vB and SMF have meta descriptions and keyword tags within the templates that can be changed by the forum operators.
Is there a way to SEO meta tags within MyBB?
How about spiders and crawlers, is MyBB spider friendly and what can we do to optimize MyBB?
I know we were having problems getting indexed with some versions of SMF because of session ID's showing up while vB is much more spider friendly and their URL's are fine!
You can add your meta tags into the template headerinclude (Admin-CP -> Templates -> Edit/Delete -> *your templateset* -> Expand -> headerinclude.
As far as I know there are no problems with the crawlers. If you want you can install
this plugin.
MyBB by default is fair enough for search engine spiders, esp. google. However, to get better rankings in the search engines, you can use my plugin as mentioned by michael. I do not recommend adding meta tags as they don't really matter these days. Having keyword rich urls will get you all the ranking you want. Google "server overloading" for a proof of nice ranking using keyword rich urls plus other nifty features of
MyBB SEO Mod .
This forum seems to be ranking high in the SERP's without the SEO hack.
Are MyBB URL's out of the box fine?
As I mentioned we had major problems with SMF showing session ID's killing off any hope of being indexed.
vB has a feature that includes the title of the thread in the meta description!
Will MyBB move in this direction as I think it is very important as well as the URL's, has there been a session ID problem with MyBB and why did SMF have this problem?
Meta tags are still more important that many think!
Google is fine as long as there are fewer than 5 query parameters. MyBB sets a special session id to search engines which don't change - this avoids a lot of headaches (such as the spider hitting the same page multiple times due to different session id).
laie_techie Wrote:Google is fine as long as there are fewer than 5 query parameters. MyBB sets a special session id to search engines which don't change - this avoids a lot of headaches (such as the spider hitting the same page multiple times due to different session id).
Please explain "query parameters" for the non technical people like me out here!
Querystring params are such as:
url.com/user.php?uid=4545&do=view&foo=bar
Here the parameters are uid, do, and foo! So we have a total of 3 params here.
Quote:Meta tags are still more important that many think!
That's rather debatable. Well, whatever you do, do not use the same description meta tag throughout your forum. Using keywords would be fine though.
Quote:This forum seems to be ranking high in the SERP's without the SEO hack.
That's because of the massive amount of 'backlinks' to this forum.
Quote:Are MyBB URL's out of the box fine?
Yes they are! However, they aren't the search engines favs. to get the high ranking. But ofcourse a lot of backlinks and you'll be there no matter if search engines like the urls or not.
Thanks for the help, you guys have made this a great thread for sure!
vBulletin changes the description to the thread title automatically, the keywords stay the same!
What I am asking is if MyBB is going to move in this direction?
Quote:vBulletin changes the description to the thread title automatically, the keywords stay the same!
I am going to include dynamic thread description (data from first post), in my next version of MyBB SEO plugin. vBulletin adds thread title in the description meta tag, by default. I'm not sure if mybb will be adding that by default, anytime soon.