Suggestion: Moderated advanced MOD rewrite

HB · phpBB SEO Team Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 812

I've read and re-read the description of the phpBB SEO Mod Rewrites. The advance mod's title injection is neat, but as dcz noted, poorly chosen titles could blunt the benefit. Sure, as moderator, you could drop the member a friendly note and change the title to something more meaningful, but another option is a "moderated advanced" version. That is, use the title injection the current mod has, but allow the moderator to override what URL is generated. By default, the topic title and URL would be the same. The downside is that it would cost another table and an extra query...

For extra credit, augment the search to look in the topic URL table too. By following a board convention, the moderators could make it a sort of "poor man's tag" for grouping related topics.

dcz

Well, the thing is a forum is not a cms, and there is no real need to separate titles and urls.

I mean, this is exactly what is done on this forum, and if you look at it, 99% of topic URLs are statically rewritten.

The real problem with the advanced mod rewrite was before the zero dupe, when you would create a dupe upon each topic title injection, but with it, you can moderate the title no problem.

The interesting matter could be to be able to switch form static to dynamic rewriting, but I am not sure in the end that there is a real need to go for extra sql data here, many changes for not much, as the "on the fly" rewriting is light fast.

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HB · phpBB SEO Team Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 812

dcz

The reason is simple, I first though and still think that a support forum with title injection is not very good.

First the titles can be of all sorts, from "help me", to this one : something descriptive but still, not really good to use in URL.

I mean, there is already a lot of topic covering the phpBB SEO advanced mod rewrite, but in the end how many are really worth extreme optimizing ?

As a webmaster, I prefer the search query related to the advanced mod rewrite to end up on this thread, rather than on this one for example.

A forum is not a CMS. Content in a forum is not meant to be final, but rather to be discussed and elaborated many time many different ways, especially in a support forum.

Now, other types of forum can end up dealing with focused and detailed topics which would be well optimized with title injection.

It's all a matter of the type of content you'll deal with and the effort you'll be ready to put into title moderation.
Injecting keywords is a way to add weight on the keywords injected, for sure more than only using it in the title or once in the page, but the goal is to put weight in the right place.

IMHO, if some content in a forum is really good, and if you want to get it optimized it the most, then move it out of the forum, in a place you can add the keywords you want in URLs and where it won't risk to be buried into the forums pagination.

Announces is a way to keep some content in the forum's first pages, but it's only a limited solution.

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HB · phpBB SEO Team Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 812

dcz

I get the idea now.
I think you're right, the keywords in url can help out user to follow links from other forums.

And yes, keywords in url are included in matching search results, that's the whole SEO point about it.

A wiki is a good way to settle and organize content, that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking at, this or a knowledge base.

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