Need SEO Opinions

ibaker

Well-known member
I have an aviation site and I think it goes without saying that Aviation is an extremely regulated industry and where forum posts of an incorrect nature can cause massive harm not only in safety but also in the potential of causing pilots to operate illegally in their own country as different countries have different regulations.

So, my current XF site is Australian based but with more and more global users arriving each day I need to modify the site in a way that will separate the forums into different countries and have specific location based menu tabs however, there are some categories in the Node List that are to be displayed in ALL tabs and some categories that are only displayed per specific menu tab.

One idea I have of being able to achieve this is by using "Styles" BUT I am after opinions on what impacts there may be, if any, on SEO and site rankings including duplicate content etc.

What I am considering...

I have categories that contain various forums/pages etc
Cat 1: General Forums
Cat 2: Australian Forums
Cat 3: UK Forums
Cat 4: Other Forums

1. Create different styles for each region (Australia, UK etc)
2. Remove the "Forums" menu tab by editing the navigation template
3. Using Jakes Nodes As Tabs, create main menu tabs for Australia, UK, USA etc (I think Nodes As Tabs maybe the best option to use in creating the tabs)...each tab will have its own sub menu the same as the default forums sub menu
4. Each Menu Tab will use the same Forum Display link as the default one, however each one will have a call to the specific Style to use i.e.
Australia Tab => Default Forum Display + Aust Style
UK Tab => Default Forum Display + UK Style
USA Tab => Default Forum Display +US Style
5. In each style, the node display template is edited to only display the specific categories for that region. NOTE, and this is the twist...Cat 1 (General Forums) and Cat 4 (Other Forums) are displayed in ALL regions. This means that I will have displayed to the user:
User selects Australia menu tab
- Cat 1
- Cat 2
- Cat 4
User selects UK menu tab
- Cat 1
- Cat 3
- Cat 4

So, I would very much like to hear opinions from anyone on if there are any SEO and search engine ranking impacts of doing the above...it is no good having a great site catering to everyone if no one gets to know about it.

As a side note, I have engaged Waindigo to create another mod for me and he advises that he has previously created another way to do it using sub domains as illustrated HERE however I just want to explore different options before I go ahead with anything. The benefits of using Styles are that you can also define different headers, graphics etc easily.

Thanks for your opinions
 
SEO is only a problem if the same content is accessible from multiple URLs. If different sections link to central content at one URL then there is no problem.

I like the idea of separating sections into different tabs. But when separation turns into formal partitioning (content hiding) it can require a lot of effort.
 
So Jake, in your opinion there won't be any impacts with what I am suggesting...Google etc bots will find ALL the content on my site ok?

The only question in my mind is multiple URLs for the same content which is considered to be bad. If there aren't multiple URLs for the same content then you are good.
 
Top Bottom