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Search engine optimisation is an inexact science, and when putting together the slate of features we spent time researching the latest thinking around what factors lead to positive benefits, including absorbing existing research on sites such as seomoz.org.
The features that have been created for vBulletin 4.0 are the main factors that we consider will have the greatest positive impact in terms of search engine ranking. Instead of including hundreds of options that can be infinitely tweaked, the features chosen consist of semantic HTML packed with content meta-data, the reduction in the amount of duplicate content and search engine friendly URLS for forums, threads and member profile pages.
Built in features
Keyword Use in Title Tag - The HTML title of the key vBulletin pages now better represents the content within the page, and extraneous information (such as "Page x") have now been removed.
NOFOLLOW tag for all external links.
Duplicate content reduced - by altering the operation of the showpost.php file to redirect cleanly to showthread.php.
Meta description and keywords - now populated with relevant, meaningful page level content, including tag data and content snippets.
Friendly URL options
For 4.0, there is a new area within the admin control panel that will allow you to switch on friendly URLs that will work in conjunction with server redirects (.htaccess) where supported.
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For threads, the following URL structures for threads, member profiles and forums are created for each of the options:
Standard URLs - as exists at present:
- showthread.php?t=12345
- member.php?u=12345
- forumdisplay.php?f=123
Basic Friendly URLs:
- showthread.php?1234-Thread-Title
- member.php?1234-Username
- forumdisplay.php?12-Forum-Title
Advanced Friendly URLs
- showthread.php/1234-Thread-Title
- member.php/1234-Username
- forumdisplay.php/12-Forum-Title
Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs
- threads/1234-Thread-Title
- members/1234-Username
- forums/1234-Forum-Title
Search Engine Sitemap
vBulletin 4.0 will include a built in XML site map system that provides a machine readable index of forum posts and threads.
Google and other supported search engines will be able to access the sitemap, which will facilitate a greater amount of site content being included within the search engine index.
If you have any questions, suggestions or thoughts on the planned SEO functionality for vBulletin 4.0, please post a comment. Thanks!
More development blog posts coming soon.
-James
Currently I have for profiles:
mysite.com/username
This works great for the users. I'd be willing to change to mysite.com/member/username but not with the user number included
I have looked at vbseo and they offer nice urls like:
mysite.com/forumtitle
mysite.com/member/username
They also offer urls for blogs and groups. Which are highly important. And I'm sure that once the new cms is out, they will offer urls for that as well.
Please do not use the tables in the design and attention to Cascading Style Sheets "valid css" .