XF 1.5 How to get rid of /forum and /threads in URLs?

[Babak Ajideh]

Hello everyone,

I don't like to have these mandatory URL redirects on my board.
For some reason, I'm pretty sure that these will have negative impacts on SEO.
Does anybody have any solution?

Regards

 

[Chris D]

They're an essential part of the URL as it allows the request to be routed to the correct controller.

They have zero negative impact on SEO.

You can change them with Route Filters, but you can't remove them.

 

[Babak Ajideh]

Thank's for the fast response.

Let me show you how does these redirects have negative impact on SEO.

Check out this image please :

As you can see, google has not taken keywords in domain name, Even though this issue will have negative impact in SEO for all websites, that would be extremely bad for exact match domain names like mine (discus.fish which contains my 2 major keywords, the discus and the fish)

The issue is on forums and threads links and the home page does not have this problem anymore.

You can even see the same problem on your domain in google as well:

It has an obvious impact on SEO, I don't care about the redirects if there were no such issue but i have to solve this problem. As far as i know, non of popular scripts like wordpress or VB have such issue.

Just tell me what should i do to solving this problem?

Thank's again

 

[Paul B]

Just tell me what should i do to solving this problem?

As Chris has already explained, it isn't a problem and it is not possible to remove those portions from the URLs.

 

[Dakota Storm]

People worry far too much about seo these days. Just make sure you have plenty of quality and relevant content. That's all search engines really care about these days.

 

[Chris D]

In the example you have given, you are actually demonstrating one of the SEO strengths of XenForo.

The ones you have circled in red, are presented by Google differently than the ones you have circled in green. The ones in red actually are using the HTML5 microdata embedded in our breadcrumbs to add navigational context to the search results.

This is a feature of XenForo being appropriately used by a feature of Google to improve the richness and quality of the presentation of the search results. The fact that Google presents them slightly differently (i.e. doesn't highlight keywords within them) is likely as designed on their part but ultimately irrelevant.

 

[Mr Lucky]

It has an obvious impact on SEO, I don't care about the redirects if there were no such issue but i have to solve this problem. As far as i know, non of popular scripts like wordpress or VB have such issue.

Just tell me what should i do to solving this problem?

There is no problem here and no negative impact on SEO. When Google highlights search terms in a URL, it is for isplay purposes, it does not mean it actually used the URL for the search and based the results on search terms in the URL.

Modern SEO is based on the way Google works now. It is likely that Google used to search keywords in meta tagss and URLs, but has dropped that as it was easy for webmasters to optimise sites. Google now prefers good well written content so it is no longer easy to artificially manipulate search results by stuffing keywords in URLs etc.

Note that Google still often displays meta descriptions , i.e. "snippets", but it does not use those in the search either - they are purely to help the end user decide whether that is a good page or not.