SEO Optimizing
- Thread starter fredrikse
- Start date
Methodical
Member
Being new to XenForo, I'm interested in this as well.
Mouth
Well-known member
SEO is an unknown art, for obvious reasons. Thus, "optimised as it can be?" is a question with an unknown answer.
The general consensus is that XF provides very good SEO out of the box, and there's certainly no add-on(s) or changes specifically to improve it, or known to improve it.
The general consensus is that XF provides very good SEO out of the box, and there's certainly no add-on(s) or changes specifically to improve it, or known to improve it.
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
However there do seems to be issues. In Google Webmaster Tools, I get Google comparing about duplicate title/descriptions due to Resources and Resource discussion.
However SEO now is mostly about organic links and well written content, not something that can be easily manipulated anyway.
It may be very useful to get an addon such as @AndyB Similar Threads - look out for threads on exactly the same topic, especially with same title, and merge them.
I am also in the process of improving the user experience (good SEO) by clearing up dead links and many posts that are associated with dead links.
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fionix
Well-known member
This is the first mistake that 90% of webmaster do.. you need to get your forum optimezed for SEO unless you are one of the 500 of the largest forums around.
XenoForo has SEO issues that I so far haven't seen addressed anywhere, I'm looking at it manually for my forum. If you follow the comments from some people it's obvious they don't know or care about SEO at all.
use SEMrush and get your forum up in the 90% so you will see traffic comming to your forum, forget about SEO and you don't need to wonder why you will lose in the other end... a very good example of all of this is Vbulletin 5 connect, it's an nightmare and total SEO unfriendly script, the best is, the company behind it don't care!
CTXMedia
Well-known member
That's a very bold statement - especially as you don't back it up with any detail. What, specifically, are the issues with the XF forum software that you haven't seen addressed anywhere?
Please explain how using SEMrush helps (or fixes the less-than-apparent XF SEO failings)? At $70 per month for the entry-level service it is quite a considerable investment and would have to work miracles for me to consider using it. What does it do that is sooooo fantastic at getting your forum "up in the 90%" that it is worth such a cost?
fionix
Well-known member
SEMRush points out what is wrong with your forum and what and where you have to make changes so it get SEO friendly and SEO optimized. For instant has XF an SEO issue with the Title, there is nowhere (unless you hard code it) you can differ the front page title from the H1 Title - this is not good for SEO.
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.
There are no where you can setup the Title for the rest of the forum, XF concluded that if they put | Xenforo.com behind all title everything is fine.... this is a poblem because depending on how you make your forum categories etc. the META TITLE get's too long.
The list is going on and much of this is hard manual work when you don't know how to fix it and people seems not willing to help, because XF is already 100% seo optimized and SEO is nothing relevant to a website!!! similar statements I have seen here on the forum..
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.
There are no where you can setup the Title for the rest of the forum, XF concluded that if they put | Xenforo.com behind all title everything is fine.... this is a poblem because depending on how you make your forum categories etc. the META TITLE get's too long.
The list is going on and much of this is hard manual work when you don't know how to fix it and people seems not willing to help, because XF is already 100% seo optimized and SEO is nothing relevant to a website!!! similar statements I have seen here on the forum..
fionix
Well-known member
OHhh btw.... don't get me wrong... XF is outstanding compared to most of the other forum software I have seen.. I love it, it's awesome nothing wrong there.. but there are the small issues that I would have loved to get addressed and changed in new optdates or at least that someone build a SEO PLUGIN for XF even though they think it's not relevant at all.
CTXMedia
Well-known member
Nope, it's a simple template edit - see here: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/how-to-change-title-tag-for-home-page-only.51038/#post-546358 - the same technique can be applied for other pages too; just use multiple xenif's.
Why are you worried about the SEO value of categories? They don't have any real content and whilst the title may be somewhat useful for human visitors, Google isn't going to rank it because there's no content to judge it on. Check your analytics and tell me how many visitors come from search engines via your category URLs?!! None? Well there you go then.
I believe you can modify this too without changing the hard code (although I may be wrong, apologies if so).
Just be specific about what you want help with. The XF community is very supportive, but it will help a lot if you detail exactly what you are trying to achieve.
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
Nope, it's a simple template edit - see here: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/how-to-change-title-tag-for-home-page-only.51038/#post-546358 - the same technique can be applied for other pages too; just use multiple xenif's.
This is simple for developers and geeks, but not for normal people who don't have the ability or confidence to mess with templates.
This is why on other platforms, such as Wordpress, user friendly SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO do so well.
Isn't this exactly the point? If they were optimised better, then maybe there would be traffic.
fionix
Well-known member
CTXMedia
Well-known member
It's copy and paste - are you suggesting one needs a degree for that now? It couldn't be any simpler ...
No. You're missing the point. Categories are content placeholders. They define the content of the forums within them, but no amount of SEO optimisation is going to make people visit them or Google move them higher up their search results. They are, effectively, contentless.
Joeychgo
Well-known member
Why are you worried about the SEO value of categories? They don't have any real content and whilst the title may be somewhat useful for human visitors, Google isn't going to rank it because there's no content to judge it on. Check your analytics and tell me how many visitors come from search engines via your category URLs?!! None? Well there you go then.
Um.....
Most don't. Just one question.. When you refer to Categories, do you mean sub-forums? I assume you did since catagories are just a location of forumhome.
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CTXMedia
Well-known member
So what happens when you click on the category: Mopar For Sale Ads on the homepage?
Where does it take you?
What is the URL for this category?
What 'content' does this category have that you can SEO optimise?
Where is Google's index entry for this URL? ( Pop this into Google and tell what page the category URL appears on? - site:forabodiesonly.com "Mopar For Sale Ads" )
Anything? Nothing?
About the only thing you can do with Categories is add key words and phrases that are appropriate to your site / niche to improve your overall page keyword density.
But what do I know eh?! Good luck guys, you've obviously got all the answers.
Joeychgo
Well-known member
http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/#mopar-for-sale-ads.4
It consolidates one type of content, classifieds.
that's kind of the point. It should be better with SEO. On vb, such a page would be its own page, and allow much more customization for SEO purposes.
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
This is the whole point. It's not that great, therefore trying to make it better is surely a positive approach.
In Wordpress, category pages can be easily edited to add formatted content that is useful and informative for users and can give search engines plenty more content.
OTOH, if the category itself is inevitably useless - then it should be noindexed - again something that a user friendly SEO addon equivalent to the WP Yoast I mentioned would be ideal.
This reminds me of the flawed Logic used back in the early days of the internet. A university department said to me "why should we waste time on our web pages when all of our recruitment is by word of mouth?"
It took a few years for them to realise the reason they didn't recruit via internet searches was because all the potential recruits via internet were finding their competitors.
