Forum module and SEO

I have been looking into this as well, but cannot seem to find anything that works yet.

As far as I can tell and from EE staff, it is not possible.

I tried an extension i found on this forum somewhere and it have a tag {forum_url_title} and actually put the forum topic title in the URL after the number: example website.com/forum/viewtopic/1/the_title_was_here

But that gave me some sort of EE error… You do not have permission, blah, blah…

It did what I wanted, but unfortunately there is something in EE preventing this prom happening.

If it’s any help, I find my EE forum coming up A-1 fine in google with the regular naming convention. EE places the proper page (thread) titles, which is much more important than any URL. Also the content is important.

For an example, google

VC Everburn

that is a combustion system in a particular wood stove……we come up first. I can give lots of other examples.

You could probably do something with mod_rewrite to make these look good, but I don’t thik it is worth the time and trouble.

If it’s any help, I find my EE forum coming up A-1 fine in google with the regular naming convention. EE places the proper page (thread) titles, which is much more important than any URL. Also the content is important. For an example, google VC Everburn that is a combustion system in a particular wood stove……we come up first. I can give lots of other examples. You could probably do something with mod_rewrite to make these look good, but I don’t thik it is worth the time and trouble.

What keywords, how competitive? Keyword SEO url’s are big.

] What keywords, how competitive? Keyword SEO url’s are big.

big? In your opinion.

In my opinion and experience, they mean little to google, which is the only search engine that really matters.

Obviously, I only know what I have run into since 1995 with my online publishing. But any search engine which highly ranks the words in a URL is pretty dumb…IMHO.

After all, why not then buy paris_hilton_has_sex.com and put all your google ads on that page? Or, better yet my_google_search_engine_make_money.com

There were times, way back when, when search engines could be easily fooled. Those times are gone. Again, only my opinion, but it would be funny to think that the thousands of geniuses at google are getting taken advantage of by some SEO snake oil sales person.

Take it for what it is worth……content is king.

] What keywords, how competitive? Keyword SEO url’s are big.

big? In your opinion. In my opinion and experience, they mean little to google, which is the only search engine that really matters. Obviously, I only know what I have run into since 1995 with my online publishing. But any search engine which highly ranks the words in a URL is pretty dumb…IMHO. After all, why not then buy paris_hilton_has_sex.com and put all your google ads on that page? Or, better yet my_google_search_engine_make_money.com There were times, way back when, when search engines could be easily fooled. Those times are gone. Again, only my opinion, but it would be funny to think that the thousands of geniuses at google are getting taken advantage of by some SEO snake oil sales person. Take it for what it is worth……content is king.

I do a lot of SEO and have spoken with a few of the biggest names in the SEO industry, and they all tend to agree on this (and what I have seen from personal experience)and says the opposite.

One thing to strongly consider - what would happen to the so-called SEO “Industry” if it was found out the we (web publishers) didn’t need them?

Even years ago - it was determined that although google may have FOUND the words in URL strings, that they did not advance the rankings. Some have speculated a LOSS in rank. Again, my advice is never to try to fool google - just do it right (your content and site). If your customers find it useful, changes are that google will rank it right.

One thing to strongly consider - what would happen to the so-called SEO “Industry” if it was found out the we (web publishers) didn’t need them? Even years ago - it was determined that although google may have FOUND the words in URL strings, that they did not advance the rankings. Some have speculated a LOSS in rank. Again, my advice is never to try to fool google - just do it right (your content and site). If your customers find it useful, changes are that google will rank it right.

It is not the matter of fooling Google, it is the matter of helping it get relevance. If that was the case, your “page titles” are fooling Google and should be stopped right away.

Either way, do whatever you think works best.

Craig, having the extra keywords in the URL WILL help your ranking (period). Of course that is not the only thing that Google looks at when ranking your site, but it will help. That is something that Googles give juice to in their algorythm, but thats not to say you cant rank well without having keywords in your url, but it will definitely help.

This isnt a way of fooling google, its not like we are inserting keywords that have nothing to do with the content, its the title of the forum post whic also happens to be in the <title> tag wich is even more important. Anyway, we can argue until we are blue in the face, but neither of us have actually seen the google algorythm, I am only going off of personal SEO tests that I have done.

So, back to the original question at hand… Does anyone know of a way to get the forum title into the URL?