New Seo Update Suggestion

[Rimi]

We already did that in 3.4 :smile:

Profile links were removed in 3.3 even.

[Wolfie]

Can you try to elobrate sub menus idea a bit further so i can respond after i fully understad what it means.

To give a quick example, take the current list of feeds on this community. All of the Bug Tracker feeds grouped into Bug Tracker. So if you want to use a feed in the bug tracker, you navigate to that and see what's available. I'm sure if the devs were to implement menuing within the list of feeds that they could do something more amazing. Think in terms of the ACP menus, where it branches off into submenus.

[Rod.]

We already did that in 3.4 smile.png

Nice! :)

IPB is by far the best product out there. If you guys can truly bake SEO into your product, you will certainly jump ahead of the competition even further. Keep up the great work!

[Wolfie]

IPB is by far the best product out there. If you guys can truly bake SEO into your product, you will certainly jump ahead of the competition even further. Keep up the great work!

This post reminded me of something.

Why not just do something similar to what CSEO did? I never personally used it but from what I understand, it allowed you to alter the URL structure from within the ACP, so that the furlTemplate files weren't needed. Benefit to doing it in the ACP is that it could withstand upgrades, where as a file gets overwritten and any changes made are lost. Another benefit is that those who feel the default structure IPS provides isn't satisfactory, then they can more easily make the changes and then leave it alone knowing that things are set the way they want and upgrading won't undo it.

[GreenLinks]

Nice! smile.png

IPB is by far the best product out there. If you guys can truly bake SEO into your product, you will certainly jump ahead of the competition even further. Keep up the great work!

Maybe we should add a very important notice also. What ever SEO implementation IPB implements to their default style , it is simply not going to be enough to become the ultimate SEO . Because SEO is not one time thing , there are many other factors that effect SEO rankings. Webpage loading speed , stability of servers , security issues etc.. tons of things effect your rankings. Some people will focus on every area , some will choose to invest less. That's why on page SEO will never be enough and there is honestly no way to proove anything when the discussion topic is related to SEO

[Rod.]

Again, as long as IPB builds the structure, it's up to us to ensure we keep up with additional SEO techniques. IPB isn't going to build a be-all end-all to SEO, but just bake in the basics. Link backs, content, site speed, timeouts, etc all factor in.

[Makoto]

Maybe we should add a very important notice also. What ever SEO implementation IPB implements to their default style , it is simply not going to be enough to become the ultimate SEO . Because SEO is not one time thing , there are many other factors that effect SEO rankings. Webpage loading speed , stability of servers , security issues etc.. tons of things effect your rankings. Some people will focus on every area , some will choose to invest less. That's why on page SEO will never be enough and there is honestly no way to proove anything when the discussion topic is related to SEO

This was one of my main points. People shouldn't except everything that works for one site to work for others. In the end, IPB needs to provide a good basic structure for people to build on. I've seen so many stupid and wild theories over time that it makes me grow a detestment to anyone who even mentiones SEO. It's like people who somehow manage to run a large website get such an immensely fueled ego that they have to brag to the world and act like they know everything and don't need to prove a single thing they say because their success is "evidence" enough. Not just here, of course, but in general.

However, regardless of all this, you seem to have provided some good information, and you also support simple optimizations over these wild theories and want to make it easier for the admin to optimize their forums themselves, instead of expecting there to be some magical solution that will make every IP.Board forum rank #1 on Google.

So I hope you don't find anything I've said as an attack or insult.

I also like Wolfie's suggestion. The fURL templates really aren't that hard to edit once you understand how they work, but that's obviously not the best solution available.

[Rimi]

So after talking to a friend I decided to actually read this thread. One thing that stuck out to me was someone saying that the header html should be moved below the content and placed above the content via css. I'm wondering if Google might penalize for that...and if not what if one day they decide to? That would suck don't you think? Buuut Googles own guidelines from what I recall say to have small headers and put focus on content right? I think I read that somewhere...so I doubt they'd do that. But if they were to factor that into the algorithm one day then that would be pretty bad for everyone here. Just something to consider...

I also want to mention that IPS focuses a lot on balance. Again going back to that same change of moving the header and repositioning with css, and also using html5 to section off the site...those are skin changes and skinners hate significant skin changes like that. So there's a give and take to be aware of in your suggestion...Again I'm only focusing on that one.

[blair]

Why not just do something similar to what CSEO did? I never personally used it but from what I understand, it allowed you to alter the URL structure from within the ACP, so that the furlTemplate files weren't needed. Benefit to doing it in the ACP is that it could withstand upgrades, where as a file gets overwritten and any changes made are lost. Another benefit is that those who feel the default structure IPS provides isn't satisfactory, then they can more easily make the changes and then leave it alone knowing that things are set the way they want and upgrading won't undo it.

CSEO delivered measurable results. As vBSEO did. The problem with vBSEO (and any SEO add-on) is that anyone can easily download it and see what it does. vB "allegedly" did this and rolled the best features of vBSEO into vB4. I've spoken to some large vB site owners of vB3 +vBSEO. When they upgraded to vB4 less vBSEO they saw no impact. No doubt why vBSEO hasn't had a major update in a long time.

To their credit, or discredit IPB did not reverse engineer CSEO (despite my efforts). There are certainly lessons to be learned. As Wolfie pointed out custom FURL options are one of them. It's not make or break, but pretend you have a site that deals with file names in the title. The current url would be ...homeworkdoc, when ...homework-doc would be more relevant. An option to change would be welcome.

P.S. To those who have sent me personal messages, no I won't share the other forum software that increases traffic. I'm bound by agreements, and I'm not a lawyer. Not to mention this is not the appropriate venue. However, it is public information and you could probably deduce it with some research.

P.P.S. Just took a 'quick' look at the 3.4 preview, and it looks much improved. Not sure if it applies to the rest of the suite.

[esquire]

This was one of my main points. People shouldn't except everything that works for one site to work for others. In the end, IPB needs to provide a good basic structure for people to build on. I've seen so many stupid and wild theories over time that it makes me grow a detestment to anyone who even mentiones SEO. It's like people who somehow manage to run a large website get such an immensely fueled ego that they have to brag to the world and act like they know everything and don't need to prove a single thing they say because their success is "evidence" enough. Not just here, of course, but in general.

Understand where you're coming from. I've got a great deal to learn and spent a long time recently trying to understand why some of these so called SEO experts recommend what they do. In many of these places it's unfortunately many people using the little knowledge they do have to sell stories of alleged successes at high prices to those more uninformed. But if you're fortunate to be around some truly brilliant folks, they begin to make recommendations that help you provide, as you say, a great "basic structure" to build sites that makes sense every time you build a site. I'm constantly learning all the time and just wanted to share the little I know that made sense every time I build a site.

For example, the proper and consistent URL structure I asked about. There isn't any reason why each section of a site shouldn't behave consistently the same. For example, IPB in root install. If I'm in the /downloads/ directory, all the action for downloads happens there. Any users could go to /downloads/ and get to the downloads front page. So what if you are in a search engine and go to a thread - you'll see /topic/1234-topic-name appear. Going to /topic/ does not bring you to the forum root. You have to somehow know go to /forum/ which disappears when a topic appears. (And how would a user know whether it's forum or forums or talk or board, etc.?) Then you have IPC which has a useless slug that you'll need to assign a page to in order for it to have meaning. mysite.com / gets you a home page. mysite.com /content_marker/ gets you to a redirect out of the box because IPC doesn't know what to do with that URL since it's just a marker. How is a search engine or any user supposed to know this? I'd want to use that slug for a purpose, e.g. as a portal page that gets served if it's needed at all. (I gave a different suggestion about marking content databases, such as defining each marker for each IPC database in a config file, may not be able to be added at this stage.)

I agree - whether the numbers go before or after a topic name is a matter of preference and guesswork as to may be what is more efficient. But while nobody can prove to you that any search engine will rank a site better by having a consistent directory structure, I think it is very logical to infer that if humans will have a hard time with the inconsistencies, a machine that doesn't understand "context" like humans do will probably fare even worse.

However, regardless of all this, you seem to have provided some good information, and you also support simple optimizations over these wild theories and want to make it easier for the admin to optimize their forums themselves, instead of expecting there to be some magical solution that will make every IP.Board forum rank #1 on Google. So I hope you don't find anything I've said as an attack or insult. I also like Wolfie's suggestion. The fURL templates really aren't that hard to edit once you understand how they work, but that's obviously not the best solution available.

It seems that everyone appreciates each poster's best intentions for the success of the collective group of IPB forum owners and not just individual victories. I'm grateful that nobody closed this thread since it has produced some great stuff from people far more knowledgeable than myself - and glad to see Charles pipe in to let us know they are monitoring and working in sync with all of us to help make for the best product they can make. Completely on board with Wolfie's suggestions as well and am very optimistic overall.

[Makoto]

I can say one thing I've always wanted to be able to do was tweak the fURL's for IP.Downloads.

I have a category for videos and games, as an example.

Instead of using a URL format such as /files/file/123-foogame, I'd like to have something more along the lines of /games/download/123-foogame and /videos/download/321-foovid.

Of course this raises problems with the actual download URL for files, but I'm not entirely sure if it really matters whether or not the direct download link to a file is friendly or not. That probably shouldn't even be displayed to SE's. But the title is simple more relevant. What do people who want to download foogame search for? foogame download or even possibly foogame game download. But as it is now, it doesn't seem realistically possible to try and hack in dynamic URL's like that.

[Wolfie]

For example, the proper and consistent URL structure I asked about. There isn't any reason why each section of a site shouldn't behave consistently the same. For example, IPB in root install. If I'm in the /downloads/ directory, all the action for downloads happens there. Any users could go to /downloads/ and get to the downloads front page. So what if you are in a search engine and go to a thread - you'll see /topic/1234-topic-name appear. Going to /topic/ does not bring you to the forum root. You have to somehow know go to /forum/ which disappears when a topic appears. (And how would a user know whether it's forum or forums or talk or board, etc.?)

So what you're saying is, to have something like this?

somesite.tld/forums/123-abc/
somesite.tld/forums/topic/8675309-jenny/
somesite.tld/files/
somesite.tld/files/666-evil/
somesite.tld/files/file/321-contact/

Or like this?

somesite.tld/forums/123-abc/
somesite.tld/forums/123-abc/topic/8675309-jenny/
somesite.tld/files/
somesite.tld/files/666-evil/
somesite.tld/files/666-evil/file/321-contact/

But while nobody can prove to you that any search engine will rank a site better by having a consistent directory structure, I think it is very logical to infer that if humans will have a hard time with the inconsistencies, a machine that doesn't understand "context" like humans do will probably fare even worse.

Keep in mind that computers don't really 'think' but go based on what they are programmed to do. So they can look for patterns and find patterns faster than a human and can also retrieve data more accurately. I get what you're saying, but just because a human might have a hard time with something doesn't mean that a computer would. If it's designed to handle those 'hard times' then it won't have much of a problem with it. Just thought I'd point that out.

I can say one thing I've always wanted to be able to do was tweak the fURL's for IP.Downloads.

I have a category for videos and games, as an example.

Instead of using a URL format such as /files/file/123-foogame, I'd like to have something more along the lines of /games/download/123-foogame and /videos/download/321-foovid.

Unless you're going to have something like /games/forums/ and /games/blog/ then wouldn't it be better to do /download/games/ and /download/videos/?

P.S. To those who have sent me personal messages, no I won't share the other forum software that increases traffic. I'm bound by agreements, and I'm not a lawyer. Not to mention this is not the appropriate venue. However, it is public information and you could probably deduce it with some research.

If you're talking about MS forums, then I'm sure I know what site you're talking about. But since you're in an NDA, you wouldn't be able to confirm if I'm right or not.

[esquire]

So what you're saying is, to have something like this?

somesite.tld/forums/123-abc/
somesite.tld/forums/topic/8675309-jenny/
somesite.tld/files/
somesite.tld/files/666-evil/

.....

Keep in mind that computers don't really 'think' but go based on what they are programmed to do. So they can look for patterns and find patterns faster than a human and can also retrieve data more accurately. I get what you're saying, but just because a human might have a hard time with something doesn't mean that a computer would.

If it's designed to handle those 'hard times'

then it won't have much of a problem with it. Just thought I'd point that out.

Yes for the most part. Another good example is getting /forum/members/ to just be /forum/ and /members/ no matter where you install as they are members of all IP applications. I agree with you about computers not having a hard time - but as you said, "If it's designed to handle those hard times." We have no idea whether Google, Bing, Yahoo, Dogpile and any other search engine programmers included in the algorithm information how to specifically identify IPB sites as well as (i) what IPB FURL markers are for IP Content and how to treat them or (ii) that members don't belong just to the forum but to all applications. Without specific direction, the algorithm will use whatever generic rules it has to apply and it's anyone's guess as to the result. Given that IPB has within it's power to control how URLs and FURLs are created, why not move the system towards something that even a child can understand and take most of the guesswork out of the search engine to figure out how IPB works specifically? Can't guarantee any results but certainly seemed to me to be a prudent approach.

[Wolfie]

Yes for the most part. Another good example is getting /forum/members/ to just be /forum/ and /members/ no matter where you install as they are members of all IP applications.

That actually boils down to be a 'server related' issue, in that the admin is deciding where to install the core product. To have /forum/ and /members/, they should install to the root and not to /forum/.

[Aiwa]

That actually boils down to be a 'server related' issue, in that the admin is deciding where to install the core product. To have /forum/ and /members/, they should install to the root and not to /forum/.

This is exactly what i've said before...

We all know there is a major difference between a /folder and a /furl...

I'm not familiar enough with rewrites to know if you can strip a /folder out of a URL and proceed with a /furl after...

This really only becomes an issue when you use a product other than IP.Board... If you are using IPC, Blog, or Nexus and want a community focus, I see making those the default app and installing in root the best option...

[Wolfie]

I'm not familiar enough with rewrites to know if you can strip a /folder out of a URL and proceed with a /furl after...

It can be done, either by editing the templates file or via .htaccess, but why bust your chops trying to re-invent the wheel but doing it in a much more difficult way? That's how I look at it. Setting a different app as the default is also another issue to consider, as you pointed out. So yeah, more trouble than it's worth, definitely.

[esquire]

That actually boils down to be a 'server related' issue, in that the admin is deciding where to install the core product. To have /forum/ and /members/, they should install to the root and not to /forum/.

Thought of that too but here's the complication - stock install then put the forum in the /topic/ directory instead of the /forum/topic/1234-my-thread-here or /forum/topic-123-my-thread-here etc. It took me a long, long time to just figure out how to change the system - with many thanks to you guys and Marcher. Then there was changing the very bad IPC URLs that eventually I could shorten by making IPC the default application. (I'm still not sure why I can't change my home page to a static page and get my articles to show using the articles template.)

I guess the point is that what many would consider a very common install is a ton of work out of the box that involves some very funky and undocumented furlTemplate.php modifications even if you install board in the root. Wolfie - I agree with you. It all can be done but out of the box it Shouldn't be this hard.

[Wolfie]

Thought of that too but here's the complication - stock install then put the forum in the /topic/ directory instead of the /forum/topic/1234-my-thread-here or /forum/topic-123-my-thread-here etc. It took me a long, long time to just figure out how to change the system - with many thanks to you guys and Marcher. Then there was changing the very bad IPC URLs that eventually I could shorten by making IPC the default application. (I'm still not sure why I can't change my home page to a static page and get my articles to show using the articles template.)

I think you're getting confused.

If the forums app adds 'forum' to all the URL's, then there wouldn't need to have some parsing to strip 'forum' from the URL when viewing members because it wouldn't be added to begin with. That would only be an issue if someone installs everything to a folder named 'forum', then they would have '/forum/members/' and such. It can be confusing at first but once you figure it out it's relatively simple to know the difference.

So, for an app to always have something as part of the URL that is unique to that app (forums, members, gallery, etc), then adding to the URL for the function being used (topic, image, profile, etc), that's not all that hard to do and depending on what the developers think, might be worth adding in as the default. So if you installed the software to the root of the site, you'd have somesite.tld/forums/topic/123-hello/ and somesite.tld/members/profile/666-demon/ as URLs. But if you install to a folder named 'forums' then you'd have somesite.tld/forums/forums/topic/123-hello and somesite.tld/forums/members/profile/666-demonas URLs. First one is easy enough to setup, the second would be an issue caused by a bad decision on where to install the software.

[blair]

Holy crap, I just realized who "Sjv" is. Missed your sig before. Welcome to IPB Mert! I see they've given you a special red badge, I hope they gave you the number to the red phone as well.

I've been absent from IPS for a while, as I had planned migrating to another platform. Long story short, it didn't work out, and I'm hoping to stay with IPB. I have to say I'm really impressed with the improved quality of the community since I've returned. IPS has always been receptive of input, especially regarding SEO. It's refreshing to see some new people who really know what they are talking about. This is very encouraging.

@ Wolfie no matter what you think of vBulletin, vB3 + VBSEO is probably the golden era of forum SEO. They enjoyed a huge SEO advantage that really hasn't been equalled to date.

[Matt]

Thanks all for the suggestions so far.

Please understand that if we don't implement a suggestion it's likely that we're waiting for 4.0 to make larger changes. I want to build 4.0 from the ground up with SEO at its core. I want to overhaul the way we route links and allow for better customisation. I want to rewrite the templates to ensure we're using best practises, etc. There's quite a lot we do want to do for 4.0 so please keep the ideas coming.

[Tsvi]

Thanks all for the suggestions so far.

Please understand that if we don't implement a suggestion it's likely that we're waiting for 4.0 to make larger changes. I want to build 4.0 from the ground up with SEO at its core. I want to overhaul the way we route links and allow for better customisation. I want to rewrite the templates to ensure we're using best practises, etc. There's quite a lot we do want to do for 4.0 so please keep the ideas coming.

Is there a chance that in 4.0 you'll stop using tables in your templates and change everything to DIVs ?

That would be great. Because it's just the standard today ;)

[bfarber]

Is there a chance that in 4.0 you'll stop using tables in your templates and change everything to DIVs ?

That would be great. Because it's just the standard today

I don't necessarily agree with this personally (a table is still very much a valid semantic HTML tag when displaying tabular data), however the exact specifics of every tag we will use in a new skin we haven't developed yet hasn't been determined just yet. :)

[Rimi]

According to Bing the fact that the Board Index doesn't have an h1 tag is a big deal. Just contributing.

EDIT: :) I might also add that both Xenforo and Vbulletin have h1 tags on their board indexes. I wonder how significant this is? :)

[NewRockRabbit]

I want to build 4.0 from the ground up with SEO at its core. I want to overhaul the way we route links and allow for better customisation. I want to rewrite the templates to ensure we're using best practises, etc. There's quite a lot we do want to do for 4.0 so please keep the ideas coming.

Thank you Matt - I think this is my all time favourite IPB post ever - can't wait for 4.0 (and thank goodness we've moved away from the stupid and pointless 'IPB SEO is crap / brilliant' debates we used to have in the past).

[NewRockRabbit]

According to Bing the fact that the Board Index doesn't have an h1 tag is a big deal. Just contributing.

EDIT: I might also add that both Xenforo and Vbulletin have h1 tags on their board indexes. I wonder how significant this is?

Any chance this could be added to IPB 3.4 - perhaps with H1 text being editable via ACP?