What is the status of making IPB better with SEO?

[Cyrem]

You're right, the image posted right above you is clearly photoshopped and I don't get thousands of visitors from Google every day.

IPS is responsible for ensuring your site has quality content and that you know how to properly optimize your own board.

I'd place a bet that this is a PEBKAC issue, and not an issue with IP.Board.

I love sarcasm :smile:

I love how webmasters think that just because they aren't winning, SEO is bad.

I love how every webmaster thinks they are an SEO pro.

I love how people think SEO is the magic answer to everything.

I love how webmasters only care about Google. When did you last complain about your Bing or Yahoo rankings?

[Rhett]

Content is KING, and it always will be! :)

[Matt]

We monitor and improve our "SEO" related functionality with every major release. For example, here's a recent blog entry, and other entry, and another, and another, and another and another.

[.Ian]

I am finding no issues with SEO or listings on Google - although I have no idea why Google lists pages on page 2 or 3 within 5 minutes of me creating them!

Something must be working well behind the scenes to assist Google in listing them so fast.

Of course we all want to be listed on the first page, but unless your content is good for the search request, it never will be.

[Makoto]

I chose a domain and site name I knew I could easily dominate, and that I knew would still offer me a good bit of publicity at the same time.

Hence, the main keyword that gets me thousands of daily visitors is the keyword in which I'm listed second on Google. Just bellow Wikipedia. My site is also listed three times in a row under that keyword.

[CSSlife]

So why then do I have high rankings? I'm only beaten by the company that makes the software program my site supports and Wikipedia.

3DKiwi

The only reason it's showing you up there on the 1st page is because your logged into your google account and because google's rankings are now influenced by the sites you +1 and visit on a regular basis, the search results will change depending on those variables. So that screenshot only shows what the rankings look like through your google account.

Now try a proxy like http://hidemyass.com and search for cinema 4D... or go on incognito mode on chrome and search for it. And your site is noewhere to be found ;)

[3DKiwi]

The only reason it's showing you up there on the 1st page is because your logged into your google account and because google's rankings are now influenced by the sites you +1 and visit on a regular basis, the search results will change depending on those variables. So that screenshot only shows what the rankings look like through your google account.

Now try a proxy like

http://hidemyass.com

and search for cinema 4D... or go on incognito mode on chrome and search for it. And your site is noewhere to be found ;)

Interesting. Thanks. I'm on page 2 using this proxy site searching for "Cinema 4D" but still page one searching for "C4D". I can live with these rankings.

3DKiwi

[Makoto]

The only reason it's showing you up there on the 1st page is because your logged into your google account and because google's rankings are now influenced by the sites you +1 and visit on a regular basis, the search results will change depending on those variables. So that screenshot only shows what the rankings look like through your google account.

Now try a proxy like

http://hidemyass.com

and search for cinema 4D... or go on incognito mode on chrome and search for it. And your site is noewhere to be found ;)

Regardless, my site is still well listed on Google. Many others here have stated they're producing good results as well. So it is not

clearly an underlying problem with IPB that noeone wants to admit to.

If you notice that another piece of software does things a different way, a way that seems to produce more favorable results, you're welcome to post those methods here.

But just saying "well because on my personal experience, clearly IP.Board has issues and you need to fix them even though I don't know what the issues are" is not going to get you anywhere.

[Rimi]

Kiri-kun to be fair your keyword is not something that most people would dedicate an entire site to...

Your site is very very very niche. I bet a blogspot site could get equally high ranking with that word since it's just not a common word.

Alternatively my site ranks pretty high when you Google hsdk forums or kenichi forums.

[.Ian]

The only reason it's showing you up there on the 1st page is because your logged into your google account and because google's rankings are now influenced by the sites you +1 and visit on a regular basis, the search results will change depending on those variables. So that screenshot only shows what the rankings look like through your google account.

Now try a proxy like

http://hidemyass.com

and search for cinema 4D... or go on incognito mode on chrome and search for it. And your site is noewhere to be found ;)

I tried my site using a proxy using various key words, and on every keyword we were on the first page, except one where we were on the second page. On our main keywords we were above other sites including wikipedia and the BBC.

However I am wondering if our results are being driven mainly by our use of IP.Content rather than the forums. I have for a long time considered the forums to be secondary to the site - sure they get people posting, but often it is the pages that contain content that get's the guests viewing, which hopefully in turn will get them to sign up for the forums.

I am not saying I have it correct though, as I think I can improve upon my results, but that will be through adding more data, more content and therefore more food for the search engines.

[Makoto]

Kiri-kun to be fair your keyword is not something that most people would dedicate an entire site to...

Your site is very very very niche. I bet a blogspot site could get equally high ranking with that word since it's just not a common word.

Alternatively my site ranks pretty high when you Google hsdk forums or kenichi forums.

I can't really argue against that, you're pretty much right.. but I don't mean for my site to be the shining example.

I designed my site to be niche based, and it has generally worked out well for me. It produces favorable results (for me) and I've never paid to advertise my site anywhere. All my traffic has been viral and search engine based. It's not a lot of traffic, but it's free traffic.

I consider content more important than anything. I think IP.Board's system should be efficient enough to allow most to prosper, that's basically the sum of what I'm meaning to say. I don't believe IP.Board has any true fallacies that are catastrophic to the search engine ranking of websites as was seemingly implied.