Whats the best way to display your title for each page.. I am currently doing the topic of the post, followed by our site name..

The site name seems redundant, but is good branding. My main concern is not having good titles. Like HELP... for a title that is useless..

Any ways to combat this, should i have random key words added to the begining or end of the topic?

Any suggestions would be great and thanks for this site very helpful.

Thanks
--Craig

Repeating the sitename in all title is not necessarily a good thing, but making so title always contain some interesting keywords can be.

Since you are talking about a forum, you could do the following

Index : sitename
forums : forum title (+ eventually sitename)
topics : topic title (+eventually forum title)

Adding the forum title at the end of the topic title may be a better thing to do than adding the sitename, especially if the forum title are not too long and chosen with care.
The words in the forum title are more likely to be related (and better related) than the sitename for the topics. Besides, it would open more gates for SERPS than just the sitename.

I modified the optimized title mod a bit.

Main index: "MySite.com - Forum"
Forum pages: "Forum name - MySite.com" (first page)
Forum pages: "Forum name - MySite.com - Page N" (subsequent pages)
Topic pages: "Topic title - Forum name - MySite.com" (first page)
Topic pages: "Topic title - Forum name - MySite.com - Page N" (subsequent pages)

Note the topic title and the page title aren't the same:

page title for a topic: "Topic title - Forum name - MySite.com - Page N"
topic title shown in body: "Topic title - Page N"

It's not perfect SEO-wise, but I think it's a reasonable compromise in terms of what looks intuitive to visitors and what pleases search engines.

Thanks very helpful.. I am not familar with the optimized title mod... Got a link?

I just created a seperate php file with something similar to this in it:

Code: Select all


if ($PHP_SELF == "/index.php") {
   $title = "homepage junk";
} else if ($PHP_SELF=="viewtopic.php") {
   $title = "{PAGE_TITLE}";
} else... you get the idea.



Ph1ngering wrote:Thanks very helpful.. I am not familar with the optimized title mod... Got a link?

http://downloads.phpbb-seo.com/phpbb-se ... les-7.html (phpBB V2.0.x)
http://downloads.phpbb-seo.com/phpbb3-s ... es-42.html

Thanks going to check it out now...

--Craig

Just check out your site as well, very well done I like it..

I like the way you did the title, but do you feel having your site name is to redundant and can take away from your ranking? I have read a lot saying not to have it. But like you feel like it should be there..

That the other mod i am going to try tonight, the re-write url..

Which one did you implement?

Thanks again
--Craig

I don't know how much it matters what text appears on the far tail end of the page title. It's improbable that SEs would penalize the site name being on the end. The highlighting in the Google SERPs looks good, so I'm not worried. Personally I like the site name somewhere in the title so it's easier to close active windows.

I used the "advanced URL mod". It requires decent titles to be effective. I use the site search extensively, so I pay attention to the topic titles anyway, independent of SEO considerations. Many of my posts start with a list of prior discussions of the same topic.

Thanks for the tips.. I also like the site name in the title but have been scolded by my seo mentor... LOL

But I think I am going to throw it on the end as well, unless some one else can give some great reasons not to.. Anyone?? Anyone?

Thanks again very helpful, glad I found this site.. Any meta tag desc mods out there? Google-ing now..

--Craig

well in case any one else is following this post..

I found it here:

http://downloads.phpbb-seo.com/phpbb3-s ... gs-44.html

Wow I hope things turn around.. Since I put in the new title format and the meta-desc mods.. I have dropped nearly 80 urls on 25 of my key words I am tracking through digitalpoint...

What do you mean exactly ?

It's possible that updated page are taken out of Google results during the cache update process. If so, should not last long.

What I mean is, I was ranked say 8th in google for a certain key word, since the changes I am now rank 48th in google...

went from this for everypage:
-www.sitename.com - key words key words key words

to:
index = sitename - key words
forum = forum - keywords
topic = topic - forum - keywords

Rank Daily Weekly Monthly
Google 1+2 0 0 0
Google 5 1 3 0
Google 6 -2 0 -1
Google 12 -2 -2 -10
Google 13 3 -3 -11
Google 24 9,975 139 31
Google 28 -1 -2 -8
Google 34+35 0 3 -27
Google 38 -7 43 -5
Google 38 -3 -8 4
Google 51 -7 -7 -8
Google 52 6 46 -32
Google 57 -13 -10 -6
Google 71 -9 -4 -47
Google 101 -9 -3 -79
Google 104 -9 -7 -70
Google 106 -5 -16 -99
Google 111 -24 -22 -81
Google 114 -24 -14 5
Google 116 -7 -1 -88
Google 148 -3 -12 -83
Google 190 -43 -40 -29

Things are starting to level off, I always for get that these changes can take time.. I am more of an instant results kind of guy.. LOL

At any rate I think a deep crawl will help a ton, so I am going to sit back and wait for it to happen...