Xenforo and SEO

[Pavle123]

Hi,

I installed XenForo yesterday. Its amazing.

However I would like to know what are the best practices when it comes to SEO?

Is there a addition or a setting where we can chose which topics can be indexed or not?

I would really like to hear what sort of things you guys do to make your forum SEO friendlier then it is by default.

My forum is new, so I want to do things right from start.

 

[ForestForTrees]

There are some great threads here if you search the forum. I find using xentag to be very helpful. I've written about it in other threads.

 

[Pavle123]

Thanks I checked it out, might be a good start.

How about additions that can help me index topics of particular length or only high quality topics?

Will google index members profiles and other stuff also?

 

[Carlos]

Thanks I checked it out, might be a good start.

Plenty of threads about this subject, you'll even find some of my posts that talk about it in detail. The SEO in xenForo is great out of the box. All you gotta do is apply a little SEO here and there and you're done. One of them is Social Media marketing, this falls under "Social SEO." Something that Google has begun taking in account: Your Social Media efforts. I also talk a lot about this, too.

I would really like to hear what sort of things you guys do to make your forum SEO friendlier then it is by default.

Friendly URL's. Many people have launched without friendly URL's, but most of the time if you want to catch keywords - friendly URL's are the way to go.

How about additions that can help me index topics of particular length or only high quality topics?

Just type the thread out, google loves high quality posts/topics, blog posts.

Will google index members profiles and other stuff also?

Yes, but for the majority of the time, member profiles attract spammers... so you're going to need to keep your front door closed tight. What I mean by this, is that xenForo now ships with CAPTCHA selection, StopForumSpam-like options, and so on. So, spend some time looking at registration options when you can.

 

[Paul B]

Friendly URL's. Many people have launched without friendly URL's, but most of the time if you want to catch keywords - friendly URL's are the way to go.

Implementing the Friendly URLs feature simply removes the index.php from the URL.

It has nothing to do with keywords.

Without FURLs: http://localhost/test/xenforo/index.php?forums/main-forum.2/

With FURLs: http://localhost/test/xenforo/forums/main-forum.2/

 

[Carlos]

Implementing the Friendly URLs feature simply removes the index.php from the URL.

Yes, I know this.

It has nothing to do with keywords.

Keywords are inside the FURL....

Without FURLs: http://localhost/test/xenforo/index.php?forums/main-forum.2/

With FURLs: http://localhost/test/xenforo/forums/main-forum.2/

What I AM talking about is when you turn off FURL's, your thread titles aren't even part of the URL. Kind of like how vBulletin was. I've been doing tests with FURL's, and without FURL's on both vB and xenForo. On vB, those without FURL's don't really succeed, in my opinion. Those with FURL's succeed provided that you work for it.

 

[Paul B]

What I AM talking about is when you turn off FURL's, your thread titles aren't even part of the URL.

Incorrect.

Once again, FURLs is only related to the index.php portion of the URL.

 

[Carlos]

Incorrect.

Once again, FURLs is only related to the index.php portion of the URL.

Why, then, when I turn off FURL's, I see only numbers in the URL?

EDIT: I just did a test on my newly launched board: http://www.blackops3forums.com/index.php?threads/1/

And this is only accomplished when I meticulously turn off:

- Use Full Friendly URLs
- Include Content Title in URLs

When I turn on "Use Full Friendly URL's" this is the result...

http://www.blackops3forums.com/threads/1/

But in general, this is called Friendly URL's...

http://www.blackops3forums.com/threads/welcome-to-black-ops-3-forums.1/

You'll see the reference used in wordpress quite a lot.

Now, can we move on?

 

[Paul B]

They are two separate options.

 

[Carlos]

They are two separate options.

View attachment 94317

I just... explained.

 

[Paul B]

I just... explained.

No, you didn't.
Your original statement was incorrect and your follow up posts also are.
You also edited your post above when I made it clear there are two separate options.

Once again, FURLs is only related to the index.php portion of the URL.
Nothing more.

 

[Jeremy]

You do not need to have full friendly URLs enabled to have content titles included in the URL. Full Friendly URLs only refer to the index.php? in the URL.

With it enabled on my site:
The URLs are:
http://film-students.net/threads/welcome-and-here-is-a-syllabus.238/#post-1307


Without Full Friendly URLs enabled:
http://film-students.net/index.php?threads/welcome-and-here-is-a-syllabus.238/



The content titles are still included and utilized. The only way to disable the content titles by disabling the second independent option.

 

[dutchbb]

My experience is that including content in the URL doesn't matter that much, as long as the URL is not dynamic or contains a lot of weird symbols it should be able to get indexed easily and rank high. What really matters is the title tag and the first content following the title tag. They have to contain the important keywords. Also use of basic HTML like <h1>, <strong> etc. and high code to text ratio. Of course it doesn't hurt to use keywords in the URL.

 

[Pavle123]

Thanks for the tips guys.

How about what to index and what to noindex? I havent seen such an option or a plugin that can noidex particular thread.
Would it help me rank higher if I index only topics with much content 2000+ words, and noindex irrelevant pages?

 

[TickTackk]

Oh no! Never do that. None of the search engine bots would index your content then.

Would it help me rank higher if I index only topics with much content 2000+ words, and noindex irrelevant pages?

No, not really. If it was that simple everybody would be at the top. Its not about the quality but about the quality. So If you follow this Quality > Quantity you should expect some growth but no like a super duper fast but slow growth.

 

[SelfSufficientMe]

Pretty much agree about length of posts vs quality as said above. However, it's got more to do with how relevant the content is than how long or good it is and also what the competition for the same info is like, plus lots of other variables many of which we don't know.

Some short posts on my blog rank high on search results and get good traffic and some 2000+ word articles do the same. But then some well researched and effort articles don't get much traffic at all whilst other short "gap fillers" suddenly do well!

Point is, yes always try to make good content but be careful when no-indexing content because you wouldn't want to kill off a potential traffic spinner

 

[Pavle123]

I am rereading this topic after a while. Unfortunately I have not listened to the advice about No indexing topics of particular length and it seams that forums did not do well in search. I used add-on by ******* called Advanced no index.

I would like to know what else should I do to improve my seo besides content. I am asking from technical side. Things such as best practices for indexing members profiles, robots.txt, sitemap? What should I index, what I should block, etc.

Can anyone help?

 

[m1ne]

I am rereading this topic after a while. Unfortunately I have not listened to the advice about No indexing topics of particular length and it seams that forums did not do well in search. I used add-on by ******* called Advanced no index.

I would like to know what else should I do to improve my seo besides content. I am asking from technical side. Things such as best practices for indexing members profiles, robots.txt, sitemap? What should I index, what I should block, etc.

Can anyone help?

No need to do anything with XenForo. Content is king and it always has been.

 

[rdn]

Din you guys dis allow /members/ from being index?

 

[Pavle123]

I would really like to know how do to that as well @RoldanLT.
I do not want to show members profiles in Google, it makes no sense in my opinion and it might be considered as junk or just thin content?
Anyone knows how to put rel noidex in members template, where to put them and which templates?