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Quick SEO Question About phpBB Forum Mod - Name Of The Forum Important?

Discussion in 'phpBB' started by bad_bob00, Sep 7, 2010.

  1. #1
    Hi there,

    This is the situation.

    I have a phpBB forum. Its been live for not very long, it was just a basic phpBB forum. I realised it wasn't very well optimised for search engines, so I got someone to install a new phpBB forum SEO mod (a complete new forum installation) at a different location on my site.

    The old forum was at www.site.com/forum/
    The new forum was at www.site.com/bodybuilding/

    Bodybuilding is the topic of the site, and I chose that name because I thought it might rank better in search engines for using a keyword as the forum name instead of just forum.

    Anyway, I was happy with the new forum set up etc and was going to delete the old forum and try to redirect it to the new one. However, someone has suggested that I delete the old forum and re-name the new one to just forum.

    So basically, what I'm asking is this; will it be more beneficial to have a keyword as the forum name? Or am I best off reverting back to the old forum name? (Bearing in mind that the old forum wasn't around for that long and I don't think its been showing up in Google or anything like that, so I don't think I'd lose out on any SEO juice).


    Thanks for any help, I realise it wasn't so much of a quick question now but would appreciate any advice! :)
     
    bad_bob00, Sep 7, 2010 IP
  2. MhW

    MhW Active Member

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    #2
    On a forum I used to run (which was also (and still is phpBB3)) we moved from domain.com/phpBB3/ to domain.com/forum/ . There was no difference whatsoever (not that we were expecting or hoping for any). Any difference you'd see in your situation would be so fractional, I'd go so far as to say it wouldn't be worth the effort at all from an SEO perspective. ;)

    One of the best SEO tips for your phpBB3 forum would be to tweak the <title> tag to remove 'View Topic' and 'View Forum' from viewforum and viewtopic pages. A guide for doing so is in the phpBB Knowledge Base: http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/remove-view-topic-and-view-forum-from-titles/ :)

    On a side note, there's also this MOD you might find interesting. It doesn't contribute a great deal towards SEO, though for usability it works wonders. From experience there's nothing more annoying than landing on a forum (from a Google results page) and unexpectedly finding myself half way through the topic

    Hope this helps :)
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2010
    MhW, Sep 7, 2010 IP
  3. bad_bob00

    bad_bob00 Active Member

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    #3
    Thank you very much for that :)

    I think I'll just revert to the previous name (/forum) just to save me having to redirect anyone etc.

    Thanks again!
     
    bad_bob00, Sep 7, 2010 IP
  4. bama boy

    bama boy Active Member

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    bama boy, Sep 9, 2010 IP