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
-
SEO Troubleshooting? Not ranking in Top 50 for "easy" keyword
Hi there, First of all, thank you in advance to whoever steps in to help me with this issue! So, I have a new site (launched December 2016) in the investing space and have been able to get page 1 rankings on some of my pages. One of my best ranking pages is for the phrase "what is xiv". The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 21 difficulty. My page for this keyword is https://www.projectoption.com/what-is-xiv/. The post reached the first page almost immediately after being published, though I know I shouldn't expect this for other keywords of similar difficulty. Here is my problem: I just wrote a comprehensive guide (8,000+ words) on a different keyword phrase: "vertical spreads." The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 25 difficulty. My page for this topic: https://www.projectoption.com/vertical-spreads-explained/. However, the page is nowhere to be found in organic Google rankings (not in top 50), and the page has been live for a few weeks now. I've done my best at optimizing the post, but something leads me to believe there are some issues that are beyond my SEO knowledge. For example, maybe the post is too long, and Google can't figure out what the page is about. Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time! -Chris
Technical SEO | | cbutler222930 -
Target Keywords not being picked up by Moz On-Page Grader
Thanks in advance for any help, It seems our target keyword "digital marketing agency" is not being picked up by yoast or the on-page grader as having the keyword in our home page content. Exact Keyword Used in Document Text at Least Once comes back as a zero. When we run our website through Google Webmasters fetch tool the keyword shows up fine in the content. Any ideas how we can fix this?
Technical SEO | | DerekDenholm0 -
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | | tutarmi0 -
Forum website rel="nofollow" is this Good?
Hi, Forum website rel="nofollow" is this Good? We have a Q & A site and have all links as Nofollow. Would this be a good way? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
How to target long tail keywords
Apologies if this is already answered, I'm a newbie. I'm looking to determine how to target long tail keywords. I'm supporting a site that is new and with very small budgets in the very competitive life insurance market. If we devise a list of long tail keywords, should we then add those to the page titles, meta descriptions etc rather than the short tail ones that the site will never rank for anyway?
Technical SEO | | aoifep0 -
Blog Comments and Forum Posts
Hi, After recent update from Google i.e penguin update. Do Blog comments and Forum Signatures work? Or will they harm my site. Suppose i have a health related blog, and i engage in making comments in technology related blog and forum. Do i am potentially prone to hit a penality? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Indexxess0 -
Sending signals to Google to rank the correct page for a set of Keywords.
Hi All, Out of all our keywords their are 3 that are showing our home page in the serps rather than the specific product page URL on Google.co.za (Google.com ranks the correct URL) Im not sure why this is happening as most links built using the anchor text are pointing to the correct page. Why would google prefer ranking our home page on local search and rank the correct page on Google.com? (only 3 keywords have this problem) I have tried to correct this by creating links from strong internal pages with anchor text pointing to the correct URL. I have also concentrated on building links from .co.za domains using the anchor text and correct URL but to no avail. It has been 2 weeks now, since i tried to sort it out, but im not sure what else i can do to tell Google to rank the correct page. Any ideas? Regards Greg
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Would this be considered keyword cannabalization?
If I have an article, titled 7 signs of unhealthy eating and the title tag for five different pages looks like this: keyword | article title ex: Binge Eating | 7 Signs of Unhealthy Eating ex: Lack of Fruits & Vegetables | 7 Signs of Unhealthy Eating etc, etc.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0