Newbie want help on this SEO thing

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

Hello, I am new here and I need your help.

I have a phpbb site and I just installed the "mx Google Sithmaps v1.0.1". On ACP I just keep all the default setting and now I can get the following "works":
http://www.star-voip.com/sitemap.php
http://www.star-voip.com/sitemap.php?fim
http://www.star-voip.com/sitemap.php?fid=4

Right now this is the only MOD at my phpbb site which releated with SEO stuff( I am still learning). Could anyone tell me what should I do next? Do these above links look all right? I know here we have a sticky post but I am confused a lot.

Also, Do I need install the "mx Sitemap Module 0.0.1"?

Thanks a lot.

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

I am reading:
The phpBB SEO Mod Rewrites

My site is hosted at 1and1.com. So I guess that Mod_rewrite should work.

Then I installed Cyber Alien's Guest Sessions MOD. Now when user login there still showing the "sid=...... " stuff, Is that normal?

I am going keep reading and it will be appreated if anyone can give me a pointer.

dcz

And Welcome Very Happy

Your mx Google sitemap installation works nicely.

Talking of what could be done to go further into search engine optimizing your forum, I think you should think about implementing at least the phpBB SEO simple mod rewrite.
It will make your forum's URLs a lot more attractive to bots.
Now, if you plan to often mix Latin characters in your forums and topic titles it could be interesting to see if the UTF-8 advanced version I build up for non Latin characters would not be a better solution.
You're not using UTF-8, (I see charset=gb2312), but the method should work the same.
What this one does is only inject the latin characters strings from the titles, and fells down to a static rewrite for title not containing any latin characters.

For example : xxxxxCLIxxAsteriskxxxxx
would be injected as cli-asterisk-vtxx.html

but XXXXXX would give topic-vtxx.html

Note that I replace the characters I could not write down in my available char-sets with "xx".

This non latin char-set version of the advanced mod rewrite is not released yet, but up and running on live site, so I can post you the code changes if you're interested. It's more code changes than the simple one, but can be interesting.

You can as well think about the mixed mod rewrite, easier to deal with as only forums will have titles injected in their URLs, the choice depends on how much will you use Latin characters in your titles.

If you decide to use mod rewritten URLs on your forum, do not submit your Google sitemap (or un-submit it now), we'll take car of it when URLs will be final.

And Laughing

, after I previewed this post, I saw your answer to your self appear in the review frame.

So yes it's normal to see SIDs after log-in, and in acp by the way. Don't worry bots do not log-in and do not visit phpBB's ACP Wink

And 1and1 is ready for mod_rewrite Wink

++

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

thank you for the quick reply!

Last week I post a article in my forum which I wrote myself. Then another website copied my article over at their site. Yesterday when I googling the topic I found their website listed on the top No. 1 spot, and my site is not even showed up on the google result! Rolling Eyes

So I started digging around to see why does google not like my original post. Then I realize the importance of this SEO thing!!!

My site is in Simplefied Chinese (GB2312) and not UTF-8. I'll follow your advise to install a remorte MOD now.

Thank you for the help.

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

Hi, dcz, I carefully read your reply again about the charset concerns. My site is in Simplefied Chinese (GB2312) and not UTF-8. I am thinking that I am going to install the mixed mod rewrite. Hope this will work out fine.

I'll post back here (in few hours)and let you know the result.

thanks.

dcz

I had noticed it was not utf-8, but wasn't sure about Chinese.
I really think it's possible to build up something to do the injection trick with simplified Chinese.

This can really make the difference if you're often using English in your topic and forums titles and if theses are the keywords that could be used to perform search queries (this I cannot tell). I'm willing to provide a solution like this for any non Latin char set, so it's all up to you. The simple mod rewrite is still an handy and easy solution working in all cases.

Now, your forum is young, no PageRank yet, and only 1 page listed in Google.
So you first need to get properly spidered and indexed before you'll be able to show up in SERPs.
This is what the phpBB SEO mod rewrite, mx google sitemaps, mx sitemaps and the dynamic meta tags will help you out (a lot) to achieve.
Then, it's all about optimization, so your need something to optimize, thus content and backlinks to really obtain good results in SERPs.

++

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

[FIXED]

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

I've installed phpBB-SEO-Simple-mod-Rewrite_V_0.0.2 and it seems working. Smile

see my site now: http://www.star-voip.com

What should I do next?

Should I sumbit the sitemap.php to Google?

What about the other stuff memtion in the earlier post? I mean "phpBB SEO mod rewrite, mx google sitemaps, mx sitemaps and the dynamic meta tags"

So far, I have:
1. mx Google Sithmaps v1.0.1
2. Guest Session MOD
3. phpBB-SEO-Simple-mod-Rewrite_V_0.0.2

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

Do I need put a robots.txt file in the root dir?

[YES, I DO.]

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

BTW, I submitted the sitemap.php to Google.

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

Is my robot.txt OK?
http://www.star-voip.com/robots.txt

I have a hidden forum and I don't want bots to access it. I should put

Peter77

Your robots text looks okay to start with. there may be more you can add, but not too sure. dcz could explain further.

privmsg.php is also one you can add...

As for a hidden forum, it is best to set the forum to registerd members only in your Admin Control Panel. A hidden forum from guest also stays hidden from Search engines. I hope that is what you mean.

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

thank you, peter! I added that privmsg.php as you instructed.

again, I see google started doing something. what would you recommand to do next? or just waitting for a while?

dcz

Your robots.txt is correct, the one frome the mod rewrite thread Wink

So :

wycf · Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 24

Thank you dcz.

I am sorry I am not quite clear to follow your instruction. Here are what I confuse about: