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well, I seo'ed a phpbb forum

Discussion in 'vBulletin' started by harley, Oct 13, 2005.

  1. #1
    I have to say, I'm thoroughly impressed. It's been only 3 days publicly linked up now, and it's already beginning to be indexed. I would say definitely take the time to SEO up your forums, especially removing session ID's and creating static URL's. Definitely worthwhile.
     
    harley, Oct 13, 2005 IP
  2. aeiouy

    aeiouy Peon

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    #2
    Actually creating static urls is completely unnecessary and actually may cause more harm than good because it creates more duplicate urls.

    While I do advise removing session ids, there is no reason to change urls for PHPBB. The reality is the urls for PHPBB are already static, you are just rewriting them into different format. None of the major search engines have a problem spidering normal phpbb urls. Since you have to maintain the old and new in order to keep things working properly, you end up with more potential duplicate links, which potentially creates more issues.

    I have a half-dozen PHPBB forums now, and while I did rewrite the urls on the first couple, I took them all off because of the lack of benefit and the increase of potential problem.

    Congrats on getting spidered, and I am not suggesting you undo your work. My advice is to leave it as is. Just if you ever set up another forum, I would not advise you rewriting the urls, it is not needed.
     
    aeiouy, Oct 13, 2005 IP
    minstrel and bschneider5 like this.
  3. just-4-teens

    just-4-teens Peon

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    #3
    i used to think the same thing, untill i came here and saw how well this forum was indexed, ranked in engines and thats with dynamic urls.
     
    just-4-teens, Oct 13, 2005 IP
  4. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #4
    That's absolutely correct. I'm pleased to see this finally getting noted on forums like this one.

    Excellent post!
     
    minstrel, Oct 14, 2005 IP
  5. Old Welsh Guy

    Old Welsh Guy Notable Member

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    #5
    I added some seo friendly stuff to my rugby forum. removed sessid's etc, did a 301 on non www. to the www. blocked the non content pages from the spiders to encourage them to get at the good stuff. Certainly didn't mod rewrite, and I currently have some 22,000 pages listed. Definitely no need to mod rewrite, all your doing is slowing things down by placing extra load on the server, and as pointed out, risking duplication.
     
    Old Welsh Guy, Oct 14, 2005 IP
  6. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #6
    Ditto. My psychology forum has 45,700 pages indexed in Google at the moment. No mod_rewrite. Just the first part of the Able2Know SEO mod really, with a couple of extra customizations.
     
    minstrel, Oct 14, 2005 IP
  7. Old Welsh Guy

    Old Welsh Guy Notable Member

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    #7
    A2K was the basis for my SEO friendly work also. Highly recommended, but I don't recommend the making an island of the forum by hiding all the outward links. (PR leakage indeed) ;)
     
    Old Welsh Guy, Oct 16, 2005 IP
  8. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #8
    LOL! That sort of defeats the purpose of SEO, doesn't it. :D
     
    minstrel, Oct 16, 2005 IP
  9. mdvaldosta

    mdvaldosta Peon

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    #9
    well, maybe he wants to pass pagerank to member's profiles and such :D
     
    mdvaldosta, Oct 16, 2005 IP
  10. Roze

    Roze Guest

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    #10
    Ditto - my unmodified VBulletin installation is completely indexed. The archives too!
     
    Roze, Oct 16, 2005 IP
  11. RectangleMan

    RectangleMan Notable Member

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    #11
    RectangleMan, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  12. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #12
    Why not? The point is not what the URL looks like but how well its indexed/ranked.. And you do NOT need the type 2 URL to index/rank well. And not using mod_rewrite elimionates some potential problems for you.

    In other words, using mod_rewrite (1) has no advantage and (2) has some potential drawbacks.
     
    minstrel, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  13. RectangleMan

    RectangleMan Notable Member

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    #13
    So your theory is that url's have no bearing on rank at all?

    Well let's put that to the test shall we.

    http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=site+seo&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

    Search is "site seo"

    Results
    1. www.sitepoint.com/article/dynamic-site-seo-tips-hints
    2. www.sitepoint.com/print/dynamic-site-seo-tips-hints
    3. onward.justia.com/
    4. searchengineoptimism.com/SEO_Tutorial/
    5. www.toolstudios.com/seo_denver.html
    6. www.getafreelancer.com/ projects/SEO/Payment-Site-SEO.html
    7. www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/ en/forum/viewforum/f-9.html
    8. www.xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2387
    9. lawlibrary.ucdavis.edu/LAWLIB/Sept03/0007.html
    10. www.ito.ca/SEO.aspx

    So I see many of these have the term SEO or SEO/site in the url.

    Not sure who is right but I think I have proved that your theory is questionable.
     
    RectangleMan, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  14. RectangleMan

    RectangleMan Notable Member

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    #14
    Oh I want to also point out that when you search anything in google it highlights your search terms by bolding them in the results. If you notice they enbolden the URL too. In my opinion that means they put importance on a url with keywords as they want users to see urls that have the keyword they searched for.
     
    RectangleMan, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  15. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #15
    No you haven't. What you have shown is that sometimes having keywords in the URL provides a small advantage, all other things being equal.

    But all other things are rarely equal in the real world.

    Google, MSN, and Yahoo have no trouble crawling and indexing and ranking dynamic sites with well-formed dynamic urls.

    Do a site: query on forums like DP or on my forums if you have trouble believing that.
     
    minstrel, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  16. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #16
    Faulty logic. Google bolds whatever part of the page or URL it finds those particular search terms in. It doesn't necessarily mean it's using that part of the page for ranking.

    For example, while Google uses the meta description tag for snippets, there's no evidence it has any impact on ranking. And yet if you do a search for terms that are present in the description tag, Google will highlight the term in the snippet.
     
    minstrel, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  17. RectangleMan

    RectangleMan Notable Member

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    #17
    Well you stated this:

    I don't agree with that and seemingly neither do you now..

    Getting google to index your site does not require any SEO or mod_rewrite but it can help when you are indexed. Better a small advantage then no advantage. It's the little things that add up fast.

    As for meta tags..I agree that at Google they mean zero for ranking.

    Implementing mod_rewrite for phpbb takes about 10-15 minutes TOPS. Why NOT do it?

    btw minstrel...thanks for the late night debate...it actually made me think a bit harder about SEO and I thought of a couple interesting things concerning this to help my sites...I think. Always nice to have a good debate on SEO ain't it. :)
     
    RectangleMan, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  18. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #18
    1. selective quoting (like omitting "all other things being equal") doesn't strengthen your argument or make any of my statements agree with you.

    2. I've been through this argument many times including on this forum and right now I have no interest in repeating it again - go read the phpbb - vBulletin threads on the topic.

    3. If you think mod-rewrite is going to help, go right ahead and do it. You're wasting time and resources but it doesn't matter one whit to me either way.
     
    minstrel, Oct 19, 2005 IP
  19. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #19
    I think this thread was more about mod_rewrite and getting indexed than advantages to keywords in your URL. That being said... mod_rewrite will not help you get indexes vs. not mod_rewriting. Putting your keywords in your URL *will* help with rankings (for me personally, it's such a small amount that it's not worth me having ugly URLs to do it... which is why I don't do it here). If you want every advantage you can get, you should throw keywords in your URLs. But for me... they are just too ugly to be done here.
     
    digitalpoint, Oct 19, 2005 IP
    eXe likes this.
  20. RectangleMan

    RectangleMan Notable Member

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    #20
    I just want to say I hate SEO. I hate it. I registered SEOSUCKS.com (currently a dead blog).

    Yeah I agree that you don't need to seo for google to find you.

    I also want to point out a couple things I notice with your phpbb forums.

    http://www.google.com/search?hs=JaT...q=site:bandofgonzos.com+subsilver&btnG=Search

    Your bandofgonzos.com has 253 pages CACHED in google with 36,000 posts. That forums index page is PR5.

    My phpbb forums PSPFORUMS.com has 10,400 CACHED with 100473 posts. My forum index is PR4.

    http://www.google.com/search?q=site...r&hl=en&lr=&client=opera&rls=en&start=20&sa=N

    So I have about 3 times your posts but about 50 times your cached pages.

    This would leave me to believe a couple things, such as google likes static pages over dynamic. While it might take note of the dynamic pages it doesn't seem to cache them well.

    Also google does have more of your pages indexed with 25,000 but I have 18,000. Yet I have more pages cached by far. Could you explain why this is if not simply the static links? Maybe I am missing something in this regard.
     
    RectangleMan, Oct 20, 2005 IP