Low relavence for actual keywords in a forum
-
My website, www.rcnightmare.com has a forum, the most popular entry point for seo traffic. I have tried unsuccessfully to really make the forum's content outweigh the actual content of the "forum" itself. For example google analytics says "post" is my strongest keyword across the site.
the forums url is www.rcnightmare.com/forum, I am looking for some answers from people familiar with Vbulletin for things I can change to help this
-
Hi Jeremy,
I have a forum in the RC space as well, running on DNN Active Forums (www.rcnvavalcombat.com). My top five most common keywords in GWT are posts, private, combat, ship, forums, and admiral (a user rank). Ryan gives good advice to not sweat it.
Keri
-
ive been told to consider replacing the text with images etc? that hold water?
The bottom line is if you present text to your site's readers, then search engines wish to read it. Search engines have the ability to read text in images (OCR), although they presently don't use the information for search results.
If you were to replace the text with an image, you are supposed to use an ALT tag so both the search engines and people with reading impairments know what the image says. If you were otherwise to replace the text with image for the purpose of manipulating search engines, it is a black hat technique which I would advise against using.
In vBulletin, the admin pages contain options to show or display post counts. If you decided to go with the image route, you would need to modify the appropriate template in the admin section. I would suggest there are better things for you to spend time on to help improve your site.
-
thanks for the thoughtful response.i am currently running vbseo.ive been told to consider replacing the text with images etc? that hold water? i am not super familiar with the backend is there some settings there to explore
-
The most popular SEO plugin for vB is vBSEO. Last time I checked it was pretty much the standard choice for vB.
Another choice is to switch to XenForo. VB's original design team led by Kier Darby left vB a couple years ago and created their own forum software, XenForo. XF has many SEO functions built in.
Every post on your site shows a profile in the left column with "Join Date" and "Posts" are fields, so they will show as associated with your site. It is very common and expected on forum sites. You can remove those fields if you want. There are other ways to circumvent the text but it is not generally necessary.
The idea is you can build great pages on your site itself. You can monitor forum traffic to gain an idea of what relevant keywords are driving traffic to your site. Forums will always be sloppy in terms of SEO as you have little control over the content people add and how they format that content.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking a Polish website in English with existing keywords
I have a website that is currently in Polish and I'm interested in ranking it for the same keywords in English. I'm wondering if I need to create entirely new pages for the English version or if there are plugins or other tools that can help me translate and optimize my existing content for English search engines. my website seo factor. Any recommendations or experiences are greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | mohammadrehanseo0 -
Do Meta Keywords matter?
I am a firm believer in the fundamentals of SEO but is there any data to support its impact positively or negatively towards a sites rank?
Technical SEO | | Brandonp0 -
My blog post for a specific keyword is in the 'omitted results'. Why might this be, and how to overcome it?
My website Homepage: http://kulraj.org Here is the page I am working to rank for:** http://kulraj.org/2014/07/15/hedonic-treadmill/** When I search specifically for 'kulraj hedonic treadmill' just to test it, the first result is this: kulraj.org_/tag/_hedonic-treadmill. It shows the shortened version of the article that is within the Tag page. [I'm new to SEO and Moz, please keep in mind] Moz has told me I have duplicate content, which is regarding my main Blog page and Tags page, which is true the content is duplicate. However, the actual blog post itself is not displayed anywhere else on the website, or anywhere else on the web. Moz confirms this, and reports no duplicate content warning. My questions, therefore, are: 1. How do I actually go about installing a rel canonical tag within a standard WordPress dashboard (I'm using Genesis Framework) - I'm finding great difficulty finding instructions on this anywhere on the web. I clearly need to fix the issue with Blog page and Tags Page. 2. Why would my blog post be omitted, and are there any suggestions I could implement to bring it into the main search results. Other things I've noticed: 1. If I type this URL in: kulraj.org/hedonic-treadmill, it automatically redirects to http://kulraj.org/2014/07/15/hedonic-treadmill/ 2. Inside Google Webmaster Tools it says: No new messages or recent critical issues. 3. Regarding the above, when I click 'Labs > author stats' within Webmaster Tools, it shows nil stats, so something there is not quite right either, even though Google+ Authorship is confirmed.
Technical SEO | | Kulraj0 -
Do you only allow one URL (link) per Keyword?
I'm basically working with an outsourced SEO company. They fix 20 on-page links every month. To broaden my point, I'd like to know how to check up on their progress by using MOZ. Do you have any advice? Also, would we be able to use more than one link per keyword? I don't see this option but maybe you can help me with any suggestions. Thanks! Nzo Tiano
Technical SEO | | ckroaster0 -
Keyword in URL vs organization
I have a jobs site that currently has the following structure for jobs: www.site.com/jobs/openings/1234.html Categories used to be listed this way: www.site.com/jobs/openings/accounting But we changed it to: www.site.com/jobs/category/accounting Does it matter? Is one better than the other? The page title, heading, and description also have the word "openings" or "opening" in them.
Technical SEO | | cmp1010 -
How do i best utilize my exact keyword match domain names as landing pages?
I own mutiple exact keyword match domain names which I would like to utilize as landing pages for my business.I would like to know if it would be best to host each page as a seperte website?or would it be best to simply link the domain name thorugh the domain registrar to an already exisiting page on the main website. example: cheapshoes.com --> www.thebestshoes.com/cheapshoes I would like to do this in the most seo friendly manner so that the exact keyword domain is ranked within google without losing any PR. Which method is best? and what type of linking should be used through the domin registrar?
Technical SEO | | snapbacksmith0 -
Optimal Structure for Forum Thread URL
For getting forum threads ranked, which is best and why? site.com**/topic/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/t/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/**thread-title-goes-here I'd take comfort in knowing that SEOmoz uses the middle version, except that "q" is more meaningful to a human than "t". The last option seems like the best bet overall, except that users could potentially steal urls that I may want to use in the future. My old structure was site.com/forum/topic/TOPIC_ID-thread-title-goes-here so obviously any of those would be a vast improvement, but I might as well make the best choice now so I only have to change once.
Technical SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
What is the most likely reason we aren't ranking #1 for our keyword.
So we are targeting a keyword and we are ranking 2nd for it. Another company is ranking number 1. What is the best element to target for us to improve into position number one? Page authority: them 41, us 40. mozRank: them 5.52, us 3.38. mozTrust: them 5.86, us 5.58. mT/mR: them 1.1, us 1.4. Total Links: them 6571, us 68. Internal Links: them 1138, us 1. External Links: them 5431, us 63. Followed Links: them 6569, us 64. Nofollowed Links: them 2, us 4. Linking Root Domains: them 25, us 41. Broadkeyword usage in page title: them YES, us YES. KW in domain: them no, us partial. Exact anchor test links: them 161, us 21. % of links with exact anchor text: them 2%, us 30%. Linking Root domains with exact anchor text: them 2, us 11. Domain Authority: them 41, us 40. Domain MozRank: them 3.7, us 4.5. Domain MozTrust: them 3.8, us 4.5. External links to domain: them 22574, us 217. Linking root domains: them 50, us 48. Linking C-blocks: them 46, us 42. Tweets: them 1, us 12. FB shares: them 6, us 26.
Technical SEO | | Benj250