Better SEO values in the IPB template

[MadMatt6]

Hello,

since the Google Panda / Penguin / Hummingbird updates our IPBoard positions are getting worse.

We must make a better onpage optimizing in focus of the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

I installed the IPB 3.4.6 because HTML5 and the Canonical tags, but the template and the IPBoard software must anyway better.

Perhaps can the IPB development team make the templates more SEO (Search engine optimizing) compatible in future:

Please install the Firefox Addon SEOQuake and click on Diagnosis.

https://addons.mozilla.org/uk/firefox/addon/seoquake-seo-extension/

1.)

You can see that the header tags <h1> <h2><h3> are not logical.

The first Heading text must be one H1, the second H2 and the comes H3.

2.)

The meta tags must be better:

- The title may have no more than 59 characters.

- The description may have no more than 159 characters.

- Not more than 10 keywords.

3.) For a better "HTML to Text ratio" may the source code not contains so many trash.

Any out-commentated text can be deleted or hidden with PHP.

4.) The Paging function / pagination ( 1 | 2 | 3 ) must be optimized.

Google like the rel “prev” and “next” HTML attributes to identify the paginated pages.

5.) The template images without alt="" attributes are bad.

6.) The user profiles e.g. http://community.invisionpower.com/user/143373-madmatt6/

have a low quality and should be set with:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">

7.) The biggest problem is the duplicated content because e.g. the following URLs:

Perhaps you can disallow some bad URLs with mod_rewrite, 301, rel="nofollow" or the robots.txt:

/forums/index.php?app=core&module=help
/forums/index.php?app=core&amp;module=search&amp;do=viewNewContent&amp;search_app=forums
/forums/forum/47-skin-tutorials/?sort_key=start_date&sort_by=Z-A
/forums/topic/7245-guest-textbox-modification-in-overlay-cherry-template/
/forums/index.php?app=forums&module=forums&section=findpost&pid=32672
/forum/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules

The original and very incomplete robots.txt

User-agent: *

Disallow: /forum/admin/

Disallow: /forum/cache/

Disallow: /forum/converge_local/

Disallow: /forum/hooks/

Disallow: /forum/ips_kernel/

Disallow: /forum/retail/

Disallow: /forum/public/style_captcha/

Disallow: /forum/*view__getnewpost$

Disallow: /forum/*view__getlastpost$

Disallow: /forum/*view__old$

Disallow: /forum/*view__new$

Disallow: /forum/*view__getfirst$

Disallow: /forum/*view__getprevious$

Disallow: /forum/*view__getnext$

Disallow: /forum/*view__getlast$

Disallow: /forum/*?s=

[TwistedMerlin]

Are you creating a community for humans or robots?

[mark007]

Of course for both. The moste new visitors come from Google & co.

[cocoliso]

+1000

[Rhett]

Good solid content is your friend, and you will never worry about SEO again.  

[AlexWebsites]

I'm also noticing a small drop off, but that's forums in general I think. However, I believe 4.0 was touted as being more SEO friendly if I read correctly somewhere. I was under the impression IPB was investing into that for 4.0.

[bigPaws]

Good solid content is your friend, and you will never worry about SEO again.  ​ 

Which is all good for a blog but obviously on a forum a lot of the posts can be short - Google can then consider these pages as "light on content" - therefore if IPB can incorporate some "best practice" SEO then that would be a welcome hand :) 

[Rhett]

Which is all good for a blog but obviously on a forum a lot of the posts can be short - Google can then consider these pages as "light on content" - therefore if IPB can incorporate some "best practice" SEO then that would be a welcome hand  

​

We do, we have, and we will always improve on SEO as things change.  

What most don't understand is google and other search engines are an always changing item, their goal is to find what you are looking for, as site owners often hack their way around into fooling/tricking/seo'ing google and others to list their site higher without actual valid "high rated" content, google and others are always looking for methods to rank content properly, and see their way past the tricks people play, they will in time find a way to de-value the bad content and rank appropriately.

If you want to rank high for something, you better have high value content on your site, that is the bottom line, if you do, you will never worry about SEO again.

 

 

 

[bigPaws]

I agree with you 100% there @Rhett - most days I have to explain to my clients that's there is no quick cheats to ranking well and even if they did discover one it won't last and therefore will ultimately be a waste of time vs actually making a site people naturally share and enjoy.

All I meant in my earlier comment is that I hope IPS 4 has followed Google's own best practices in terms of page structure, correct use of tags, etc. - it sounds from your reply that it has. The only thing I'm aware of is they've suggested the ability to noindex threads with less than a few hundred words. This was advice from Google in terms of not having lots of pages (topics in the case of IPB) which contain very little content. Any chance of having something like that in IPS 4?

[sobrenome]

Unfortunately we cannot worry about content only. SEO guidelines (like speed, organization, duplicate content, etc) must be followed or our ranks are keep going down...

[Makoto]

speed

​IP.Board is plenty fast, if your website is slow that probably means you need to move to a better host.

organization

​IPB4 makes some pretty significant improvements in regards to organization. Where do you think it's lacking?

duplicate content

​IPB makes full use of canonical tags, unless you're meaning to reference something else.

You're right that SEO is important, but the majority of real SEO is just following sensible programming and design standards, which IPB seems to go above and beyond in doing. Everything else in the subject of SEO is either trying to manipulate Google's rankings (see how quickly your ranking on Google plummets after you're caught and penalized for that) or just pseudo nonsense from self-entitled "experts".

So pretty much everything important relating to SEO (i.e. the "basics") IPB already does. If you think it's lacking somewhere, please do point out those specific areas for discussion.

Other than that, content is indeed the primary, major driving force for your website. Even if your site was less than perfect in adhering to modern standards, Google would still likely find a way to work with it, as long as your website provides quality content that people are interested in.

[opentype]

Please install the Firefox Addon SEOQuake and click on Diagnosis.

Such tools really start to annoy me. Even our web design clients start to use them and then list the “errors” we are supposed to fix for them, even though they have not a clue what all that stuff means. 

Don’t take this stuff too seriously. Such tools can be useful. They can show some area where a tiny optimization is possible and you wouldn’t have notice it without the tool. But don’t take these things literally. The search engine ranking represents relevancy – not if you used 50 or 70 words in a meta tag. 

When I do search engine optimization, I THINK about what my users want and how I can get more of that content and make it more accessible. And I check Google Webmaster Tools and Google analytics to see what my users are searching, doing on my site and so on. But it’s not about those pure technical measures such SEO tools list. And this is what Google also says over and over again – just watch all those Matt Cutts videos and you get a much better idea how search engines work.