SEO

[Durango]

Hi

We just noticed a problem

All topics have titles like this :

"Title of topic - Forum name - Community name"

thats much too long ! we should be able to customize this to have only :

"Title of topic" for example

This is much better from a SEO point of view, as Google will only take into account the keywords of the defined title of the topic, and not of the rest

How can we do that ?

Tx

[Durango]

Any SEO on the forum ? this is very important for all of us !

[Jim M]

An optimal tag length is between 55-60 characters as Google shows this in results but the way the title tag is formatted (e.g. Title, Subject, Website name), this is ideal to search results and is alright if it is over the optimal limit as the Title is still the main object you want to show in search results.

Having the other items in your title will actually help some of your SEO as keywords may be associated between. Example title for a car community: "A/C Compressor Issue - Mechanical Questions - Chevy Enthusiasts"

Title of Topic: A/C Compressor Issue
Forum: Mechanical Questions
Community name: Chevy Enthusiasts

The above may catch a search strings of "Chevy Cobalt A/C Issue", "Chevy A/C Question", etc..

There is currently no penalty for having a long title to my knowledge.

[Durango]

Hi Jim

As a SEO, i admit adding the "brand" at the end of the title may be considered as a "plus" by some SEO, like Moz

The brand (the forum name in our case), is ok but the subforum name is too much in my opinion as sometimes subforums names can be very long

Some titles would be :

"After you know who your competitors are, mine their SEO data easily - Advanced Local SEO Competition Analysis - Invision Power Services"

That is far too long, this would be better :

"After you know who your competitors are, mine their SEO data easily - Invision Power Services"

Thats Moz recommendation

Another problem with this would be duplicate content, i mean not the page content in itself but too similar titles because of short topic titles :

like those ones for instance :

 

"Hello - Advanced Local SEO Competition Analysis - Invision Power Services"

"SEO - Advanced Local SEO Competition Analysis - Invision Power Services"

"Bug here - Advanced Local SEO Competition Analysis - Invision Power Services"

 

At least we should be able to choose this, as the title in SEO is a key part of a SEO strategy

in the admin we should be able to configure this, the same way there are so many SEO plugins for wordpress for example All in One SEO it is possible to configure this way :

"%post_title% - %blog_title%"

Moreover some people would also prefer to add their own words like this :

"Topic title - IPS super SEO Forum"

instead of the website name

 

 

[genrobgen]

I hacked our IPS 3 installation to give us the SEO page titles we want, for reasons similar to those given by Charlie above.

I haven't gotten around to doing it since upgrading to IPS 4, but I do plan to.

It would be nice if this were a standard setting instead. Not essential, but would be nice.

[Durango]

So agree

Any update about this ?

[Durango]

We have made tests about this and we saw a real difference in SEO

I am a SEO myself, Titles are very important in SEO, if not the most important

Have very long titles and then you will lose a great part of your SEO accuracy

A simple example :

Topic : Cheap airplane tickets to Thailand for August 2016

Forum : Tips and tricks to travel around the world

Board : Maxitrip online Community

 

IPS title gives : Cheap airplane tickets to Thailand for August 2016 - Tips and tricks to travel around the world - Maxitrip online Community

 

This is a real problem

 

it should be :

IPS title : Cheap airplane tickets to Thailand for August 2016

or :

IPS title : Cheap airplane tickets to Thailand for August 2016 - Maxitrip online Community

[sudo]

Having the *brand* part is imo even too much, I would use titles only.

[opentype]

I think no one can say how these titles ultimately “should be” created. Opinions vary and what might be right for one site or one section of a site might not be ideal for another. 3.4 had the option to construct custom titles in the conf_global.php. I am not aware that this is still possible in 4.x. If it would return or someone would tell us how we can do it already, we wouldn’t need such SEO discussions. 

[Durango]

@opentype Youre right, no one has the truth in SEO

but most SEO would tell you Google only takes the 60 first characters and the brand so better to make it short & accurate rather than too long & less accurate

@ZeroHour There is a huge debate on this, but many SEO think Google will give more visibility to sites showing their brands in title, maybe because it is a quality signal