SEO and werid URL's

[tomcoleman]

my board was installed in the root of my webserver so when you go to www.thesaltybox.com it displays the forum instantly.

I have noticed though that in the URL bar it shows

http://www.thesaltybox.com/forum/the-salty-box-com-service-section/thesaltybox-com-news/1827416-forum-upgrade-to-version-5/page2

http://www.thesaltybox.com/forum/the...-to-version-5/

My question is how do I shorten this URL and remove the forum part? to make it more google friendly.

[glennrocksvb]

The /forum is to distinguish posts from /blogs, /articles and /social-groups.

[tomcoleman]

The /forum is to distinguish posts from /blogs, /articles and /social-groups.

ok so that is by design then?

Is there anyway to shorten the SEO links as having

http://www.thesaltybox.com/forum/the-salty-box-com-service-section/thesaltybox-com-news/1827416-forum-upgrade-to-version-5/page2

example part in BOLD below doesn't look right or nice.

http://www.thesaltybox.com/forum/[B]the-salty-box-com-service-section/thesaltybox-com-news[/B]/1827416-forum-upgrade-to-version-5/page2

[glennrocksvb]

That's by design. And you can't change it without modifying the code. The format of the URL is:

/forum/[category]/[forum-name]/[suforum-name]/[nodeid]-[post-title]

[tomcoleman]

ok thanks very much

[Replicant]

Site builder can rename URLs. When you change the URL with the site-builder, it sets a redirect301 in the routing table. I've renamed most of the URLs on my site using this technique. Just for example: I renamed

[URL="http://www.k5blazersplus.com/forums/forum/main-forum/build-threads/chevy/k5-blazer/-69-72-first-gen"][COLOR=#000000]http://www.k5blazersplus.com/forums/[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=#000000]forum/build-threads/chevy/k5-blazer/-69-72-first-gen[/COLOR]

to

[URL="http://www.k5blazersplus.com/forums/69-72-first-gen"][COLOR=#000000]http://www.k5blazersplus.com/forums/69-72-first-gen[/COLOR][/URL]

The old URL still works so there is no broken links to deal with. After the URL change, when I click on a post, the following is displayed in the URL bar

[URL="http://www.k5blazersplus.com/forums/69-72-first-gen/163-71-k5-build-for-the-wife"][COLOR=#000000]http://www.k5blazersplus.com/forums/[/COLOR][/URL][URL="http://www.k5blazersplus.com/forums/69-72-first-gen"][COLOR=#000000]69-72-first-gen[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=#000000]/163-71-k5-build-for-the-wife[/COLOR]

[Mark.B]

Another important point is that having the word "forum" in a URL is not suddenly going to divert all that site's traffic elsewhere.

Don't believe most of the SEO "specialists".