Should I use Seo urls in my forum or not?

[icare]

After reading this am totaly confused.. Should i use that vbrewrite hack?

Making URLs Search Engine Friendly

I'm sure a few of you are confused and wondering why I have not yet mentioned installing a friendly URL hack for the forum. Well I wrote what is probably the most popular article on the Internet for search engine friendly URLs, so believe me, I'm generally a fan of them, and if forums used them by default I'd be glad, but they don't and I'm against installing a hack to change that.

The reason is that the URL structure is such a fundamental component of forum software that when you change it you're changing a lot. Likely every time you need to install a security update that hack will need to be removed and reapplied. Also in the future the hack may stop being supported, or you may decide to stop using it after an upgrade. At this point you'll run into URL integrity issues. All your incoming links would now be broken since they used the old search engine friendly URLs, and losing all your income links is about as calamitous as having a hard drive failure. Plus, as I said above, search engines generally don't have a problem with query strings anymore. So, in my mind, its simply not worth the risk and potential problems to heavily hack a forum so much, when you really are gaining only a minor benefit by doing so.

I think Vbulletin-faq is doing great job without seo urls...

please comment and help me decidie?

[Brandon Sheley]

what your really asking is " should you use content relevent URL's "

and that just really depends on if you want CRU's...

"SEO" is a lot more then url's ;)

[icare]

what your really asking is " should you use content relevent URL's "

and that just really depends on if you want CRurl's...

"SEO" is a lot more then url's ;)

Well I am talking about vbrewrtie hack available at vb.org?

[mavahntooth]

hmmm never heard of that.

[Brandon Sheley]

it's a good hack,, Tyler and Dean C both put out a free re-write hack. and then you have vbseo that is a paid hack and Much more in depth.


I'll tell you my experience with their hacks, and then a short description with vbseo.

As soon as I placed either of the free re-wite hacks on, my spider count went up dramatically.
The problem you run into with those hacks is this. Any prior threads you have indexed by google are useless now.. With vbseo you can redirect all old threads and post to the new url so google wont lose you..

with either case your going to have some drop in SERP's until the new url's get indexed..

I've been using vbseo for 3 months now and I have PR3 on my index and portal, and PR5-4 on my forum sections and FAQ and most of the site function links.. ( I had them re-written also ) /faq/ instead of /faq.php..

and. I've been getting guest to the site with targetes search prhases.. went from 50 keyphrases a month to 120+ and growing each month.

I have hours and hours of typing I could do on this subject. I've been reading and learning about SEO since the end of last year, but I need to go to work now. See ya, and good luck.
-Loco

[Coder1]

My own take on this SEO business: if search engines were focusing on what they are supposed to do, then no SEO would be necessary. The implication is that if there are two sites, all things being equal with navigation, content, keywords, and one site performs "SEO", they'll rank higher and get more hits. While this may be true, to me it highlights a weakness in the search engine!

Rather than acknowledge that and address the flaw, search engines in general and Google in particular, promote the SEO industry through a clever mix of hints, hush-hush, PageRank, and content monetization. Shame on them... they used to be a SEARCH ENGINE.

Seriously, if they can't "index" your site without elaborate SEO, SiteMap, Analytics and so on, then we all need to find a better search engine.

My site is as active with spiders as I want it to be, and I've never done any "SEO-ing".

[Joeychgo]

Rather than acknowledge that and address the flaw, search engines in general and Google in particular, promote the SEO industry through a clever mix of hints, hush-hush, PageRank, and content monetization. Shame on them... they used to be a SEARCH ENGINE.


I call it Marketing - Think about that a minute, and how well Google has marketed itself to webmasters, who in turn have made them millions and millions.

IMO, the Mod-Rewrite is unecessary. vBulletin is spidered just fine the way it is. Matt Cutts (A Google Engineer) confirmed that at one point. If you want to see how well vBulletin forums can be spidered, look at vBulletin itself, or digital point, or sites like mine, www.lincolnvscadillac.com (http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com) - they spider just fine without mod rewrite.

[bhuwan]

Some people say SEO'd urls are necessary, some people say they are not
I wonder if we'll ever know for sure? :)

P.S. I've basically taken over development of vRewrite (from Tyler)

[cpvr]

Nah, no need.
Just focus on h1 tags (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8).

[Brandon Sheley]

that aren't necessary, but they will help if done correctly ;) including 301 redirects from your old threads..

personally I wouldn't use either free rewrite found at vb.org, because if you use the google, yahoo site map generator,, they will submit links like you find here showthread.php?342 stuff, but bots will see your forums a thread-name-title.html

therefor you will have duplicate information, and might get banned..

if you use vbseo, all links will be the same,, the ones submitted from the sitemap, as well as the links the bots see..

[Joeychgo]

Ive said it over and over. They are nice for astetics - but they have no significant SEO value.

Nobody has ever provided any evidence to the contrary. I can show dozens of sites that are indexed just fine without a rewrite. Matt Cutts backed me up on this some time ago as well.

There was a time several years ago that Search Engines had a harder time reasing the complex URLs, but that time has past and they have no problem indexing the stock vBulletin urls now.

[Brandon Sheley]

I can show you several sites that have benefited from SEO URL's also ;)

and links from the google guys saying that they are good :p

[Joeychgo]

I can show you several sites that have benefited from SEO URL's also ;)

and links from the google guys saying that they are good :p


But is all they did was to rewrite? Did they get no new links? Did they not use (or were already using) a sitemap? Etc Etc. Everything I have seen is just conjecture. Fact is, many many vBulletin forums are well indexed without the rewrite. Matt Cutts said the urls are spidered just fine as they are stock. So what evidence is there that it helps SEO?

[Brandon Sheley]

well, i can't say that the sites didn't use other SEO techniques..
I guess I don't understand why some people are so against CRU's ?

[Coder1]

Because it is a totally silly sleight-of-hand trick. Unnecessary, with no documented impact. What's so wrong with a system that uses querystrings to operate? That's how the web works. To think that something so fundamentally part of the web infrastructure since its inception would cause PROBLEMS for the world's (arguably) best web search engine... that has to be a new type of paranoia. I bet a pyschology major could write a graduate thesis about the SEO industry.

[Brandon Sheley]

I think we can all agree that back links are key, in PR

all I can say for sure is this..

I've been building back links and working on other SEO techniques on locoforum.com for 4 years, and never had PR
after I install vbseo, I have many PR3's 4's and 5's :D
was it because vbseo ?

now look at vbportal.com which has been around longer then my site, and my forums and sub forums and 2,3 marks higher on PR then vbportal

now, time for those who are against vbseo to say PR doesn't matter ..lmao

[Coder1]

PageRank doesn't matter. It's a direct indication of backlink count during a particular (and inderminate) snapshot of time. It is not to be confused with SERPs.

Having a great "Page Rank", then, doesn't mean your site is going to appear at the top of a search result page. It's a basically useless statistic, except in the case of selling advertising to less-sophisticated advertisers.

Disclaimer: I really don't know or care about any of this, I'm just parotting what I've heard elsewhere. I just like watching the rats in the maze while Google keeps moving the cheese.

[Joeychgo]

Close. Pagerank only indicates how often your spidered. Thats it as far as Google has told us.

As far as locoforum having pagerank - Look at my sites. All have PR. Look at other sites - many have good indexing and PR. So... We cannot hold that out as a suggestion that url rewrite provides any seo advantage.

Why am I against URL rewrite? I am not. But there is a cost attached for vbseo AND vbseo has been marketed as an SEO solution, which it isnt IMO.



The vBSEO solution enables your forum to get more web visitors from all search engines including Google, Yahoo, & MSN Search.


This is, IMO, deceptive to less knowlegable admins who buy into this "magic Bullet" theory of SEO. "Enables" - is a misleading term. it makes one think their forum is not able to do so without their product. vBulletin can be spidered and ranks just fine without vBSEO.

Good SEO takes alot of hard work, and is an ongoing venture. How hard depends on the keywords you're targeting, but its hard work nonetheless. Ultimately it means alot of link building and some minor tweaks to make your forum stand out a little.

[SEO Pirate]

Pagerank only indicates how often your spidered. Thats it as far as Google has told us.Pardon? :confused:

[Brandon Sheley]

I pretty much completely agree with what Joey said.

Disclaimer: I really don't know or care about any of this, I'm just parotting what I've heard elsewhere. I just like watching the rats in the maze while Google keeps moving the cheese.
and i thought this was funny. :D



one part Joey mentioned was the part about them "deceiving lesser knowledgeable admins"
I do agree that these "newbie" admins would read this and think, this is it.. just add this plugin and wam I'm set, here comes the traffic.....



okay, now here is a question.. not sure if anyone goes to sitepoint or not. I've been browsing in this section seems about once a day for a few weeks now....
Sell Your Site (http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=56)

If you watch this, you'll notice when a sites being sold with "SEO" URL's that they really push that....
and ppl pay more for clean url's like this /titles/topic/ and not /page.php?=5

are these ppl that are bidding and paying higher $ for CRR's just ignorant to what the difference actually is to SERP's ? you can even compare new sites,, with no traffic

:)

[Michael]

But is all they did was to rewrite? Did they get no new links? Did they not use (or were already using) a sitemap? Etc Etc. Everything I have seen is just conjecture. Fact is, many many vBulletin forums are well indexed without the rewrite. Matt Cutts said the urls are spidered just fine as they are stock. So what evidence is there that it helps SEO?
Products such as vBSEO however provide much more than a simple URL rewrite. They are implementing features and ideas which people such as the god-like Matt Cutts are recommending, for example, the implementation of pingbacks and trackbacks into vBulletin via the installation of vBSEO will help ensure the relevancy of two-way link exchanges, increase their validity and getting away from the current obsession with link-farms and automated link exchange programs.

Sure some vBulletin forums are getting indexed well without the implementation of these "SEO tools", however by installation modifications such as vBSEO in particular you are helping not only speed up this process, but simplify it dramatically. Having all automated SEO-related modifications under one tree is much easier than running numerous seperate plugins and products not designed to work seamlessly together such as those created by vBSEO.

For vBSEO in particular, the days of being just a URL rewrite product are over, now vBSEO is helping to tackle the issue so often neglected or abused by forum administrators; good, quality links. With the introduction of pingback and trackback functionality you are dramatically simplifying the process of ascertaining relevant, related linkbacks.