well, I seo'ed a phpbb forum

Labrocca, again your being selective and not scientific enough , and making wrong assumptions.

My rugby forum has 21,500 pages indexed, the forum has 128,000 posts. 18,000 or so of these are behind password protected areas for special groups (spiders can't get at them). ALL the profile pages and other junk pages are blocked from the spiders taking the available pagination down further still. I also use urls like this, http://www.scumv.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=7163 no mod rewrite, but session ID's removed for spiders. Have you done that? if not then likely a lot of your pages are duplicates with different session ID's.

Still hate basic SEO?

 

What matters is search engine positioning and that doesn't depend on either PR or caching.

From Google:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/faq.html#label

I think you'll find that many dynamic pages end up in the Supplementary index and are not cached. They may still appear high in the rankings for a search, though. And that's the bottom line, or at least the most sugnificant bottom line.

There are differences even between the two forums in my signature - the psychology one has fewer posts but more threads and a lot more pages indexed. Due to difference in the URL in various backlinks, the PR on the forum itself is lower, but it ranks in the top 5 for major search terms (often #1 or 2) - partly because it has less competition for those search terms than an SEO forum.

 

what i got from this discussion is that only 1 thing is worthy that is remove session ID.
And don't convert dynamic pages to static .html pages.
Anything missing?

 

That's pretty much it

Go get the SEO mod from http://www.Able2Know.com and have a look at what else he does, ignoring the mod_rewrite stuff which is no longer needed.

 

Looks like I have more to learn from some of you "pros".

Welch guy....

http://www.google.com/search?hs=GcI...s=en&q=site:www.scumv.co.uk+group&btnG=Search

I think you have about 11,200 pages actually cached. Which means I have a better percentage of my pages cached. Although I am not sure how many posts you have in a protected area. Keep in mind my site also has about 5000 posts that are also in a protected area. So I think it's you not being scientific enough. You have roughly 25% more posts than me yet I have 1% more pages cached (negligible difference I know but that's 1000 more pages that are in SERPS than you).

My static html mod_rewrite has a higher percentage of cached indexed pages in google. I would think this to be important.

www.scumv.co.uk- 9% cached pages
www.pspforums.com - 10% cached pages

To get exact figures I would need to know the count on your protected areas.

I am showing examples and HOW I feel I am right or at least my opinion is not entirely proven wrong. You guys have yet to show me an example of comparible sites where the non-static pages have more cached indexed pages. I have shown 2 solid examples of my site being indexed better.

I just don't know if ignoring the mod_rewrite stuff because it's no longer needed is really true. I think seo is overrated for sure. I think that we are all mostly clueless and that google most likely has some randomness in it's equation just so no one can figure it out. BAH!

I still love ya guys.

 

Interesting discussion.

I've always felt (and still do) getting page cached has more to do with elements within the page than it does with the url.

My sports forum was having issues - very few cached pages and most of it (90% +) was in the supplemental index. I tweaked the title/meta dscriptions, added a little more on page text and bam - pages cached and everything out of the supp index within a few weeks.

The forum has about 20,000 posts and 10 - 15K indexed/cached pages.

I've tinkered with mod_rewrite before and came to same conclusion a lot of others have...more work than it's worth.

ps - the blog section of the site has about 75 posts which may or may not be intermixed within those cached results.

 

In no way is mod_rewrite required but I think it's nice looking. I prefer the readable urls instead of the dynamic numbers. It makes it look nice when a link is created from another site. Like this:

http://www.pspforums.com/forums/psp-hacks-mods-and-technical-jargon-vf15.html

Basically I have created better anchor text imho. I think the benefits are small and if I had to spend hours to add mod_rewrite I wouldn't bother...however it takes 10 minutes.

I agree with you GuyFromChicago...page elements are essential. I don't think anyone can disagree on that. I just think that even to gain a 1% benefit in serps is worth it. Sometimes you have to do 10 little things to add up to a front page result. Minstrel mentioned negatives of mod_rewrite but I can't think of any that would harm your SERP's. As far as I know it's just some added overhead and I have plenty of that even with 300 domains on one server.

 

Labrocca,

I have like 13,000 forum posts and 154,000 pages listed in google. Explain that.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.dacowboys.com&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&start=970&sa=N

My personal problem with mod-rewrites is it creates MORE urls and increases our chances of getting penalized for duplicate content. The standard rewrites for PHPBB involve creating a second set of urls for non-members and still using the same dynamic urls for members. If regular members link to your forums from outside, then search engines will crawl those urls.

You have increased the total number of urls for the same content by 100%.

I think that probably outweighs any benefit you might get from extending them out. And the reality is users don't look at urls so you could have them say anything you want.

 

nice...weird you have so many pages indexed and cached

hmm..well food for thought I guess

so should I remove the mod_rewrite on my sites?

 

I wouldn't recommend removing it.. as it can be messy for a bit.. I just wouldn't use it on future sites.

 

nah I can remove it easy..

 

This thread has been VERY useful for me. I have been sweating the load, becasue I am having major problems with my mod rewrite. Now, I think I'll just leave it be and be glad I did the first part of the SEO mod!

 

And how does that translate into search ranking and traffic exactly?

Your choice. I would remove it.

 

More cached pages in google generally raise the value of a site on resale. I think it's for a couple reasons. It shows that google likes your site, it allows you to sell RON advertising on more pages thus getting more revenue, and it also gives you a better chance of being found from a serp since more pages means more possible results.

I don't believe it really effects ranking having many pages cached but who knows what the algo is.

 

what a load of crap in this thread ahaha

labrocca, don't listen to the "gospel" in this thread. You're absolutely right having mod rewrite is a positive advantage. This thread is a prime example of why public "seo" boards can cause more harm then good.

This board does use mod rewrites. Look at result #8
google.com/search?hl=en&q=phpbb+mod+rewrite&btnG=Google+Search
if google preferred this URL
forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=25086
they would have that displayed in their results. They dont though, they use the archived version, and one reason being is that it has friendlier URLs. Before you bite my head off, I know that it's also a better optimized page. But hands down URLs is a factor.

If you are concerned about the duplicate content use robots.txt to disallow viewforum.php and viewtopic.php.

Obviously having keywords in URL is not essential for getting positive results, but anyone who goes to such great lengths to convince people not to use them either has alterior motives or shouldn't be giving advice in the first place. Shame on you minstrel. People who don't know any better come on these boards and take your advice not knowing that it's a victim of your own inadequacies.

Go ahead and reply with your rebuttles, I wont be responding. I will working on my sites.

 

I see. So you just popped in to tell us all that the thread is a load of crap? How do we even begin to thank you for taking a moment out of your obviously pintless... err... I mean busy day to post that?

I'll tell you what my ulterior motive is, Sean416: It's to tell you that everything you've said in your post is "a load of crap". You obviously know little about forum software and even less about search engines or SEO.

Did you perchance notice the designation [Library] after that listing? That's the vBulletin archiving system. An older post on the topic from August.

Now look at current and recent posts in this forum. Do you see any mod_rewrites?

Now look at the other forums mentioned in this thread. Do you see any mod_rewrites?

Now look at this Google search. Notice the Digitalpoint entries at #4 and #5? See any mod_rewrites there?

Then look at this search. Note the #1 and #2 entries (for starters). Are either of these using mod_rewrite?

Finally, look at this very interesting search. Fascinating. You must have some very important work to do, Sean. I'll leave you to do it.

By the way, you spelled "rebuttals" incorrectly. I thought that, as an editor, you might care about that. No need to thank me...

 

1. What does me being a dmoz editor have anything to do with this?

2. I said I knew that it was an archive/prior post. Point being when there was an alternative, google used it.

3. I am not saying you cant get results without keywords in the URL, and had you read my post you'd have understood that.

4. No need to correct my spelling, my writting is coherent, legible and well formed. A couple mental mistakes when discussing something on a board doesn't need to be noted unless you're just trying to be an arrogant prick.

I said I wasn't going to reply, because I can tell from your other posts that you'll moan and bitch untill the other party stops. So I'm j=going to make this easy and cut it off at this. I promise I will not reply again. I beleive the truth is in the posts.

 

I wonder.... but it was the juxtaposition of the DMOZ editor profile page with mention of your member profile in an adult webmasters forum that caught my eye.

You offered it as proof that this forum "does use mod_rewrite", remember?

I did read it. I understood what you said. I have serious doubts that you did.

Hilarious...

I hope that's true. I'll believe it when I see it. I can see you're still signed in and monitoring the thread.

 

Starting at post #36, I would agree.


As others have said there's a lot of great info in this thread that allows people to see both sides of the issue and make an educated choice about how they want to handle things with their site. There's no "gospel" here, just people sharing what has and hasn't worked for them.