phpBB seo above and beyond a2k

We all know how important removing session ID's are to improving phpBB search engine friendlyness, and using the able2know seo tips to reduce pagerank drain and improve keyword density is important as well.

Well, I've found a few fundamental, but important, omissions left out of the optimization from the a2k mod. I figured I'd share what Im using on my forums so that it may help yours as well. While I just a couple days ago made this optimization it's too early to tell how helpful it will be, but I'm sure it (especially the h1 tags) will make a difference.

First, heading tags. Theirs no <h1> tags anywhere on a topics page! This is very helpful for seo, and it's a simple fix. Second, the maintitle link (the thread title at the top of the page below the header) is linked back to the page... but it's a different URL! That could lead to a duplicate content penalty and the linking back to itself is not necessary from an SEO or usability standpoint. Also, a few other places where spider bots could follow links and assign multiple url's to the same place. It also addresses the issue of spreading page rank between the / of your forum address and the /index.php address. Your forum links will be linking back to / now instead of to index.php

The mod is attached.

 

Good points. I made some similar changes to my forum.

 

Ditto, at least for the links. I'd forgotten that wasn't part of the A2K mod, to be honest.

 

I've used "Able2Know.com Search Engine Optimization mod" and "phpBB static URLs mod _rewrite" on my old forum. They worked very well and google like my old forum.

Now I've installed a new forum and used only a2k mod (with some changes,like above) and webmedic's keyword urls mod.

I know that SEs can crawl dynamic pages of phpbb by removing SIDs. Google still likes my keyword URL's but I've seen a big difference on MSN search results. I was getting almost zero visitors from MSN. Now about 20% of my uniques are coming from msn.

Additionaly, I also removed last post column on index and viewforum, so I don't get duplicate links for each topic. Then I've added "last post on index" mod and changed it so that it shows "last topic for each forum" only.It worked very well and now I have only one unique "keyword generated URL" for each topic. I'm using phpbb as a dynamic "news website", so members and their post are not important for me.

 

Ah very nice. I'm using a2k mod and was looking at webmedic but didn't like the way it only handles the first page of a thread (I have real forums with long threads). As Craven (sp?) at a2k was talking about doing keyword urls I'm sort of waiting for that. Afraid it will make "excssively spammy urls" though with lots of "-". MSN/Y may not care but G will frown on that I think.

M is generally a fan of keyword-in-url. I'm seeing that with sites that use LMA or WSNLinks for a directory and have keyword rich urls.

Pootwan

 

Change this

<title>Email-X.net Software Forums - Free Software / Game Downloads</title>

Code (markup):

to this

<title>Free Software / Game Downloads - Email-X.net Software Forums</title>

Code (markup):

or this

<title>Software Forums | Free Software | Game Downloads | Email-X.net</title>

Code (markup):

 

Thanks for this little tip minstrel

I have a question if you'd like to answer.

I've used a php 301 redirection to my new forum on the subdir, because I will not update my old forum on the root.(But it's still readable). I've heard that this type of redirection is search engine friendly.

This is the .htaccess file on the root :

DirectoryIndex redirect.php

Code (markup):

And this is the .htaccess file on the subdir:

DirectoryIndex index.php

Code (markup):

So vitisors will be redirected from -www.email-x.net/ to -www.email-x.net/software/ .

What I'm asking is, what is the behaviour of the googlebot? Does it see my subdir as a root folder and start crawling from it first? Will google appoint still two different page ranks, one for the top level domain and one for the domain with the subdir?

Second, If I change any code on overall_header (i.e. adding a new link), does google see it as an update on all pages and attempt to crawl all pages again?

 

Googlebot is a visitor so it will be redirected like your human visitors and see what your human visitors see in this case.

It will affect all pages so it will be a change/update on all pages. How Googlebot schedules spidering on dynamic sites I'm not sure - I know it's there on my forums everyday.

 

On a good note, MSN crawled my site for the first time since I made the above changes. All the keywords I was tracking increased by about 50%. I went from #8 (been stuck there for a month) on the most highly competitive keyword to #4. My forums are ranking above established sites in my nich with 50,000 pages. I've got 500 :/

I imagine all my threads carry more weight now as well.

 

I'm using a session_logged_in for removing the latest reply image so only logged in users see it.
I left the links to user profiles in on purpose.
Check what i did here:

http://www.twenteracingscene.com/de-lounge-vf1.html
I'm also using the deter comment spam that adds a rel="nofollow" to links posted in topics, webmedics keyword url, dynamic metatags.
Also busy trying to optimize the templates.
I was using the lofi mod before but it seemed too much like cloaking to me.