| Problems with optimizing forums and how to deal | | | | If you strip out all the tags, the menus, headers |
| with it. | | | | & footers is the same for all the pages. For |
| Usually forums are a difficult beast to optimize for | | | | example, there is a thread started by A Forumer, |
| Search Engines. Unlike other websites, you as the | | | | and he writes only a few lines: "I have found a cool |
| forum webmaster will face problems like lack of | | | | site! link here! Check it out". And then there is another |
| unique and useful content, inability to optimize | | | | thread started by B Forumer, and he too writes a |
| keywords for certain pages, duplicate content | | | | few lines: "Nice article! Link here! Good read!". So |
| problems and so on. | | | | Googlebot comes and read your pages and due to |
| Difficult onpage optimization. Yes, if you have a | | | | the lack of content, they believe that these 2 |
| website, you can simply do onpage optimization | | | | threads are the same (due to your template) and |
| yourself, like bolding keywords, h1 and h2 tags with | | | | may send one of them to Supplemental Results. I am |
| keywords and so on. But how to do that in a forum? | | | | pretty sure you have a lot of such posts in your |
| A forum is about letting your users start a topic in a | | | | forum, right? |
| thread, but it's very unlikely they are going to bold | | | | What can you do? |
| keywords for you, they just post. Normal Onpage | | | | Simple, if someone posts such a thread in your |
| optimization, a effective tool for Search Engine | | | | forum, just go into the link and extract some |
| Optimization (SEO), is sadly out of your hands. | | | | summary and paste it in the thread. For the above |
| So what's the solution? | | | | article example, goto the article itself and copy |
| Help generate interest in those threads where you | | | | several lines into that thread. This way, there is |
| know your users will post important keywords by | | | | additional content for Googlebot to index and gives |
| replying or by adding more information. Even if they | | | | you a less likelihood of going supplemental. Encourage |
| don't bold it, having a decent number of keywords in | | | | more users to reply to the thread can help as well. |
| the thread will help Search Engine understand what | | | | You should also check all outgoing links your uses |
| your thread (and hence your page) is all about. You | | | | have posted and see whether these links lead to |
| yourself can add keywords when you reply but | | | | blacklisted sites. If they do, delete them off |
| please make it look natural. You can do the same for | | | | immediately. |
| links and anchor text. | | | | You can also look for forum modification scripts |
| Content. Unlike websites or even blogs, forums | | | | which helps you change the meta descriptions of |
| usually don't have unique content. Your users will | | | | your threads so that it would look different from |
| copy information from other sources and post them | | | | each other to Search Engines and reducing the risk |
| in your forum. Even if someone were to post original | | | | of your pages going into supplemental. |
| content, it may be short or incomplete enough to be | | | | There are some modifications scripts out there which |
| effective for SEO. | | | | can help your improve your forums' Search Engine |
| Help me then. | | | | friendliness by creating Search Engine friendly static |
| Well, you can write your own articles and post them | | | | URLs, or even keyword rich URLs through mod |
| in your forum. Encourage your users to write articles | | | | rewrite. In additon, see whether there are scripts |
| and have them post in your forum. Have a contest | | | | which can help you create sitemaps for submission to |
| or something. You can even start a controversial | | | | Google to help them index your forum more |
| topic and this will definitely generate replies and | | | | efficiently. |
| hence content. What you need is user participation | | | | Another effective way to improve your forum |
| and input, without them, your forum doesn't stand a | | | | SE-friendliness is through archiving. Archiving means |
| chance and most search engine will just ignore your | | | | stripping everything out except the main content and |
| forum due to the lack of unique content. However, | | | | important links. This way, Search Engine can easily |
| you should concentrate on content which has the | | | | and quickly crawl and index your forum without the |
| important keywords associated to them. | | | | rest of the rubbish cluttering it. |
| Supplemental Results. One of the biggest problem | | | | There are a lot of other ways to optimize your |
| with forums is that a lot of pages tend to go into | | | | forum, too many for this article anyway. But you |
| supplemental results. Why? Because the | | | | should follow some of the above tips (especially |
| threads(pages) have very little information or | | | | those tips which doesn't require additional coding |
| content. And when it doesn't have much content in | | | | skills) as they are pretty easy and they require only |
| it, it looks exactly like another thread(page) with very | | | | a minimal effort. Basically, they all have to do with |
| little information. Your forum is usually dynamic and | | | | adding content and keywords into your forum posts |
| template driven, which means only the actual content | | | | but still making it look natural. |
| is different, the rest of the forum remains the same. | | | | |