smf 1.1.4 and google results , seo4smf is a good choice?

[carlainz]

SMF Version: SMF 1.1.4
Mods installed:
Using default theme: yes
Link to site: apollobb
hi all,

i have smf 1.1.4 and i want know if really help install a mod like seo4smf or similar ( for url rewrite )
i don't like install mods , but if this can help me a little bit with google search , i can do ...

thanks

[karlbenson]

Most of us do just fine without SEO style urls.
In my personal experience and opinion, SEO4SMF when I last tested it was buggy and produced many errorsi n my error log.  PrettyUrls maybe a better mod in my limited tests.

There isnt any real reason to fear mods.  They allow for lots of features that would be considered bloat if included in the default core of smf.

[carlainz]

do you know if i can use prettyUrls with italian language and the apollobb theme ?
thanks

[karlbenson]

I don't I'm afraid.  I don't currently use Pretty Urls, Italian language, nor ApolloBb Theme.

[青山 素子]

If your site has been active for some time without any fancy rewrites, installing something to "pretty up" the URLs can actually drop your ranking on search results (the change rate on your site will have jumped - causing a bit harsher review by the search engine -  and all the new URLs will need to be crawled and indexed). Keywords in your URL have very little influence on rankings, so there isn't a big reason to change things around if that is all you are going to do for SEO.

Besides, all the major search engines index dynamic URLs fine, and have been for the last few years.

[verbera]

My site has been running SMF for well over a year and google and yahoo have yet to recognize any part of the forum even though the spiders are on there all the time.

I'm considering seo4smf as well as a last resort before dumping SMF completely. My only hesitation for this last experiment is because I'm not sure if it will work with 1.1.4.

[karlbenson]

verbera, what do you mean by have yet to recognise?

whats your forum link?

[verbera]

I loaded up a site map to google in December and am seeing better results.

BTW Yahoo sees the forum just fine. I put that in accidentally in the last post. Google sees the wiki, gallery, regular pages but wasn't seeing the forum at all.

I was search using strings like: site:bishie.org forum
Yahoo shows many threads in the forum. Now with the site map at least when I search site:bishie.org/forum I see threads. So definitely progress with google.

(Used GsiteCrawler to create the site map for any who are interested. Great program. Did need to do a lot of URL removal though to get rid of forum URLs that google should not see and might mistake as "repeats".)

[billp]

I think google is crawling you just fine. Try this query:

site:www.bishie.org anime con boston

shows a post from your forum as the top link.

[humbleworld]

DigitalPoint forum site is not using pretty urls. It runs on a dynamic url.
Spiders have no problems with dynamic urls.

[Dannii]

do you know if i can use prettyUrls with italian language and the apollobb theme ?
thanks

It'll be fine, you may have to copy the very few changes to modifications.english.php to modifications.italian.php, but that's only for the admin interface.

If your site has been active for some time without any fancy rewrites, installing something to "pretty up" the URLs can actually drop your ranking on search results (the change rate on your site will have jumped - causing a bit harsher review by the search engine -  and all the new URLs will need to be crawled and indexed).

Is this this case with 301 redirects?