgh!  I forgot. btw, the prayer helped. 

nada

[ladynada]

Yup.. testing shows a clean log.

So, I wanted to tell you that, you need to understand that, if you are reading a reply inside a topic thread, that the keywords that are actually put into the header are the ones from the FIRST message in the topic, as in, the NEW TOPIC message that was originally posted, which makes sense...

nada

[ladynada]

okay crazy lady is back again!

You do not know what the code was that I had to delete, however, I have been pouring over it for hours, and found one of the bugs in it.  It was a simple one.  When you ask for the count of an array, you have to minus one, because it starts counting from zero.  So that if there are 4 elements, the 4th one is at position +3.

GIGGLE!

so if you are using another variable for your counting and compare that to the count of the array, you have to minus 1 to find the end.  Okay, that fixed the offset out of range error.

The other error was not worth sleuthing, because the logic did not make sense.  the code was trying to find if your message contained any of your default or hotkeywords, and it would add the word even if you had already added the limit of number of words - BAD IDEA - unless you test for when you are out of range... the error was actually undefined - I chucked the whole section.

so, now I can give you some more code that will allow you to select how big your keywords are; like 4 letter words or greater.   And add an option for you to have a COMMA between your keywords or a SPACE.

right now it just streams every word, with no commas.

however, I would like to spend more time on it, and see if I can implement what the author intended, because it is useful, that if later in a message, your hotkeyword is used, then it SHOULD be in the meta tag, because it would reinforce your SEO for your default keywords, thus making that message more RELEVANT to the content of your overall forum.  uknowhatimean?

I will get back to you on this,
nada

[ladynada]

Got some GOOD code coming soon!

OH!  I love to program!

OOOOOOOH!

this is my thang!  programming...

I will test this til tomorrow.. but what I got is... it will take your list of hot keywords and check the message, if any are found they will be put first in the final keyword list, then it will look for what the user said at the beginning of the message (which might have kword bbcode if you add that tip) and add more keywords, up to your defined total limit for keywords... right?  yes... it works so far, I have it displaying output to the screen for testing

I love to program!

nada

[KGIII]

Silly question time... (And, really, someone might complain about post bumping... So be careful there.)

Why not use something like the topic solved mod and just insert those results?

(Just curious - I've been pondering doing the same thing myself though just using the topic solved mod to grab the keywords and maybe the post content for the description.)

[ladynada]

hiya,

I am not familiar with that mod.  I stayed up all night working on this.

I was not intentionally bumping this thread.  I just kinda carry on a conversation with the forum - I was acting naturally.

This project has turned into quite an SEO bonanza!

I have, for myself, now over 420 keywords!  And, for example, one of my postings hit for over 100 !

In other words, if you uncomment the echo commands you can test this, and find the best keywords for your forum, thus tightening up your SEO so that robots will be thrilled to give you higher rankings because of the high correspondence of your keywords to the actual content of the page.

nada

more later, I need some sleep!

[ladynada]

Good day,

I got some sleep and am fresh to code today.  What I plan is to add a debug mode so that you can simply change one line and it will display output.

Here now let me explain and I have a picture to show you.  Last night, when I was testing this, I would add keywords, and then select a message and watch the display to see how many of my hot keywords were FOUND in the message.  Then I added IGNOREWORDS, like to, for, you, me, us, in... etc.  little words that you do not need in your meta tag keywords.

Then I added, test for duplicate words found, so that you do not get the same word twice in the list.  Then I said to myself, self, you might as well add a two tier run through, whereby you select small words like greater than 2, and on the second run, you select larger significant words, like greater than 5 or even 7 for big big words.  Then I added the hot keywords that were found at the end.

so, first it finds hot keywords and holds them aside, then it finds actual words in the message including small ones, and last it finds large significant words, and adds all that up to equal your set keyword limit.

Technical info, gladly this also keeps intact web links so that if there is a link near the beginning of a message, as often is, it will be in your keyword list, which is awesome for SEO, because that is like linking to that site and sharing in its popularity.  ie if search engines like that site, then it will _more_ likely cause a search for them, to also find your message that has that site's link in it.  This also saves apostrophe's properly too, like Sony's, Fred's, etc.

In addition, through testing I was able to add much error-catching, such as when more hotwords are found than the limit you set, or zero hotwords are found.  Programmers must always test for limit ranges like that, upper and lower.

So, through all this testing, I discovered that this is going to be much more effective for our SEO than I thought at first.  Because once I had a Humungous list of over 411 hot keywords, _and_ I hit upon a message that had over 100 of them!! then I realized that this will help the SEO of message forums.  A robot that would include at the least a comparison of the relevancy of the keywords of a page with the content of that page, would find a HIGH relevancy percentage, and thus, its code should assign a higher page rank for searches on that very content.  Thus you can imagine that adding the words greater than 7 letters becomes more important.

So, because I believe this will be highly useful to us, I want to spend some more time testing, debugging and adding to the display features, because, if you want to do this right, you need to view the output and let it TEACH YOU about your own forum, as to which keywords are popular according to how your people post.  Here is a picture of part of the screen where many of my hot keywords were found.



As you may know, my forum is about God and spiritual stuff, now please look at that output and notice that foundhot was 35 for three times, and that is because some of those words are _already_ in the list so far, so it is holding the count at 35 until it finds a new one.

Also, as I mentioned before, this only works while reading messages, using the FIRST message in the topic thread, so that other places in your forum do NOT use this, and therefore the default keywords that you put in your index.template.php can NOW be OPTIMIZED!  How?  Because you can check output like this, and select which keywords you notice come up the most for your site, and made a SMALLER default list for the remainder of your site.

okay, this is long enough of a post for now.  I hope this discussion helps other programmers, and those who end up using this tip.

The code in this message is CORRECT and is the SIMPLE version, so if you use that, you can start to see what this is all about.  When I post the new code, it will go in the same places and I will post it as separate message for those who start from scratch at applying this tip. 

If anyone has any ideas or comments, please share them, and I will keep you updated on my progress.

thanks for listening,
nada

[SlammedDime]

I know you're having lots of fun here, and spending a lot of time on this, but I hope you realize that Google doesn't place much weight on your keywords tag.  I'm sure you may believe otherwise, and I have no belief one way or the other, but if you do a google search yourself on the topic, you will find many many discussions that support that as well.  Of course keyword tags may help with the smaller search engines that don't use as advanced algorithms, but in the top search engines, it makes little difference.  IMHO anyway.

[ladynada]

Hello,

I am having some more thoughts while working on this display for this tip.

Of course you could take your forum down for maintenance while running this for while, as you fine tune your hot keywords and default meta name keyword list.  However, you could also opt to have your users assist you by allowing it to display while the forum is up. They can browse around to messages that interest them, and reply to a central topic to give you their keywords and observations of the output.  This activity could be a real plus for your forum community, making them feel a more integral part of your SEO efforts.  Which also, might induce some to use the kword tip I posted the link to here, where when they START A NEW TOPIC, they could add keywords at the top (which also helps some people gather their thoughts about what they wish to say, or summarize after they say it) both of which would elicit more well thought out messages.. a win win win situation for sure.

just some thoughts..

nada

[ladynada]

I finished the update.

Already on my google Webmaster Tools I see a STARK difference.  My  Query stats had only THREE entries up until AFTER I started using this new tip, and now I have TWENTY !

ALSO, before this tip, I had on the "The PageRank of your pages in Google"
a setting of "PageRank not yet assigned"  but now, since only a few days of using this tip it is set to:
"Low".

The name of my site and the name of my new theme that I only just put up yesterday is already in the " Top search query clicks" !

I just added the final program to the mod that I mentioned that was made by someone else that makes the archives for SEO, and it works with that and I expect huge SEO results, since google was already indexing up to 700 pages from that, and my forum has only been up for a couple of months.

I am not boasting about myself, because I give all the credit to God who helps me in whatever I do because I do ask Him all the time. He helped me understand things about SEO that are contrary to popular belief, but I understood them (code wise) and believed what God was showing me, and now I see the results prove His guidance to be true.  It is very hard to go against the grain and not follow the crowd and believe that keywords make no difference, but now I have the physical evidence that the crowd is being sold a bill of goods.



This output is only seen if you set debug=1 otherwise, of course, the program does not display any output.

Briefly, it looks at the message, your list of hot keywords which can be as long as you want it, a list of ignorewords (small words) and two criteria, one for little words, and one for big words, and combines all that to analyze the message and make an intelligent keyword list, which is added to the html header when a user or a search robot reads a message.  The keywords are 100% relevant to the message and your whole website, which is what causes search engines to move your site up because your site is seen as EFFICIENT, and your keyword to content ratio is so good that your site is RELIABLE enough to move up your pagerank for keywords that people search for.

this is the short explanation for why it works.  whatever the so-called experts have been saying is wrong. perhaps they only believed what the experts before them said, and the ones before them, and it just spread alot of erroneous ideology about SEO.

about my intent.  I only wanted to help SMF sysops.  I do not have any other motive. I used to own a BBS software program in the 1980's and I wrote in machine language for it, I wrote games and modules and added transfer protocals, etc etc  I am accustomed to message boards and writing programs to HELP.

same goes for themes... before I wanted a forum, I used to make windowblinds SKINS, spend months doing the graphics for every little piece of display you see on a windows screen.. I enjoyed doing that, so naturally making themes for SMF has also been a joy.

maybe some people believe keywords do not help seo for SMF forums, but I felt it was worthwhile to go all the way, and I am thankful to God for helping me, and rewarding me with good results.

nada

[ladynada]

PROOF

please try this search:

smf theme core

My homepage web url is NUMBER FIFTEEN

I rest my case

nada

rank is # 3 on this search smf theme core green

[KGIII]

I am not sure what case you are resting? See this link...
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=ISP+password

I am sometimes #1 for a term of "isp password" and, honestly, I have not one clue why.

[ladynada]

rank has already got a dot in the medium bar! after only a week with the new program

saw this under google patents:

http://www.arnoldit.com/lists/google-patents.asp

Phrase-Based Searching in an Information Retrieval System (US20060031195)
An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases. Related phrases and phrase extensions are also identified. Phrases in a query are identified and used to retrieve and rank documents. Phrases are also used to cluster documents in the search results, create document descriptions, and eliminate duplicate documents from the serach results, and from the index.



the strategy related above would use my keywords to tighten the efficiency of my website even more, because clusters of phrases would repeat and indicate my site as THE place to find whatever the phrases are talking about.

tres k00l

the Lord knows best, I give Him the credit, every time!
nada

[ladynada]

actually alot of that phrase stuff depends on the theme of the forum.. I just did an advanced search, with SMF's search function on my forum for the two words divine purpose, and it came up with a whole page of 10 messages, with page links at the bottom for 3 more pages.  so, what that means is, that the phrase or the words divine and purpose are often posted in a single message on a forum like mine, and google's patent indicates that the bot would pick up on that.  I only looked for those two words because they ended up in my keyword list on a post I made.

so thats probably why. if the theme on the forum is as narrow as mine is, that would naturally help the seo.

nada

[SlammedDime]

Using a keyword search on google of "smf theme core" will prove nothing to you other than that google can index those words and link your site to them.  How many users do you expect to get using those keywords?  Rather, let me rephrase... how many users do you think will search that in hopes of finding your site?  Slim to none I'll bet.

Lets use your previous example, divine purpose.  Search that in google... I stopped looking at results after the 7th page...

[KGIII]

To only add to the confusion. There's nary one bit of optimization done to the site nor do any sites link to that page as near as I can tell. (The page gets a lot of traffic which is what baffled me and made me start looking.)

In fact, here's the entire head of the page:

Code Select Expand


<head>
<title>G³ - Windows &gt; All Platforms + General: Forgotten ISP Password </title>
<link rel="StyleSheet" href="../../../styles/prime.css" type="text/css">
</head>


[ladynada]

PROOF

please try this search:

smf theme core

My homepage web url is NUMBER FIFTEEN

I rest my case

nada

rank is # 3 on this search smf theme core green

I was rereading this entire thread just now because I posted related information on my blog today.  I notice that now my site is FIRST, not fifteen on that search.

Keyword Density is key to SEO

the experts were....  wrong.

nada

[ladynada]

a link to the new code in a message here is wrong.  I guess my forum reindexed.  I do not know.

here is the valid link

http://heartdaughter.com/overcomers/index.php?topic=816.0

nada