Why does Google not like Xenforo Forums?

[JamesBrown]

When I copy a thread title that might be a good long tail search term and paste it into a Google search box I'm often disappointed to find that it's not returned with the relevance I feel it should have.

Often obscure and less relevant results are returned well above mine from wordpress sites with just 6 crappy spammy articles within. With a 12 year heritage, 150,000 URLs indexed I'd hope to feature higher in results, especially when searching for long tail terms, that exist on our site, are discussed in depth, tagged etc. But google would rather return a wordpress site no matter how crap the articles.

Using xF 1.5 out of the box, what could I be doing better to make Google look upon my threads with a little more fondness? I will be upgrading to xF2 later this year. Is the SEO in this any better than 1.5?

 

[MySiteGuy]

I have no issues with Google "liking" XF 1.x or XF 2. Everyone thinks their content should rank first, determine why those site's pages rank higher, and act accordingly.

 

[JamesBrown]

Everyone thinks their content should rank first, determine why those site's pages rank higher, and act accordingly.

While everyone would like their content to rank first, I don't think everyone thinks it should, most appreciate that the Google algorithm is complex and there are hundreds of things that might determine where in the results your content is returned. But all things being equal, Google does seem to downgrade forum content, even if it is more specific and complete. What specifically can xf forum owners do to make this better.

 

[ŽivaAkcija]

What specifically can xf forum owners do to make this better.

hire SEO experts or wait to someone release SEO add on!

 

[djbaxter]

This speaks for itself I think:

 

[frm]

This speaks for itself I think:

View attachment 192652

Those may be your results, as a result of preferring to see xF content over everything else.


However, those may not be @JamesBrown 's results, nor are they mine (though, I "cheated" by going incognito and used a VPN to really drive the point of tailored search results home):

 

[Mr Lucky]

This speaks for itself I think:

I think it may mean it's a Lon search with few if any competitors for the same search

 

[deslocotoco]

I don't have any issues with Google Search, my Forum is on the first page of results in my country. My only issue is the index system indexing even the profiles of the users.

BUT, AdSense is a major problem, not XF related. They flag everything with "forbidden content".

 

[shimspedy]

hahaha, I used to think so but sometimes it depends on how many times people search content related to your site the more they do the more you're likely to rank..

I'm not an SEO guru but i have been able to make my forum appear second or third even though is new... but this is dangerous as well if your site appears first position and your content are useless you're likely to be masked by google ...

 

[frm]

I don't have any issues with Google Search, my Forum is on the first page of results in my country. My only issue is the index system indexing even the profiles of the users.

I turned this off using @au lait 's SEO2. My site is fairly new, but I believe I have it set correctly by disabling member avatar/name links (they are plain text to guests, and I'm assuming robots too), but I take it a step further by noindexing/nofollowing the Members page.

My forum is fairly new so there isn't much indexed, but from what I can see, no member profiles are indexed. You may want to either give this add-on a try or to specifically code in a noindex/nofollow in the page_container with something like this (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, and also provide the templates for both members page and profile page to correct this as I'm new at XF conditionals):

<xf:if is="{$template} == '[MEMBERS_TEMPLATE]' OR '[PROFILE]'">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
</xf:if>

SEO (SEO2)

If you like this add-on, rate it. This helps others to make decisions. If you have any ideas or suggestions don't hesitate and write to me. DEMO Decide for yourself and effectively which content is indexed from the search engine. This happens...

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