MyBB Community Forums

I want to ween myself off Google SEO plugin.... We have thousands of links built from this both internally and more importantly - at other sites.

I don't want to 301 these because we will lose a huge portion of our link juice. If someone clicks (or Google leads them to) mysite.com/Thread-I-love-robin-williams, I don't want it to redirect to mysite.com/showthread.php?tid=47244, I want it to open mysite.com/Thread-I-love-robin-williams without redirecting, and likewise if someone clicks a link that directs to mysite.com/showthread.php?tid=47244, I want it to open mysite.com/showthread.php?tid=47244, not redirect.

Surely there must be some way to do this? Any suggestions?

What's wrong with a 301 status code? 301 means that the resource has "moved permanently". Spiders (such as Google) will use the new URL from now on. Your resources will keep their page rank.

^ this

We have status codes for a reason. Google will probably then compare (or something) the old one to the new, find that they're about the same, and carry on. You're not doing anything fraudulent in terms of SEO, and so Google won't punish you for it.

Google SEO will happily redirect its SEO urls back to showthread.php?tid=19264 for you. You can achieve this for example by setting all URL schemes to empty string in the Google SEO URL settings (but leave the rewrite rules intact). Also see the manual section on "Redirecting SEO URLs back to MyBB stock URLs"

Or it won't, if you disable Google SEO Redirect. But it's not the right thing to do™.

If you decide to do it that way anyway, at least let Google SEO Meta stick a canonical in it so Google will have a chance to pick up the "new" URL even without redirect.

(2015-08-18, 06:08 PM)laie_techie Wrote: [ -> ]What's wrong with a 301 status code? 301 means that the resource has "moved permanently". Spiders (such as Google) will use the new URL from now on. Your resources will keep their page rank.

As far as I know, anytime you 301, you loose juice. It's not punishment...It's just something that happens. This is what everything I've ever read on the subject says. And when I initially tried changing them, I immediately lost 30% of my traffic. I tried hanging on for a month, but they never bounced back, so I'm back to Google SEO on again.

(2015-08-19, 04:22 AM)Josh H. Wrote: [ -> ]^ this

We have status codes for a reason. Google will probably then compare (or something) the old one to the new, find that they're about the same, and carry on. You're not doing anything fraudulent in terms of SEO, and so Google won't punish you for it.

(2015-08-19, 10:02 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]Google SEO will happily redirect its SEO urls back to showthread.php?tid=19264 for you. You can achieve this for example by setting all URL schemes to empty string in the Google SEO URL settings (but leave the rewrite rules intact). Also see the manual section on "Redirecting SEO URLs back to MyBB stock URLs"

Or it won't, if you disable Google SEO Redirect. But it's not the right thing to do™.

If you decide to do it that way anyway, at least let Google SEO Meta stick a canonical in it so Google will have a chance to pick up the "new" URL even without redirect.

P1: Yes, I noticed this, but I'm trying to avoid the redirect.

P2: So it's possible to revert the forum to standard style links, then if someone clicks a link in the forum it will lead to the MyBB "standard" style.... and if someone clicks on an embedded (in a post/on an external site etc..) link that leads to /Thread-blah-blah, it will open /Thread-blah-blah without redirect, and if they click a link that leads to /showthread.php?tid=19264, it will lead to /showthread.php?tid=19264). Is that correct?


I hope I'm being clear... I want to revert the site to standard style links, but not have any redirects happen when someone clicks a standard style link or a Google SEO style link.

Thanks for your reply...

redirects only happen when you enable redirects

Okay, I can get it so the redirects don't happen.

The problem is that when I disable Settings > Google SEO > Google SEO URL, the Google SEO links no longer work... But if I leave them enabled, then the site doesn't revert to stock MyBB links.

What settings to tick to get it so:

- the site is reverted to stock links
- the old Google SEO links still work
- no redirects

Please read.

Yes, I read what you wrote. Disabling redirects works, but the forum still not reverted to stock links...

What I've done is:

- reverted core files (this is what I believe I was missing)
- disabled redirect
- enabled Settings > Google SEO > Google SEO URL

This seems to work.

Also, one more question... the setting for canonical links is checked. Which is being set as the canonical link? The stock MyBB link or the Google SEO link? Or does this setting have nothing to do with that?


Thanks Frost.

the canonical link is what it would be redirected to, but you can simply check - right click on a thread page, view page source, search for canonical