Even more Search Engine friendly mod_rewrite

trc4949
As far as I know google didn't highlight words in the url of a dynamic website until the last couple of months or so. Also, it seems it will only highlight keywords when the website is well established (eg. has enough original content, good pagerank etc.). I do search positioning and think keywords in the url make up maybe 0.005% of the total quality score. In addition, when you try to put too much keywords, the effect is just the opposite.

Sites with a commercial license can remove the link: http://www.minibb.com/paid_support.html

Hey Tom,

But you said you use keywords within your urls of your forum installation?

Any chance I can get this script from you or the instructions on how to do it...

Or maybe I can pay someone to do it..

Tom

I'm not good at scripting... - but I think one of the miniBB authors should be able to help you for a fee (you can contact them online).

I accept polishforums.com site has an officially approved commercial license and has agreeement to remove the copyright. I also accept keywords in the url make up maybe 0.005% of the total quality score ;-) I like the word "maybe" in that case.

What you can notice in search results on mentioned term, is that the first link even doesn't contain the whole phrase "polish singles" nor in the title, nor in the URL itself. Polish Forums result contains it in both title, URL and the description. Why do you think is that? Don't you think it proves, that Google doesn't pay attention to the URL at all?

Exchanging information with one of our customers, I've got informed about the following: if you change the title of some topic, your "alphabetical" mod_rewrite URL needs to be changed, too, doesn't it?

So, it's not the best for Google or any other SE, because that way, you need to keep old URL for some time somewhere, and redirect SE to the new one, if old URL is typed.

A LOT of job for the script and resources - but if you have only numerical mod_rewrite URL, like we have by default, nothing needs to be changed. Just an another argument that there are more minuses, else pluses!

keywords in url do not help at all for google. what DOES help, is making links with keywords in it. for example

NO --> http://something.com/keyword
YES --> <a href="http://something.com/keyword">KEYWORD</a>

The words other sites use to make a link count for search engines, but not the URL itself. So, if you make a word in a sentence that is a link, and this word is a keyword, that will count. Most web sites will link to other sites using keywords, not writing out the actual url like <a href="http://something.com/keyword">http://something.com/keyword</a>

That's it! I agree absolutely.

Still nobody is forbidding to use a REAL keyword in such type URL.

For example: <a href="http://www.23883929382938.com/dooxowvnypo1899.php">Something</a> most likely is tracted the same way as your keyword would be contained in the URL itself.

It is sure google and other search engines prefer urls with keywords above urls with numbers.
You can find this on any SEO forum or site.

I came to miniBB because I heard it was SEO friendly.
And I do need to say that it's the first board I have found that uses such clean code and is really depended on CSS for the lay-out.
But the urls that miniBB produce are really NOT SEO friendly.
Google doesn't like numbers. Yes your forum will still be indexed (just as phpBB forums are indexed as well).
But getting your site indexed doesn't mean anything. You can have a site of 1 million pages indexed and never get any visitor to it.

It's about scoring high not about getting in.

Don't want to break miniBB down. As I said before it already has some pro's a lot of other forum scripts don't have.
But I do think a good url rewrite should be included.
At least I hope :)

But the urls that miniBB produce are really NOT SEO friendly.
I think it is nonsense. The mod-rewrite could not be cleaner and more Seo friendly. You can check webmasterworld.com (I think the most authorative SEO source) or other serious sources and compare their URLs to minibb, which have a similar same idea.
Google doesn't like numbers.
It's actually the oposite; it seems Google has opened a "Pandora box" when one of their employees claimed keywords in the Url are one of the "factors" in determing search engine positions. They forgot to mention it's one of hundreds of other minor factors that could constitute a very tiny fraction. Most likely it's not more important than mata tags (which was "modern" and "crucial" among the "Seo community" back a few days go).

The most important for search engines is original and useful content.

Guest_Rik
Do you have any examples of forums (not CMS) which use keywords instead of numbers in urls? Give live examples before writing nonsense.

It's funny that you mention webmasterworld.com as this clearly uses keywords in its urls. Ok the posts are in numbers but the category names ARE used in the url.
I'm not saying it would be perfect (prob the numbers are still needed to keep unique urls) but I am 100% sure it would result in a higher google placement.
I've seen invision boards working like this but can't find it back right away.

So I'm not saying the posts need to be changed to text but isn't there a way to make the forum name a directory (like webmasterworld.com uses)?

That urls aren't very important is not true. Just do a google search and look at the first 10 urls. Many will have a keywords in their url.

Ok, I mentioned webmasterworld so I can give you an example how "important" keywords in the URLs are. Do Google search on: Flash Shockwave

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Flash+Shockwave&btnG=Google+Searc h

You will notice which webmasterworld pages rank the highest:

webmasterworld.com/forum104/253.htm (10 place)

webmasterworld.com/forum104/page1.htm (25 place)

The main page about Flash and Shockwave (with the keyword in the URL) http://www.webmasterworld.com/flash/ is not in the first 100.

As I mentioned previously, the keyword in the URL could actually add a point to your pagerank if this URL has been posted on some related (pay attention - RELATED) site. So Google could interpret the keyword between <a href="...">tags</a> as a base.

However, the most important part is the "keywords" tag on your page itself. This is what is most importantly interpreted by Google regarding the link indexing (because on a 3rd party site, the link could be used in context as well, for example <a href="...">click this link to read</a> whereas there are no keywords supplied).

Now pay attention to what kind of "keyword-rich" URLs other forums have and you may discover "automaticly" created URLs of this kind in 90% of cases mean nothing. Usually they are build from the topic and/or forum title, and since topics are created by users themselves, topic title are often non-meaningful.

So the score you may receive with this method is really low. But disadvantages you're receiving are more than you ever could expect (specially on non-English forums).

Tom, it needs to be that a lot of sites link to those posts.
I can show you the opposite as well.

Do a google search for graphics multimedia (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=graphics+multimedia&btnG=Search ) and guess what is on the second position?
webmasterworld.com/graphics_multimedia/
I didn't find any other results in the first 10 pages.

Paul, I agree that the link tag is the most important but this does not mean keywords in the link itself isn't helpful.
And if you have a good forum you can be sure you'll get links from related sites.

I also understand it could create a lot of problems in non-English forums as well as meaningless titles created by users.
Thats why you have convinced me that the posts are bests linked by numbers but on the forum titles you haven't convinced me at all.

I've started on trying this by adding a field in the database called forum_tag
Gettting it in the url without the mod rewrite doesn't seem to give any problems. But when I activate the mod rewrite it doesn't work (I did change .htaccess as well)
I think I forgot to edit a few files.
Which files should I need to change (add the variable)?

Thanks

Guest_Rik
tom322 could prove you there is a solution when you don't need to add any new field in the database. I developped this solution myself for him. And it works. Basically you need to replace only some mod_rewrite rules in standard core files and add some plugin lines for the addons like Checker; so mentioning this all it is even possible to upgrade the forum to the latest core with no hard problems.

So now he paid for this solution - and you want to get it for free? ;-)

If you want to develop something what we call "custom" - welcome to our paid support, or you may try to experiment yourself and see how it goes...