Invision Community 4: SEO, prepare for v5 and dormant account notifications By Matt Monday at 02:04 PM
Jinkler Posted November 10, 2010 Posted November 10, 2010 I'm a bit perplexed by this. Why don't you use the robots.txt file that you provide for your own site? How do you know if it is working correctly, efficently etc, if you aren't using it yourself?
bfarber Posted November 10, 2010 Posted November 10, 2010 Because we don't feel it's necessary. The only reason we even include a robots.txt is because many of our customers do consider it important, so we built a basic one that covers most things that are important without going overboard. The robots.txt is evaluated on other third party sites by employees. A lot of the SEO talk that is spread around really doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. We don't use a heavy robots.txt, we don't sit and analyze Webmaster Tools for hours each day, we don't advertise, and yet our search engine traffic is just fine. :)
AndyF Posted November 10, 2010 Posted November 10, 2010 I think each site is going to want to configure (or not) a robots file to their preferences. I do applaud IPS in providing one with the board anyway as it is an ideal, sensible 'starting point' for those who wish to change it and it seems quite adequate for those who are not interested in such things too.
Jinkler Posted November 11, 2010 Author Posted November 11, 2010 It's an interesting viewpoint. I've been reading all the shenanigans recently about robots, and search engines etc, which lead me on to asking this question. Thanks :)
bfarber Posted November 11, 2010 Posted November 11, 2010 Personally I think too many people focus on the "little things" and end up missing the mark on what really matters.
Mike54 Posted November 11, 2010 Posted November 11, 2010 ...we don't advertise, and yet our search engine traffic is just fine. Incredibly cavalier reply there, Brandon. IPS doesn't advertise? How many IPB admins feel the copyright removal is too dearly priced and subsequently have a backlink to the IPS site, on every blinkin' page of their own sites? G'wan, tell me again how IPS doesn't advertise. I suspect if we all had so many backlinks out there, our search engine traffic would be just as fine.
AlexJ Posted November 11, 2010 Posted November 11, 2010 Personally I think too many people focus on the "little things" and end up missing the mark on what really matters. Because those too many people think, those things are important to promote there small little forums. Without correct SEO, our forums would be like beautiful island on some unknown galaxy :ermm: ..
.Ian Posted November 11, 2010 Posted November 11, 2010 At the end of the day unless you have content you can have all the SEO / robots.txt in the world and it will mean nothing.
Management Charles Posted November 11, 2010 Management Posted November 11, 2010 At the end of the day unless you have content you can have all the SEO / robots.txt in the world and it will mean nothing. That is what I believe Brandon was referring to. We see a lot of people go on and on about SEO but never seem to pay any attention to the actual content of their site.
Connor T Posted November 11, 2010 Posted November 11, 2010 Its funny that the people that are constantly tweaking or arguing some SEO problem never seem to have good placement. It seems the people that do absolutely nothing or don't care place better. I haven't done anything besides upgrade my IPB board and I think my Google placement is fine. If people just didn't change things so often, I believe their placement might be better.
bfarber Posted November 11, 2010 Posted November 11, 2010 At the end of the day unless you have content you can have all the SEO / robots.txt in the world and it will mean nothing. Indeed, as Charles mentioned, this is what I was referring to. I love hitting the first site in Google only to find out it's a link farm where the admin has spent more time figuring out what meta tags to use than typing the article that lead me to the site in the first place.
Guest Posted November 12, 2010 Posted November 12, 2010 Incredibly cavalier reply there, Brandon. IPS doesn't advertise? How many IPB admins feel the copyright removal is too dearly priced and subsequently have a backlink to the IPS site, on every blinkin' page of their own sites? G'wan, tell me again how IPS doesn't advertise. I suspect if we all had so many backlinks out there, our search engine traffic would be just as fine. Mike - I get what you mean, but trust me, having the backlinks we do is both a blessing and a curse. Our backlink profile is huge, but primarily they are unrelated to our site niche, which look suspicious to search engines. What Brandon meant in terms of advertising is that we don't do any traditional advertising. We don't run Adwords campaigns, banners, magazine ads, press releases, etc. Its funny that the people that are constantly tweaking or arguing some SEO problem never seem to have good placement. It seems the people that do absolutely nothing or don't care place better. I haven't done anything besides upgrade my IPB board and I think my Google placement is fine. If people just didn't change things so often, I believe their placement might be better. For me, the most important thing here is what I've made bold in this post. Regular updates are great, keep posting new content, new topics, etc. and post quality stuff regularly. BUT, regular *changes* are terrible - Don't start changing things after a day, a week, even a month, just because Google hasn't changed your rankings yet. If you change design, URL structure and so on too often, your rankings will drop, I guarantee it.
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