XF 2.1 Wordpress or Addon for home page?

[Jon12345]

My forum is in a folder called forums, with Wordpress in the root domain. Is this the best combination? Can they integrate well together, or should I be looking at some other combination?

 

[djbaxter]

There's really no content to your WordPress site in the root. It's not helping you at all re: SEO or anything else really.

If it were me, I would delete the WordPress site and move the forum to the root of your domain. Much more content for Google to index there.

If you want some sort of home page other than the forum index page, you can create that in Xenforo but don't repeat the mistake of the WordPress home page. Give it some meat and make sure it enhances the forum in search.

 

[hemant_bhardwaj]

My forum is in a folder called forums, with Wordpress in the root domain. Is this the best combination? Can they integrate well together, or should I be looking at some other combination?

I am agree with @djbaxter if you only using wordpress for home page or landing page then i will suggest you to move the xenforo to maina and kick out the wordpress. and make some same type of home page in xenforo and with some dynamic content of forum.


Regards
Hemant Bhardwaj - Xenbros

 

[Jon12345]

The website I am referring to is not The Mind Tavern in my signature, it is www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/

I do not want to move the location from the forums folder because I have over 11K incoming links to content in the forum.

 

[djbaxter]

Ah okay. Well my advice still stands for https://themindtavern.com/community/

For http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/ the main (root) WordPress site does have some content and SEO value. You could set that up as a Xenforo page if you want or leave it as it is. Either is fine.

Moving the forum to the root would not lose those incoming links as long as you have the correct redirection set up in cPanel or in .htaccess. Anyone clicking on the /forum/URL link would automatically be redirected to the /URL location.

But for that site I would recommend you just leave everything as it is.

 

[Jon12345]

301 redirects lose you a little link juice. Site traffic is already down after switching from vBulletin. I don't want to risk any more relocation changes.

The content on my Wordpress section is, frankly, rubbish! The theme itself is not mobile responsive either. It was set up a long long time ago, back in the days when life was simple!

When you say you could set up a Xenforo page, do you mean you can do that for the root, despite Xenforo living in the root/forums folder? I wonder if there are any Xenforo Wordpress kind of plugins or bridges. I've thought about having the homepage as a list of forum statistics, like latest threads, most popular posts etc. Not sure how easy that is.

 

[djbaxter]

301 redirects lose you a little link juice. Site traffic is already down after switching from vBulletin. I don't want to risk any more relocation changes.

No really that's not true. There are a lot of persistent myths about Google Search which go back to the 90s. Some are no longer true and some were never true.

The content on my Wordpress section is, frankly, rubbish! The theme itself is not mobile responsive either. It was set up a long long time ago, back in the days when life was simple!

When you say you could set up a Xenforo page, do you mean you can do that for the root, despite Xenforo living in the root/forums folder? I wonder if there are any Xenforo Wordpress kind of plugins or bridges. I've thought about having the homepage as a list of forum statistics, like latest threads, most popular posts etc. Not sure how easy that is.

No. If the WordPress site is outdated and not responsive, then duplicate the content you want to keep in a Xenforo page in the same folder as the forum.

Then I would delete the Wordpress site and move Xenforo to the root with 301 redirects in place. You may see a bit of a dip in traffic from those incoming links until Google catches up with the redirects but it will recover.

If you're Wordpress site is not mobile friendly, arguably that may be a significant factor in the loss of site traffic too. If you don't want to follow my recommendations, at the very least find a new responsive Wordpress theme and overhaul that site dumping outdated content. By now, the site is probably a security risk among other things.

 

[Jon12345]

I found this source handy:

Redirects: How To Use, SEO Impact & Types (301 vs 302)

A redirect sends users (and search engines) to a different URL from the one they originally requested. 301, 302, and meta refresh redirects are the most common. There are several ways to set up redirection, read more to see which is right for you.

moz.com

It suggests 90-99% of link juice transferred. i.e. not all of it. You lose a little.

Hardly anybody goes to the homepage on my site. It is all about the forum. But I want to keep the site nice and clean in Google's eyes, so I get a great mobile usability status.

 

[Jon12345]

As a sidenote @djbaxter, you seem super-helpful to users on this site. Always posting to give advice!

 

[eL_]

We all appreciate @djbaxter advice.

 

[djbaxter]

I found this source handy:

Redirects: How To Use, SEO Impact & Types (301 vs 302)

A redirect sends users (and search engines) to a different URL from the one they originally requested. 301, 302, and meta refresh redirects are the most common. There are several ways to set up redirection, read more to see which is right for you.

moz.com

It suggests 90-99% of link juice transferred. i.e. not all of it. You lose a little.

Hardly anybody goes to the homepage on my site. It is all about the forum. But I want to keep the site nice and clean in Google's eyes, so I get a great mobile usability status.

Honestly, I follow several major/popular SEO sources regularly and Moz is among three to which I give very limited credence. Google spokesmen have themselves cast shade on some of the Moz claims. In the case of that specific resource, the document is not even dated. Was it written yesterday? or 15 years ago?

Here is a recent (2019) article on the top from ahrefs:

301 Redirects Explained: How They Impact SEO

Learn how to make 301 redirects work for you and not against you.

ahrefs.com

Before 2016, if you used a 301 redirect to redirect one page to another, there was some loss of PageRank along the way. How much? That’s debatable, but 15% seemed to be the general assumption. It’s also the range Matt Cutts, Google’s former Head of Webspam, alluded to in this 2013 video:

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Sidenote. Matt didn’t actually say that 301 redirects lost 15% of PageRank in that video. That was just the figure he used as an example. However, it’s the number that most SEO professionals seemed to run with for quite a few years. That’s likely because 15% also relates to the “damping factor” in the original PageRank patent.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume that the number was 15%.

Here’s how that would play out:

Simple 301 redirect: domain.com/page‑1 → domain.com/page‑2 = 15% loss of PageRank

301 redirect chain: domain.com/page‑1 → domain.com/page‑2 → domain.com/page‑3 → domain.com/page‑4 = 38% loss of PageRank!

However, Google changed its official stance on this matter in 2016:

Gary "鯨理／경리" Illyes @methode

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30x redirects don't lose PageRank anymore.

275 7:59 AM - Jul 26, 2016 · Zurich, Switzerland

So, in 2019, if you redirect domain.com/page1 to domain.com/page2, the redirected page should have just as much “power” as the original page. That’s a BIG deal, and it’s part of the reason 301 redirects can be so useful for boosting organic traffic.

 

[Jon12345]

Yes, I am aware of the chained redirects not having an impact. I used to be an internet marketer as a living you know!

If page1 redirects to page2, then there is no loss of power, unless that is the only redirect, in which case there is a loss of power.

I am assuming the moz comments to average out at roughly 5% loss of ranking power. However, 5% loss does not necessarily represent 5% loss in rank. If you have for example 100 people neck and neck, losing 5% could potentially take you from 1st to 50th!

I will check the ahref link, thanks.

 

[Jon12345]

I am trying to look at everything from a user experience point of view nowadays. If you have a 301 redirect, there is a slight delay, and this degrades user experience somewhat. That is why I believe Google would a apply a small penalty. Also, if the url looks different to the url someone clicked on, that is also a subtle degrading of the user experience.

 

[eL_]

Remapping the links manually won`t be a big deal I suppose.

 

[djbaxter]

Yes, I am aware of the chained redirects not having an impact. I used to be an internet marketer as a living you know!

If page1 redirects to page2, then there is no loss of power, unless that is the only redirect, in which case there is a loss of power.

I am assuming the moz comments to average out at roughly 5% loss of ranking power. However, 5% loss does not necessarily represent 5% loss in rank. If you have for example 100 people neck and neck, losing 5% could potentially take you from 1st to 50th!

I will check the ahref link, thanks.

Also remember that PageRank, while still a ranking factor, is only one of more than 300 ranking factors (and climbing). Losing 5% could also potentially take you from 1st to 1st.

 

[djbaxter]

Remapping the links manually won`t be a big deal I suppose.

But it is a PITA if there are more than a few.

I have never not seen any major lasting negative impact of a 301 global redirect in a very long time.

 

[Jon12345]

I've lost about 20% of my traffic. I am hoping that it slowly recovers. All the signals in Google Console are better: more mobile friendly pages, I now have a sitemap(!), coverage is up (although I suspect some of that is the 301 duplicates, which are being excluded).