[EDIT] Comparison table updated to phpBB3 here [EDIT]

Magic SEO URLs For phpBB ?

So I just felled on this comparison table here and would like to tell you a few words about what's being said there.

Everyone has the right to think what he wants and I have no problem with that, so here I go for my part.

The information's on this table are inaccurate and the way it is presented can lead some to think that mod rewritten URLs is the only Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) enhancement one could think of, and that injecting keywords in URLs is the working for all solution.
And this is not true at all. A lot of phpBB forum do have excellent results with static mod rewrite (no title injection at all).

That's why phpBB SEO is providing three different mod rewrite solutions, because Search Engine Optimisation does not only rely only implementing code changes or mod rewrite, but is a global scope needing the set of a correct strategy according to your specific project's needs and type, and on the efforts you'll be able to put in it.

There is no absolute and final universal solution. That's why the phpBB SEO Community covers many more topics than just php code.

This being said, we have to talk a bit about the code and the choices I made so far attempting to provide a personalized SEO working solution for all here.

My starting principle follow those three essentials principles being, IMHO, the three essentials SEO principle :

Search Engine Optimization relies on :

1. Content :
   There is now way to Search engine Optimize a site without content.
   Looks stupid to repeat this, but content is always what comes first in the end. I mean, only pages with structured and following a defined topic will have reliable search engine results, that will last in time. All pages attempting to do more SEO than content will be one day or the other penalized by search engines.
   Content is the number one matter for a web site, even if only providing online services, such as mail or dns look-up, or even Google (eg few forms and barely no text), theses services should be well commented somewhere in the web site for them to be findable under more than just their name as a search query.
2. Linking :
   Both internal and external.
   Links are our only tools to make our content findable. No link, no page views.
   That's why this is what comes second in Search Engine Optimization Priority. And where comes mod Rewrite as well.
   So what we want here first is a good URLs standard. Mod rewritten URLs are better for sure, but not everything with it is better.
   As it is already said in this thread, there would be no point to end up with title injected URLs if we'd only have topic titles like this : "oh it's so wonderful, I can't believe it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!".
   This is not something I tell for others to follow, I do prevent topic title injection here on this site for regular users.
   Then, once you have chosen the best mod rewrite solution for you, you need to work on having many links to your content, both coming from your site and from others.
   You must as well work on having the less duplicates as possible, if not none, as well as the fewer useless links (like posting for phpbb forum, it's not SEO useful, but is a must for users so)
3. Code :
   You need your site functional and your HTML output to be the cleanest as possible.
   You want fast page load and low server load. There is a lot to say about the ending html code and page loading time, they are essential for both Search Engine Ranking and user experience.
   To me user experience comes first compared to super optimized html output, because I am not developing nor writing for bots, but this is very important for sure to care about this.
   HTML optimization just need to be done according to the means and effort you'll be ready to put in your templates.
   Not really cool if you end up with a great SEO template but reluctant to users. For sure the best is if you managed to only use divs and lists to build your page. But, as every web site should look different, there is no final answer to this.
   When using php scripting, you need it to work fast, and even more when it comes to SEO mods, because you as well want to keep resources for users, which are not really caring about URLs, but more about content, styling and page loading.

As you can see, the phpBB SEO projects offers you to work on all these three points.
Some good SEO advises can really help out to best organize content in a web site. And organization is important both for users and Search engines.

phpBB SEO offers two directories (French and English speaking) with hard links, allow signature links for real users and thus provide very good backlinks, they will, I am sure, really appreciate.
phpBB SEO provides more than mod Rewrite with mx sitemaps and mx Google sitemaps to take care of your linking.
phpBB SEO provides meta tags and other titling enhancements for phpBB.
Besides, being a community will allow our experience to be shared and will lead to even better solutions I am sure.

So let's go now for a technical answer to this Magic SEO URL comparison table :
First two are ok. Then :

Code: Select all

Well-structured URLs    Yes    No    Partially (structured incorrect)

The No standing for the phpBB SEO advanced mod rewrite.

Let me tell you something right know, you must have noticed the phpBB SEO mod rewrite where only rewriting links being viewed by Search engines.
The "partially" here stands, at least I believe it does, on the extended sorting options in viewforum.php and viewtopic.php, never followed by bots by the way.
I decided to make the pagination standard as light as possible because I believe we still don't want too many parameters in our mod rewritten URLs.
Besides, the extended sorting Options are fully working with original URLs.

Now, purely SEO wise, I am sure it is not a good thing to mod rewrite extended sorting URLs, because this would raise the number of URLs with the exact same title and injected keywords in URLs (even though with different parameters) to something totally outrageous.
You must know that two pages with the same title will have at least a lot fewer, if not no chances to both get cached by Google and will for sure create confusion and lead to a lower PageRanking. So what if an custom sorted page showing most recent messages first is the one to get cached ?
Your nice first post with the good content to first spider and cache will barely never show up in search engines results. Really cool.

So this is not something I'd advise to do. What I think is one URL, one title, one page. The simpler the better.

And the forum itself is only linking to the URLs without those extended sorting options, so you are directly working against those good ones, being already well linked and enough to list all your content.
All those will have the same title, the same keywords in URLs and most of the extended ones will have unstructured content.
I mean there is nothing better than chronological order to make sens with time for search engines. If a special URL is stored in Google's Cache, it will be the one visited, thus hard to understand as the content will change with new posts and not just be added like something following the starting post. All together this is not a small issue, at least IMHO.

So to me, this supposed "structured incorrect" for those URLs using the phpBB SEO mod rewrite is a major SEO enhancement. It's all a matter of point of view, I personally only care about results in such matter.
You just need to add two line in your robots.txt to make sure the vanilla forum and topic URLs won't be taken into account where with the other method you would just not be able to disallow any.

And this as well takes care of point three as it is a lot lighter not to rewrite all those.
Now some will say, "ho but if a member posts a natural link with extended sorting options, un-rewritten, ho my god this is horrible"
The answer is : would you prefer spending more server resources to allow "pseudo-dupe" posting ?
And by the way, one could really think about getting rid of these special sorting options as they are far from being the more useful nor most used in most cases.

Then, results, try only thinking about results : Pages 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 ...

The same about the "Supported types of URLs" row, I mean, is the magic SEO URL mod rewriting ACP links ?

What's the point to mod rewrite memberlist.php ?
I really think we should not SEO profiles too much if not at all, because it's the first thing to do to fight against spam, and SEOed web site are more interesting for spammers.
Again, not something I tell for others to do, as you can see, I have left the vanilla URLs here for profiles, even though the phpBB SEO mod rewrite will mod rewrite profile links.
As the method is here super fast, no title injection to allow robots.txt disallowing, it's something webmaster usually prefer even though I am not sure user really care about them, or at least would ask for them to be rewritten this much.
Never occurred to me, never so a user asking phpBB.com to mod rewrite URLs just for the user experience.
This is at least going further than what is really required and important, mod rewriting URL we should disallow in robots.txt is no SEO at all in all cases.

Then again not that useful server resources spending IMHO.

"No same content available on the different URLs" :

For sure it was not released yet, but here is what I think :

http://boards.phpbb-seo.com/the-phpbb-seo-website-lies-to-you/many-duplicates-are-possible-vt126.html

http://boards.phpbb-seo.com/viewtopic.php?t=126

http://boards.phpbb-seo.com/viewtopic.php?p=908

With pagination handling for both post and topics :

http://boards.phpbb-seo.com/viewtopic.php?p=1238

http://boards.phpbb-seo.com/viewtopic.php?t=4&start=45

So this is a feature all phpBB users will soon have. Will off course support forums and categories URLs.

And when I read under : "Verification and validation of each URL" that the redirection are not well formed, I start being amused.

HTTP 301 is the only used method here. And again, you'll see how efficient is the tweak, will be as much as one call to format_url() in one "if" per page load, I am not sure four digit after zero will be enough to measure time loss.
So the "Safe changes of URLs" not implemented here is just wrong, period. I know how to use HTTP 301 headers.

The "Redirections from ALL original phpBB URLs" will be total upon the zero dupe release.
Will handle all links, thus "Previous/Next thread links workaround", same for "Newest posts links workaround" and "Prevent home page duplicate content penalties".
"Makes all relative URLs absolute" will be an option, as it's not a good solution for all.
Adding the domain in every URL is something that can help out, but this can be like 20% of your page's weight, so you'd better have bandwidth.

The "Sesions IDs removing" is just so fun, "not supported", but in fact it is. What's the problem with Cyber alien guest session mod?
No need to redo it, it's here and efficient.
Then again, to handle the three user per year not accepting the very friendly phpBB cookie (guests without cookie handling still can browse the forum), the Magic SEO URL mod proudly filter 120 bots before it will decide what to do. I mean, how efficient that is ?
And it's just taking great risks of showing SIDs to bots, for example if your bot listing is not up to date.
The Cyber alien Guest sessions method is just so much simpler, lighter and 100% efficient.

I take the Does not add any SQL queries to "n/a" as a joke, is it possible to miss this when you pretend to compare this much features ?
Then saying the Magic SEO URL does not add SQL query but caches all URL. I mean, I believe it does, but this mean it's flat cache file. Really cool with 200 topics, but what about if you reach 50 000 ?

File access on a 5mo file (more or less what would weigh 50 000 titles) is rather a heavy process.
That's why SQL servers exists, to query among large amount of data.
I mean, these cache files are updated upon every new post and editing ? And worst, loaded upon each page load ? Or is it one file per cached title (not better) ?
And why caching when it can be this fast to do it on the fly ? I am not even sure the cache would be a real enhancement for small boards, I am really wondering how it would be for bigger ones.
The other two comments are just not worth commenting here, yes this is a mod, yes you'll have to implement rather simple code changes and yes you'll need sometime to ask for a small patch for mods if not just hit search link here to find it already done. This is not much to do if you consider this is what is making this code so light and fast.

Then about the URL standards chosen on Magic SEO URLs, I personally dislike it, and found many "incorrect link structures" such as the ending /?view-post=xx#xx and find the category title injection in all links just too much.
There is a limit in what is useful, reached here IMHO and again heavier to run for the server.

I already said that the forum title injection on this site is experimental, not the code, the concept, and that it will be available for phpBB3 anyway.

Then, I am sorry if telling this causes trouble, I have no problem with other web site doing what they want, it's just there is no possible way someone will start telling things not being true about all the efforts being deployed here, for free.

Every one has the right to do and think what he wants as long as respect for other is kept untouched.
I do respect the Magic SEO URL effort, but this does not mean I cannot think what I want, nor that I am supposed to stay quiet when I read such things. I mean, an official SEO web-site selling SEO softwares and telling this can look like the truth to many, even though I fell honored that phpBB SEO is listed among their top three mod rewrites
Saying how great is their software should have been enough I think. No need to say wrong things and to pretend others are not providing good solutions, if not better.

Before I end this long post, one last thing : all of this being said, I have no problem at all about the Magic SEO URL mod users (nor with the project besides this), and would actually be very happy to help them doing better and keeping their URL standard.
This is something I do since the very beginning, I think mods like mx Google sitemaps and mx Sitemaps should be usable with any mod rewrite as they are anyway useful.

I followed another path in this project with good reasons. That at least make the comments in this "comparison table" unappropriated.

So the discussion is opened, all I want to make sure is that everything is clearly stated for everyone.
Then results will talk.

++

[EDIT] Comparison table updated to phpBB3 here [EDIT]

Hi my friend i see the table and get very angry when i read how they talk bad about your software saying false things.

After reading this post i understand why topic title injection will be VERY BAD. I have about 40 different post with the title"ayuda" other 100 with the single title "winstrol" so many bots cant get confused and give you pelnalties for duplicates AND THEY ARENT DUPLICATES PAGES. You are right. Webmasters can control al forum names, but not post titles. Because of that i think mixed mod rewrite is SIMPLY GREAT.

In that table the info about your mods is manipulated for their benefit. I mean in order to benefit Their mod. In my opinion UNHONEST TATICS.

Why do you have to deal with SID if Cyber Aliens solve the problem previously??? Why they dont reinvent the weel? Because someone thousands of years ago already do it, AND WORKS PERFECTLY. This is what really matters.

I think your code is fats and light. My Board have 9000+ users and more than 46000 posts in more than 7000 topics. Imagine to catch all that info in every reply. Im sure that will crash the server FAST. What about in a forum like elitefitness.com? 130.000 users!!!! (the do not use phpbb by the way). If you have SQL databases to manage huge amount of data WHY go back 30 years and use simple files for cache the HUGE info? VERY BAD.

I spend so many hours implementing your mods. And im pretty sure this will kick my traffic to the sky. Im very dissapointed with this people. You justify ALL the features of your mods. They manipulate the info on their benefit. This is scam novices users.

And with your zerodupe mod there is not any duplicate in my forum i think.

Well the people can think whatever they want. But not saying the truth in order to promote their mods really sucks

Continue your work my friend. Im here to help you test your GREEK IDEAS... jeje you know what i mean. I fyou need any help testing something on a big board ask me. Well my board is not big, but i think can help for testing.

Thanks for your support

Was just stating the obvious here, what they think is bad is SEO enhancement to me, and guess what : phpBB Magic URL

I was just going thru your above explanation and the magic seo url comparison. I have few queries if you dont mind :

- magic seo says

No same content available on the different URLs
(prevent possible duplicate content penalties) Yes No
(e.g. over 30 different URLs per thread - high penalization by crawlers) No
(e.g. over 15 different URLs per thread - high penalization by crawlers)

Is this true ?

- Can you provide explanation in similar tabular format. It wud be much easier for us to understand

- Why didnt you optimise your website for "phpbb seo" keyword. I didnt find it in top 10 in google.

and lastly I beleive, whatever others might say but you are the best

hehe, thanks

This comparison table really got on my nerves back when I found it. I mean, can business and marketing be based on telling other's do not do a good job?

I do not fear comparison at all, but this is far from comparing, this is telling wrong things.

Then, about the "phpBB SEO" query and Google, phpBB SEO is first, but not if you specify the hl param to "en" (for English) or to "all".

The problem in this case is this web site to be half french half English speaking with a french ip. And the Google geoloc is not helping us in this case.
That's why I installed the forums in sub domains at first, to try to separate the two languages. But I changed this recently, as Google was not "loving it".
So this is making this particular search query harder to optimize in the English world for now (which does not mean the english speaking forum is not showing up in really good positions in the serps )

But this has nothing to deal with the phpBB SEO mods, it's just hard to SEO the same web site in several languages. Obviously, phpBB SEO is first on google.fr

Talking about the duplicates, well, it's the post's URLs to be the worst source, once you've gotten rid of all pagination duplicates.

These are left unchanged in the current phpBB SEO mod rewrite, but they are not taken into account as duplicates since we disallow them with our robots.txt.
For sure, it will be even better when I'll release the phpBB SEO mod rewrites updates, as they'll totally get rid of these posts URLs in the output, but it's not an SEO issue as is.

I don't think I'll spend time on building up a clean comparison table soon, I prefer to spend time on building up good SEO solutions

++

To tell you the truth, I visited magic seo forum and to my surprise they hardly have any members hahahaha so yes you are right there is no point wasting time in explaining anything to anyone.

I wud like to tell you that the serp on google.fr has phpbb-seo at number one position but on google.com its not there even on first,second or third page as seen from India. I wish I cud send you the screenshots for reference.

Yes, that's part of why it became very hard to SEO multilingual web-site : geolocation.

Actually, even from two cities in France I often get different results at the same time (no I am not droopy, but I have friends ).
This is not the thing I like the most with Google, I mean, it's cool to be able to have personalized results, but we should be able to fully overcome the geoloc because we could be willing to search things about different countries in different places, and as you mention for now, the same query does not give the same result from everywhere.

++

magic SEO URL !!

what a seductive name it has !

i think i found this mod 5 month ago
i think the developers of this mod are from czech republic
i warned dcz about this mod. can you remember dcz ?

six month ago i searched a lot for good phpbb rewrite mod
i couldn't find any thing valuable. the only thing that i found was webmedic rewrite mod (that is not compatible with UTF-8 ) and google BB link mod
i think someone gave the link of phpbb-seo.com to me in phpbb.com forum .when i visited here, the first page was disable, the forum only had 12 member and less that 10 topic. most the part of the forum were locked.

but now
this forum has good position in google and many forum are using this site SEO solutions.the number of backlink is the evidence for this claim

yahoo 93.000 backlink

google 1530 backlink

msn 6000 backlink

this project is free and everybody knows that free projects can grow very fast but commercial project can not.
i find out that this site SEO solution are valuable and i promise until end of the year 2007 the page rank of this site will reach to 8 and many site will using this site SEO mods

i have installed this site SEO mod in my forum and my friend forum

-http://www.siscenter.com
-http://www.aerospacetalk.com/forum/
-http://forum.irani.ch
-http://forum.persia-cms.com
-http://forum.e-gold4u.com
-http://www.itmashhad.com
-http://forum.shahriariha.com
-http://www.kowsarr.com/forum
-http://forum.persianspot.com


and i will install this mod on as many forum as i can because it is free!
i have plan to release a special version of phpbb for persians with all phpbb-seo mods
im sure that until the end of the next year more than 100 persian forum will use my phpbb version.
i spend my time for promoting these mods because these mod are free.

please don't compare phpbb-SEO mod with SEO magic URL package because SEO magic URL is not valuable enough to spend time for comparison. i don't want to show that their job are useless but giving wrong information to others for selling something is not accepted.
i willingly keep the www.phpbb-SEO.com link in my forum because this mods help me to improve my site rank in search engines

you can compare phpbb-seo package with VB SEO (commercial project. price = 189 $) package.
this comparison is fair because, both of these packages are in the same level.
the position of the site and the result of indexing is important for user not that nonsense that they are putting on their comparison table.

phpbb SEO is in the forth page for term "phpbb SEO"



and this site is in the second place for term "phpbb SEO mod".



but its not important because the amount of phpbb-seo.com backlink will change the position of this site in near future.

Thanks a lot amir

Does this reminds you something

Got caught by the waybak machine

For the search results, this one is fun : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=able2know+mod

This one good : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=seo+mods

And I should not post this one, but : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=magic+seo+url

Anyway, I feel honored you like this project.
As you say, it's growing rather fast, and this will bring more tools, more code and more SEO solutions, because all here is about sharing working solution and views about our SEO "quest".

While I am working on the update of the phpBB SEO mod rewrite solution, I performed many tests on different phpBB modules (smartor, easy cms ...) and portals (phpnuke, guppy). All this will lead to further release of code for these, which will allow us to SEO more than our phpBB forums and will bring even more interest to this project, thus more solutions to share.

And this will give us, I hope, many reason to think about something else than this awkward comparison table.

++

iam czech too.

and this site and mod is da best.
thanks for it and really nice and fast support.