Google ranks with low PR URL's containing 'forum(s)'

A lot of discussion with no clear answers? :)
I'm not a SEO geek so I have no idea how things work. Shawn or other experts, should we have a /forums part included into URL or is optimal to define our own custom titles for forums, threads, etc.?
 
Floren said:
A lot of discussion with no clear answers? :)
I'm not a SEO geek so I have no idea how things work. Shawn or other experts, should we have a /forums part included into URL or is optimal to define our own custom titles for forums, threads, etc.?
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Shaun's (DP) answer was pretty clear about it...
digitalpoint said:
Absolutely incorrect. There *are* reasons why a forum would have lower PR than a non-forum page, but it has nothing to do with the URL.
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If you're concerned about Google News, which is different then Google SERP, then, yes, as I mentioned before you'll run into some issues with the out-of-the-box URLs.
 
Floren said:
A lot of discussion with no clear answers? :)
I'm not a SEO geek so I have no idea how things work. Shawn or other experts, should we have a /forums part included into URL or is optimal to define our own custom titles for forums, threads, etc.?
Click to expand...
It's all just personal preference really. I use sub-domains for my stuff simply because I think it's cleaner (it also makes moving parts of the site to a different server easier from a technical standpoint).

But having your forum at any of these is really just personal prefernce:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com
http://digitalpoint.com
http://www.digitalpoint.com/forums
http://imsupersweet.digitalpoint.com/and/i/like/really/obnoxious/urls/

Well, the last one is a little spammy, and Google might see it as such...

Best thing to do is just use common sense and do stuff that benefits your USERS. Google is about delivering quality results, and they have a lot of really smart engineers that work to figure that out. You don't need to do anything special... just build stuff for the user... the rest will come.
 
Sure I read that Google advised many years ago (not recently), that you don't use "forum(s)" as the boards folder name if installed in a sub-folder within your ROOT directory. I can't point back to it now, but like Floren I did read about it then and why I've always avoided using the name "forum or forums" as the folder name since, or including it in the URL address. Instead using "community" as the forums folder name, same with URL. Even Google if I remember right here, I'm going back some time when I saw this, must be more than 8 years ago. Did advice you use something like that instead if not installing the forum in your ROOT directly.

mysite.com/community/ "rather than" mysite.com/forum(s)/

I did read about this and it did come from Google saying pretty much what Floren said, 99% sure of that. And they would penalise your site for doing it. No idea why?
 
Kevin said:
Google News does not like "forums" but Google SERP has never had a problem with it. Before worrying about changing the route I would prefer seeing something from Google directly instead of hearsay. So far I'm not finding anything from Google about it.
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I couldn't find anything either, I should of scrolled down before wasting my time searching :p
 
I don't see any reason for why they would penalize it, and have never read anything about it. I doubt it has any effect apart from keyword ranking. The biggest problem as mentioned earlier is the high amount of links on forums, links should be reduced in number and should all be unique on the page.
 
Floren said:
A lot of discussion with no clear answers? :)
I'm not a SEO geek so I have no idea how things work. Shawn or other experts, should we have a /forums part included into URL or is optimal to define our own custom titles for forums, threads, etc.?
Click to expand...
There is zero penalty for having /forum/ in your URL.

People perpetuate nonsense, and the moment someone actually uses PageRank as their justification, is the same moment you should stop listening to them, as PageRank has nothing to do with rankings in Google today...

PageRank is nothing more than marketing nowadays... it has near zero influence on a pages ranking.

Go do searches for single words, then look at the results rankings and then the pages PageRank. You will clearly find lower PR pages ranking over higher PR pages. Why? Because PageRank is about 0.0001% of the factors contributing to a pages actual ranked location within SERP's.

Adding to the above. It is near impossible to control a forums thread pages ranking until the page is completed and posting has shifted to the next page.

Most sites literally have only a few primary keywords that are the difficult ranking ones. Those are typically the specific purpose of the site. Whilst those handful of terms may bring a lot of traffic, you can achieve more targeted traffic staying away from them and concentrating on forum pages themselves. Adjust thread titles to be specific, as users usually are not specific. That one change alone in moderation technique will progressively increase your forums traffic.
 
I don't know, as I stated before I know nothing about SEO. I don't understand then why Stuart said he needs to register the domain somenews.com, in order to avoid the forum keyword. He obviously does not pull this information from a sock.
 
A scene from my favorite movie, Revolver.

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"The bigger the trick, and older the trick, the easier it is to pull. Based on two principles. They think it can't be that old, and they think it can't be that big for so many people to have fallen for it."
 
Floren said:
... the domain somenews.com, in order to avoid the forum keyword. ...
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Is he trying to get his content into Google News (which, again, is different from Google SERP)? If yes, then it is because of what I mentioned before... that the requirements for Google News is specific and has its own requirements in order to be included. You won't find an out-of-the-box XenForo (or nearly any other out-of-the-box forum software) content page in Google News.
 
Our blog has been listed by Google News. Google News clearly mentions that URLs that have /forum/ cannot be accepted in Google News because the content on the forum isn't edited. A random poster breaking a news isn't 'authoritative' from Google's point of view. They only want to list the content that is edited. Google News blogs are manually scanned and approved by Google employees.

With that, I can tell you that PR is dead. Yes it is. The only trick to getting listed on the front page of Google (for forums) is this -
  • Write the titles that people would search for
  • Write relevant content and the text in your first post should at least be 250 words plus, with right information (read keywords).
  • It helps if another website has directly linked to the thread URL.
  • Your website is 'established'. Older the domain; the better are your chances of getting listed.
There might be a difference of opinion about my last point. Frankly speaking if I were to pick the most important points for being on the first page of Google results, then they'd be - 1. Proper Title 2. Content Rich post :)
 
PageRank is still relevant, just not the way it used to be. Google has made it more 'fair' for sites with lower PR and so has lowered the importance of PR in the last couple of years. But to say that it is now completely irrelevant is not correct. Incoming links are still needed and will show in the PR rating. On-page SEO is probably equally important though.
 
PageRank and inbound links have very little to do with each other. Again, go do a backlink search and you will find sites with more backlinks having a lower PR than sites with a few, and account for those links PR and you will see issues to many peoples theories.

PageRank, when in its prime, was a combination of many factors, not just links. Today, it is a small part of Googles algorithm and really an irrelevant aspect for ranking.

I spoke with an algorithm specialist a few years ago about PageRank, and even his own tests concluded it was dead. He could manipulate rankings with zero PR, just as the rest of us could, as a confirmation about it.

I can get a site to a PR6 or 7 with ease, yet it still has little rankings or traffic. It means absolutely nothing unless you're selling links to people who actually still think it means something for their rankings, or to advertisers period who actually think a link on a high PR page has any bearing nowadays... all based on half arsed perpetuated information that is 5+ years old and its day has well and truly come and gone.

Googles local search algorithm killed many a methodology long ago.

A single word is extreme luck... a two word phrase can be ranked on the first page with only one link... no PageRank nonsense needed. The problem is not getting it there, the problem is keeping it there based on further newer algorithms from Google, such as keeping fresh content higher in rankings than older, stale static content.

PageRank is for marketing purposes only nowadays, it has no bearing on ranking a page.
 
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