Ideas and SEO Tips that will speed up your Community

[SeNioR-]

Hi, I didn't find a similar topic so I decided to create one. These are ideas and seo tips that will speed up your community. First, thanks to @Adlago for your effort and contribution to improve IPS.

Topic will be updated on a regular basis.

1. Images 

a). keep your images on subdomain; use CDN (Content Delivery Network) if you can.

Explanation: https://www.semrush.com/blog/must-know-seo-practices-for-content-delivery-networks-cdns/

b). change size of default letter avatars to 80x80 (max 150x150) 
- the default size is set to 500 pixels (sic!)

Explanation: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/441642-generate-profile-photos/

2. Sitemap

a). add your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing - Webmaster Tools. (Optional: Yandex, Baidu)

Explanation: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/442742-large-community-you-have-a-problems-with-sitemap/

3. Robots.txt file

a). Make sure you have this file.
b). Add link to your sitemap file and disable subfolders that you don't want to be indexed.
c). Check out my optimized robots.txt file for IPS 4.2

Explanation: 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/438911-robotstxt-ipboard-4x/?do=findComment&comment=2699582
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/428706-when-google-index-topic/
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/423233-i-advise-you-to-remove-share-by-email/
https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/8608-robotstxt/

3. PHP Version

a). change PHP version to the latest one if you can. (IPS work well on PHP 7.1. I am not convinced to 7.2) 

Explanation: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/442321-php-720-released/

4. Updates

a). Update your Applications, Plugins, Themes, Script on a regular basis.

b). Don't use outdated Applications and Plugins on updated script. This leads to many system errors.

5. Archiving Tool

a).  reduce the size of the database table storing posts. Archive topics with a lot of posts that are not used.

Explanation: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/437997-mass-remove-topics-for-better-performance-bad-idea/

6. Bots

a). Stop spam bot registration. Use Google Recaptcha. / IPS Anti-Spam 

Explanation: 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/443416-contact-us-spam-e-mails/
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/372907-stop-the-spam-guide-to-stopping-spammers/

7. Secure your community with SSL Certificate 

a). SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral.

Explanation: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/360704-full-ssl-support/

8. Choose www or non-www version

a). make sure you have a htaccess redirection.

Explanation: 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/367687-important-seo-step-that-is-often-overlooked/
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en

9. Make sure your content is valuable.

a). it is better to have less topics but more meaningful than many worthless, useless topics.

Explanation: 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/358727-content-is-the-key/
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/358006-three-important-things-for-your-website/
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/360480-treat-your-members-well/
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/358046-less-is-often-way-more/

b). make sure that the content is visible to guests; check guest permissions

Explanation:
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/440056-422-recommend-quick-audit-of-your-guest-permissions/

10. Userful Online Tools

TinyPNG - compress images
The W3C Markup Validation Service - html errors
PageSpeed Insights and pingdom - website speed
GTmetrix, Dareboost and SeoSiteCheckup - website analysis
Majestic and SEMSTORM - backlinks

Things that must be introduced / corrected:

a). compress HTML output code and reduce size of HTML (remove blank empty lines)

Explanation: 

b). better seo for the user profiles page.
- missing important meta tags like description and keywords
- make the profiles without content not indexed.

c). make the tags indexed too (after optimization for seo) also why two different url show the same results?
https://nophelet.com/tags/śęąż/ - special chars
https://nophelet.com/tags/seaz/ - without special chars, same results.

d). less JS files. 

e). option to remove special characters and CAPS from url (eg. ĄĘŁŹŻĆŁÓÇÃ)
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/417653-how-to-remove-special-characters-from-the-tags/

f). option to delete old reported content
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/443519-option-to-delete-old-reported-content/

 

g). limit post size (helps stop spamming)
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/420254-limit-post-size/

h). option to set the maximum number of topics in forum
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/435970-allowed-threads-to-create-in-specifics-forums-by-one-user/

i). profile field per gorup (I know there is a plugin but it would be good to introduce it to the standard)

j). option to use signatures by days since joining and at the same time approved items

k). extra option (only for PM) to groups tell user can't edit own Private Message. Now we can set only for all content like Topic etc..

l). tools to prevent create multi accounts. search engine to find multi accounts and merge it fast.

m). add google rich snippets 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/418376-how-add-google-rich-snippets-to-ipb-4/

n). member list 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/407488-where-is-the-members-list/

o). seo friendly url to groups like /group/ips-staff/ 
https://invisioncommunity.com/search/?type=core_members&joinedDate=any&group[5]=1

p). larger font for mobile devices

[Adlago]

Install this tool in your Chrome browser. You will find many truths about your site.

 

[Sheffielder]

This is my ROBOTS.TXT file

Would I be better off swapping it out to the one in the O/P above?



 

User-agent: *
User-agent: *
Disallow: /forums/admin/
Disallow: /forums/cache/
Disallow: /forums/converge_local/
Disallow: /forums/hooks/
Disallow: /forums/ips_kernel/
Disallow: /forums/retail/
Disallow: /forums/public/js/
Disallow: /forums/public/style_captcha/
Disallow: /forums/public/style_css/
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=core&module=task
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=core&module=usercp&tab=forums&area=forumsubs
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=core&module=usercp&tab=forums&area=watch&watch=topic
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=forward
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=members&module=messaging
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=members&module=chat
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=members&module=search
Disallow: /forums/index.php?app=members&module=search&do=active
Disallow: /forums/index.php/forum/4-the-dressing-room/
Disallow: /forums/index.php/forum/26-the-dugout/
Disallow: /forums/index.php?&unlockUserAgent=1
Disallow: /*app=core&module=usercp
Disallow: /*app=core&module=usercp
Disallow: /*app=members&module=messaging
Disallow: /*&p=
Disallow: /*&pid=
Disallow: /*&hl=
Disallow: /*&start=
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: /*&view=getnewpost$
Disallow: /*&view=getlastpost$
Disallow: /*&view=old$
Disallow: /*&view=new$
Disallow: /*&view=getfirst$
Disallow: /*&view=getprevious$
Disallow: /*&view=getnext$
Disallow: /*&view=getlast$

 

[SeNioR-]

@Sheffielder you have a 3.x IPB? My robots.txt file is for IPS 4.2.x

[SeNioR-]

Updated to things that must be introduced 

r) prevent to submit new topic twice (like new reply)
https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/7942-prevent-double-submission/

s). get image from post to og:image tag
https://ipsviet.com/topic/59512-ipsviet-image-meta-tag-102/

[opentype]

On 14.2.2018 at 3:31 AM, SeNioR- said:

3. Robots.txt file

a). Make sure you have this file.

I would disagree with that absolute statement. 

Quote

b).  disable subfolders that you don't want to be indexed.

Why? 
This is actually bad advise. System folders that don’t get called with HTML content aren’t indexed anyway. You are only exposing to the world what system folders you have, which actually achieves the opposite of what you claim. You make them easier to discover and scan. 

[Sheffielder]

21 hours ago, SeNioR- said:

@Sheffielder you have a 3.x IPB? My robots.txt file is for IPS 4.2.x

 I have 4.2.x

Is mine (above) out of date?

[opentype]

Yes. You could just delete the robots.txt. 

(And no, I don’t advise you to just copy over someone else’s robots.txt.)

[Sheffielder]

 

hmmmm

I'm going to delete the robots.txt in that case

Is there any ideal replacement I could use?

[opentype]

32 minutes ago, Sheffielder said:

Is there any ideal replacement I could use?

No. 

There is no “standard” robots.txt, that makes sense for everyone. If there would be, IPS would include it. 
You don’t need a robots.txt – unless you run into crawling/indexing problems specific to your site, which cannot be solved another way. And in this case you add a specific rule for that problem alone. 

[Sheffielder]

Got you - thank you

I really have no real idea what I'm doing on this one so will try and find a dummies guide ha ha

[MADMAN32395]

On 2/24/2018 at 3:34 AM, Sheffielder said:

Disallow: /forums/admin/

I always thought it was bad practice to have ACP listed in robots?

[Surendra.S]

thank you for the tips.

[Black Tiger]

Thank you very much!

 

A bit old topic, but maybe the robots.txt might be updated for 4.4 as I'm getting these kinds of crawl errors:

ignore/?do=ignore

settings/?do=toggle

/discover

I presume they just can be added like this?

[opentype]

2 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

ignore/?do=ignore

settings/?do=toggle

/discover

Instead of blocking it, I would check what is going on there and possibly fix the root of the problem. /discover is a regular page guests can access, unless you deliberate remove permissions, in which case crawlers hitting an error is totally fine. The other two sound like member links, which bots shouldn’t access to begin with. But I don’t know the details about where those links occur. 

[Black Tiger]

I indeed disabled the search for new posts, so the /discover for guests.

As for the other two, they were generating crawler errors, like this:

Googlebot for smartphones found an increase in authorization permission errors on https://www.satellitefun.org/

So I opened the report and then all these crawl errors. Some are linked from the old forum, but some are from the new forum like this one:

https://www.satellitefun.org/ignore/?do=ignoreType&type=signatures&member_id=1&csrfKey=ea3c353dc6c89ea13c5ec358638f512f

When I click this, I get some error notice about a CRSF security key? Error 2S119/1.

When I look at the "linked from" it gives these pages:

https://www.satellitefun.org/forums/topic/11660-is-er-een-altenatief-voor-janlul/?tab=comments#comment-74150

and

 https://www.satellitefun.org/forums/topic/11660-is-er-een-altenatief-voor-janlul/?tab=comments

Which are old topics, but these are already in the new forums.

Could be this is because I still had the old sitemap.xml present and coudn't remove that in the new search console, so had to switch to the old one to remove that. Looks like things are slowly getting better now.

 

As for the /settings it's like this:

Quote

Googlebot couldn't crawl your URL because your server either requires authentication to access the page, or it is blocking Googlebot from accessing your site.

Linked from:

https://www.satellitefun.org/forums/topic/919-re/

Looks like Google is trying to access signatures in the profile or something, but guests do not have profile access, maybe that is the reason?:

https://www.satellitefun.org/settings/?do=toggleSigs&csrfKey=3f49aa4fdb5e56f5b0df4a4d6051e4a5&ref=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2F0ZWxsaXRlZnVuLm9yZy9mb3J1bXMvdG9waWMvOTE5LXJlLw==

 

I made a screenshot of them from the old console.

[opentype]

25 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

When I look at the "linked from" it gives these pages:

https://www.satellitefun.org/forums/topic/11660-is-er-een-altenatief-voor-janlul/?tab=comments#comment-74150

There is indeed a problem there. Guests shouldn’t see those ignore signature links. That’s worth fixing. Maybe a theme issue?

Both errors are caused by the same problem by the way. 

[Black Tiger]

I can't even visit that link you gave. I can visit until janlul/

So like this:

https://www.satellitefun.org/forums/topic/11660-is-er-een-altenatief-voor-janlul/

if I punt that ?tab=comments etc. behind it, then my url changes liket his:

https://www.satellitefun.org/forums/topic/11660-is-er-een-altenatief-voor-janlul/?%EF%BB%BFtab=comments#comment-74150

So I don't see any ignore stuff there.

Can't be the theme either, because the theme is just a copy of the default theme and only colors are changed via Admincp.

Could these be caused by the fact that my forum is converted from SMF and I previously had my SMF forums in /forum/ and this is renamed now so redirects will work, but I only removed my old sitemap.xml today, which I forgot.

So shortly said, could this be caused by old indexing?

[opentype]

20 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

So shortly said, could this be caused by old indexing?

No. It’s because member-only links are shown to guests. If you can’t figure out the cause, a support ticket with IPS should help. They can easily replicate that by visiting the links you provided. 

[Black Tiger]

I've only seen this in the old webmaster tools, after calling for a automatic check. Not seen it in the new search tools. But I don't see messages there either.

I've no idea which member-only links you're talking about, but I will send in a ticket, I'm sure they now what you mean.

Thank you!

 

[opentype]

7 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

I've no idea which member-only links you're talking about

These. 

None of them can work for guests/bot. That’s why you get those crawl messages. 

[Black Tiger]

Ooooh... oke now I see what you mean.

That is indeed very strange, I don't even have a signature settings part in the guest members group, only in normal member groups. So this is nothing I can fix myself.

I've already put in a ticket.

 

[Black Tiger]

@opentypeIt was confirmed as a bug and will be fixed in a future version.

Maybe you can help me with this too? Google found this on error:

It was a thread with at the end:

?do=findComment&comment=68603

When I put this into my browser, this will become:

?tab=comments#comment-68603

And then I understand why Google has issues, because ?tab=* is present in robots.txt from the first post.

Should ?tab=* indeed be in the robots.txt? Causing "indexed but blocked by robots.txt" under Coverage. Or should this be removed?