If you make categories and you don't make them to pages some strange things happens with the url it generates a . before the url.. I posted about it, people tend to want to argue rather then help to fix the issue! again, small SEO error but it is still there, takes hours for someone new to XF to sort this out.
You're confusing software with your input. They are not the same thing. Forum categories contain no substantial data equal to Google quality guidelines, therefore you are best not to even have them cached by Google, instead just followed to the thread content itself, being a forums primary content.
Titles are not software SEO, as titles are user generated content, as are posts. You can't SEO user generated content at the software level.
You're confused.
XF default software is about 90% there for ticking the primary software, out of the box, SEO requirements.
Moderators doing their job and changing thread titles to match what a user discusses, would suffice about 8%... but that has nothing to do with XF SEO. XF default has some minor issues IMO in the way both CSS and JS is output with a string, making it near impossible to correctly cache. XF default theme uses gradient images... lots of them, which is annoying for page requests, but otherwise not an issue. Using NGINX with ngx_pagespeed, gets you around all of this at the server. Add cloudflare if global and wanting added protection.
Most of the problem is when a user changes themes and adds add-ons. These two areas are where the most issues arise for bad SEO. Both are not XF default software though.
Again, a user problem, hosting choice and server setup. Performance is about 70% of SEO today. If you get every page loading in under 3 seconds on a mobile 4g connection, then you just nailed near perfect Google SEO for 2017.
I have client websites that I have built a single link to... just for the sake of it, with unreadable page or domain authority, out ranking highly optimised sites within their local audiences. Performance does that... spend just a little for amazing server performance (starting at US$10 a month), and you nail the majority of Google SEO for Xenforo.
Less is more with Google today. Google are just outstanding at matching irregular link building patterns now, knowing when you're buying links and when they're natural. Their algorithm has serious merit nowadays... its taken them a lot of years to get here... but they're seriously on the edge of some serious AI at work in what to rank, when, for who, and where.
There is a big difference in where you draw the line in saying:
- XF SEO, vs
- Admin / moderator / user SEO input.
Xenforo, nor the software, control what you do with it, your mods or how users interact with it, nor how you host it. Things that are being mentioned are at the admin / owner responsibility, not XF software out of the box.
Your site will naturally grow with posted content. If an SEO technique works for you, you will see a very clear and definitive correlation of where you implemented the technique, followed by steep increase in traffic that continues. Trending upwards is normal and expected, that is not due to SEO. That is due to a sites natural growth pattern, eventually tapering off because there is only so much potential traffic in any given market. Forever growth is not real... every niche has a cap that traffic will become steady and quite predicable.
