Lack of interest [Suggestion] Improve Search page SEO

[Ryan Kent]

The following page ranks #1 in Google results for the term "Tampa DJ": http://www.gigmasters.com/Search/DJ-Tampa-FL.html

It is a search page. What I notice is the following:

The page URL is much cleaner then XF search URLs:
http://www.gigmasters.com/Search/DJ-Tampa-FL.html
XF search URL for "dj tampa fl" = http://www.terapvp.com/search/830/?q=dj+tampa+fl&o=date

Their page has a unique description: "Browse and compare 131 professional Tampa DJs and DJs who will travel to Tampa to perform at your event."

Their page also has some unique (albeit keyword stuffed) content: "Please note these DJs will also travel to Lutz, Mango, Land O Lakes, Odessa, Seffner, Thonotosassa, Brandon, Oldsmar, Palm Harbor, Safety Harbor, Zephyrhills, Dover, Valrico, Clearwater, Gibsonton, New Port Richey, Riverview, Sydney, Saint Petersburg, Dunedin, Holiday, Plant City, Tarpon Springs, Crystal Beach, Apollo Beach, Elfers, Ozona, San Antonio, Durant, Crystal Springs"

Their page title: "DJ Tampa FL - Tampa DJ, Tampa DJs". The XF title: "Search Results for Query: dj tampa fl | Tera PVP | Tera fansite | Tera forums | Tera online"

In short, the example site has outstanding SEO established to optimize their page title, url and content. This allows their page to rank #1 on a competitive term, rather then having the page be in the middle of page 3. If XF could offer something similar it would be a big win for XF and all it's users.

 

[Ryan Kent]

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html

The basic message? Your URLs are not important provided they are functional and consistent.

XenForo provides human-readable URLs for the benefit of humans, not search engines.

Great! So take a look at the XF URL for a given search, and compare it with the other URL:

http://www.gigmasters.com/Search/DJ-Tampa-FL.html

XF search URL for "dj tampa fl" = http://www.terapvp.com/search/830/?q=dj tampa fl&o=date

Which URL would a human prefer?

When we are done going back and forth with the various sideline discussions the clear remaining point is....can XF improve upon the existing URL? The thread URLs are great. How about the search URLs being improved to match the quality of the thread URLs.

It's just a suggestion.

 

[Kier]

http://www.gigmasters.com/Search/DJ-Tampa-FL.html

...

When we are done going back and forth with the various sideline discussions the clear remaining point is....can XF improve upon the existing URL? The thread URLs are great. How about the search URLs being improved to match the quality of the thread URLs.

The page to which you link is not a search result at all, it is more akin to a forum, for which we already provide friendly URLs.

Further, if you change any of the parameters to the 'search', you will find that you get a far less friendly URL (http://www.gigmasters.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx?search=DJ-Tampa-FL), which does not in fact reflect the parameters used to generate the results - try linking to a search result sorted by 'pay range' on that site, so I debate whether it's actually good at all.

 

[James]

Guess I better go register free-viagra-buy-viagra.com and setup a /free-viagra/ with "kick-ass" content and I'll be #1

Thanks for the tip!

but seriously..

If you have sitea.com and siteb.com with the exact same content and same amount of links (that is key.. QUALITY LINKS) you might see a slight lead in the SERP's.. a very slight.

or you'd be penalised for being a content farm

 

[Floris]

SPACES

can't be linked

THIS_IS_A LINK

transforms to (by anything on the web)

[THIS_IS_A] link ..

You CAN enter spaces, but they are converted to html entities, changing say [space] to %20

so your search query will end up as

input "dj tampa fl"

output "%20dj%20tampa%20fl%20"

now, that's just f* ugly ..

Convert spaces to - (dashes)

dj-tampa-fl

i can totally read that.

And search engines completely understand these links, and humans too!

try it!

go to a browser and type in:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693961/Photo Jun 30, 6 13 15.png

xenforo would have changed the spaces to

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693961/Photo-Jun-30-6-13-15.png

your browser changes it to

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693961/Photo Jun 30, 6 13 15.png

I hope this explains that element of your argument a bit, apologies if i misunderstood the situation.

seo wise, search results are eh .. YOURS

can't really share those :]

 

[SheepCow]

Frankly most people seem to not know much about how search engines actually work. Forget about the SEO nonsense, just read how the algorithms actually work.

Remember, wing span is the most important feature -- higher wing span directly correlates to increased pecking speed.