IPB 3.0 and SEO

[SkyDivingServices]

Hello,

i am just curious, why you don't add an option to automaticaly generate sitemap for forum. It would be a large step in SEO optimization for forums, also it would speed up forum indexation.

Also i am interested, why you guys doesn't provide an robots.txt, which would block dublicate content, and things which would be no reason to index?

And finally, why don't you rewrite all urls in friendly style, if i have checked option for Friendly Style in ACP?


P.S. I am sorry for my grammar.

[MarkJW]

I agree with this.

[Schemata]

I agree it would be awesome to have intergrated SEO tools. Not sure if it would be easy to make our own robots.txt file or anything, but too bad its not included. :(

[dr. Jekyll]

Totally agree with you.

Google has an express requirement for sitemaps. This is the third generation of IPB and we still doesn't have a site map included.

Invision is any longer a freeware and must be ready just out of the box it's not acceptable that we must hope that somebody will develop a mod to made something that should be standard in any good CMS as for example it is in Word Press.

[Matt]

How on earth would you create a sitemap file for a board that had thousands of topics? I know that most search engines accept multiple site maps gzipped but it's a lot of overhead considering that on a busy board you'd have to re-create the sitemap every few hours to make it relevant.

We will include a sample robots.txt file with the next release.

[dr. Jekyll]

[quote name='Matt' date='10 June 2009 - 06:06 PM' timestamp='1244649972' post='1808820']
How on earth would you create a sitemap file for a board that had thousands of topics?

As did CheetarShrk HERE for IPB 2.1.7 (never update since) and Minerva Seo HERE for IPB 2.3.6

The sitemap limit is 50.000 URL of course, but can be made several sitemap one each for posts, topics, members, calender, blog, gallery and download

[Will Munny]

[quote name='dr. Jekyll' date='10 June 2009 - 04:00 PM' timestamp='1244649627' post='1808817']
Google has an express requirement for sitemaps.

Nonsense. Google only state that a sitemap will assist in the discovery of pages that are buried deep in a website.

Re: SEO... the IPB developers have always been resistant to making basic search optimisation tweaks. The new IPB 3 is a big step forward, thanks largely to a lot of customer nagging. A sitemap would be nice.

I personally choose not to rewrite URLs because my dynamic URLs have always ranked very well and the risk of redundant or broken re-written URLs is still too great IMO

If you're looking for a robots file, here's mine (from my IPB 2.6 installation with a couple of tweaks for IPB 3 and does not take re-written URLs into account)...

User-agent: *

Disallow: /forum/style_images/

Disallow: /forum/lofiversion/

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=idx

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Login

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=rssout

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Search

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Shoutbox

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Reg

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Msg

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Mail

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Forward

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Track

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Post

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=post

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Print

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=ST

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=boardrules

Disallow: /forum/?act=boardrules

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Help

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Stats

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=stats

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Members

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Online

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=calendar

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=SR

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=SF

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=ICQ

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=MSN

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=AOL

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=AIM

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=SC

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=task

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=findpost

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=UserCP

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=usercp

Disallow: /forum/index.php?&act=

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=report

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=buddy

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=legends

Disallow: /forum/index.php?CODE=

Disallow: /forum/index.php?automodule=blog

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=attach

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Attach

Disallow: /forum/index.php?&&CODE=

Disallow: /forum/index.php?&debug=1

Disallow: /forum/index.php?act=Profile

Disallow: /forum/index.php?showuser

Disallow: /forum/index.php?s=

Disallow: /forum/index.php?autocom=shoutbox

Disallow: /forum/index.php?autocom=rssr

Disallow: /forum/index.php?autocom=chatsigma

Disallow: /forum/index.php?autocom=chatpara

Disallow: /*&view=getnewpost$

Disallow: /*&view=getlastpost$

Disallow: /*&view=old$

Disallow: /*&view=new$

Disallow: /*&view=getfirst$

Disallow: /*&view=getprevious$

Disallow: /*&view=getnext$

Disallow: /*&view=getlast$

Disallow: /*mode=linear

Disallow: /*mode=threaded

Disallow: /*mode=linearplus

Disallow: /*&st=0

Disallow: /*&p=

Disallow: /*&pid=

Disallow: /*&gopid=

Disallow: /*&hl=

Disallow: /*&start=

Disallow: /*&showtopic

Disallow: /*autocom=gallery

Disallow: /*reportimage

Disallow: /*postcomment

Disallow: /*forum/index.php$

Disallow: /*forum/index.php?$

Disallow: /*forum/index.php?showforum=2$

Disallow: /*forum/index.php?showforum=83$

Disallow: /*app=

Disallow: /*module=

[tenaki]

Hi I have used rss feeds as I saw google accept these. So I set up an rss feed for the main forums and submitted those, Anyone see any drawbacks with this? I assume google will carry on searching the rest of the board anyway

[ikillbill]

we are having the same issue
Google used to crawl lo-fi version very well and we put adsense on lo-fi version
on IPB 2.3.6 , google gvae us 4000 impressions/day on lo-fi version
on 3.0.5 , only 250/day!!

[madLyfe]

friendly URLs would be sweet.. "http://www.exampleblogpost.com/2009/03/17/happy-st-patricks-day/" for example..