Curating threads for better search engine results

[Stuart Wright]

All the forums I've seen have had examples of poorly titled threads.
For example, in a thread asking about a specific Panasonic TV, the OP created a thread with a title of just Panny Telly.
When indexed by Google, the above thread title does not contain the correct make and model of the TV he is asking about and has no useful information about the specific thread contents.
A much better title would be Where can I find the best price for a Panasonic GZ200 OLED TV?

Despite having a 'helper hint' above the thread title in the new thread form on AVForums, folks are still often lazy and colloquial when titling their threads.

Similarly, threads in the Panasonic TV forum, often do not contain the word Panasonic since there is context from the forum it is in. But this, of course, is not carried over to Google search results, where the lack of Panasonic in the title would likely significantly hamper a thread's discovery.

So I think editing thread titles to make them more meaningful - let's call it thread curation - is something that would significantly improve search results.
Does anyone agree with me that thread title curation is something that would (not could) significantly improve discovery of threads via search engines?
And this is an activity which should be considered?

Curating threads manually could potentially take a lot of time. Is there something we could do to automate the process?
Checking for spelling mistakes? Checking for missing relevant words (like Panasonic in the title of threads in the Panasonic forum)?

 

[AndyB]

Google selects best matches based on thread title and post content. So it's likely to not make any difference if you were to add the forum title to the thread title. I say this because typically the post content will already have the forum title as one of the words.

 

[Stuart Wright]

typically the post content will already have the forum title as one of the words

Sometimes, but not enough to make it reliable.
The thread title is significantly more important, though, because that is the page title and the H1.

 

[sbj]

Is there something we could do to automate the process?

Without custom development?

Force specific prefixes in specific nodes.

For example in your "Panasonic" node, force the prefix "Panasonic" so all threads in that node has this prefix. That should make the poorly titled threads at least "acceptable".

With custom development?

There are many things one could do which are semi-automated or automated to enhance content value.

I think at this point I am repeating myself over and over. One thing I always say is this: "Forums are a bad information saver. We need much better ways of saving information." So, imagine one would have a content system which would automatically categorize this thread to the term "Panasonic GZ200"... So the system would scan the post(s) in thread and look for keywords and save this thread under those keywords you set, such as "Panasonuc GZ200".

If the prefix system wasn't this clunky, one could actually have a "helper hint" for prefixes, where users (or mods) could save multiple prefixes suggested by the hint. But multiple prefixes are not possible, let alone a "hint system" for them. Also this would mean you could quickly have thousands of prefixes (for each TV model, just imagine). So the underlying core structure must be able to make this easy manageable in ACP, which right now would be a nightmare. It also doesn't need to be prefixes, it could also be suffixes (at the end of titles).

Endless possibilities. And for post content, the same system could be applied to custom thread fields.

 

[Alpha1]

You can also use thread fields for this.
Field 1 (Mandatory): Model

Then you have both brand and model. (you could also add a brand field for forums that are not dedicated to the brand.
And some selector for the type of query. This can be a prefix or field where the user can select 'price', 'issues' or whatever topic is common.

If you have all that data then it should be possible to add those things to the title.

 

[arn]

def agree. I get really annoyed when someone posts a title of "help" or similar. A very basic thing that would help is to require a minimum number of words. At least 3 words with a helpful error message would at least prevent the most obvious problematic posts.

 

[Stuart Wright]

This is going to require a custom addon or new tools in the core.

The most effective solution would be with manual editing of thread titles. That would require a list of threads (with hover showing first post text content as the thread list currently does) plus inline title editing. And so that there isn't duplication of effort, we need some way of marking the edited or accepted threads as 'OK'. When edited, we would need to send a predefined alert to the OP to let them know that the title has been edited for better search engine ranking. We would need specific title edit permission assignment to users to be able to edit titles. And then we'd need to find the personnel to do the editing.

Less effective, but more efficient would be some kind of automated system for improving thread titles.
Spell checking seems an obvious idea.
Maybe set up replacement strings for specific key words. E.g Panny -> Panasonic.
We could set up a system to have suggested key words for specific forums.
But for any possible corrections, would it need to automatically correct titles and/or suggest corrections to the OP before or after posting?

I think a combination of auto correction suggestion tools plus manual editing will be needed. This will cost money for the custom addon and probably the staff to do the manual checking/editing, but I'm convinced will be worth it,

 

[Alpha1]

What has helped me greatly in this regard is Post Guard Pro. It allows you to setup regex rules and error messages when those rules are met.
For example:

Less than X words	Your title is too short. Please write a descriptive thread title. Make sure it includes brand and model.
Contains 'help me'	Please write a descriptive thread title.
Contains multiple exclamation marks	Please remove multiple exclamation marks

And so on. It does annoy a few members, but if you tweak it carefully it will make a world of difference for your thread titles. You can do the same for problematic post content that frequently occurs.

@Yugensoft recently offered his addon for sale: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/offer-sale-of-ip-rights-of-all-addons.172008/
It seems that @wmtech may take those over.
Post Guard Basic is available here: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/post-guard-basic.5814/
It works well, but with Pro its easier to set up rules and error messages.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Contains 'help me'Please write a descriptive thread title.

The problem here is if somebody writes a title close to the usefulo one referenced in the OP

Help me find the best price for a Panasonic GZ200 OLED TV

 

[Alpha1]

Maybe change it to 'Help me now' or similar. We used to get about 15% of threads with only that in the title. We got rid of the problem through post guard.