Forum Content

[GregW]

Does Google respect content in forums in the same way as a standard HTML page or Wordpress post?

For example, would Google value an article posted in a forum equally to the way it would value an article on a static HTML page? Lets assume that no htags are being used to keep it fair.

[Randy Ray]

My assumption has always been that a webpage is a webpage is a webpage. I know from starting threads at PAP that forum threads can rank very well for certain phrases if you do a decent job of making the subject matter of the thread clear. I think links from forums might be devalued a bit, but I don't think Google is less likely to rank a forum thread than it is to rank any other kind of page.

I think a lot of forum threads don't rank well because no thought is given to the subject line by the thread starter, and a lot of times, the content in the forum thread is pretty weak and unfocused. But if you write a well thought out 2000 word article about a given subject in a forum thread, link to that forum thread with some appropriate anchor text, and repeat your keyword phrases in the thread, then sure, forum threads can rank just fine.

[GregW]

Thanks Randy! That's what I had hoped/half-expected. Reassuring to feel that larger forum posts and content is unlikely to just be "going to waste".

Thanks again.

[Mark]

I agree with Randy here. Most forum pages/content are not well thought out in terms of adding the right terms and organization of content. It's more of a free flow stream of ideas, whereas a regular web page that you constructed, is well thought out, follows a logical order and adds keywords where appropriate.

Mark

[kingcobra]

I'm going to disagree a bit at least in terms of the fact that html pages tend to be easier to index and less clicks from home. I've also found that even with sitemaps SE's tend to still struggle a bit with other formats such as php. I still have a lot of forum pages unindexed and some have been there for a little while. The way sites are crawled and the hierarchy that they use also favors the content pages. There's also less meta control with forum pages, at least on the software I use, and that's the biggest thing in my mind. Not that anyone would have time doing the meta tags up right for all these pages anyway

So the bottom line in my mind anyway is you want to focus on your html pages first and see the forum pages as backseat riders who still can help you but are along for the ride

[GregW]

Thanks kingcobra, the thought of internal linking slipped my mind. I can see why a forum thread would not rank quite as well when you consider how fewer links might be pointing to it internally.

I've also found that even with sitemaps SE's tend to still struggle a bit with other formats such as php.

I'm not sure what you mean about struggling with PHP. SEs do not read PHP code, so they don't even know it's there.

You could two pages with identical content, except that one page uses PHP in the code to output different pieces of content and they would be identical. PHP is a server side script, so visitors and search engines wouldn't know if it's being used or not.

[kingcobra]

I'm not sure what you mean about struggling with PHP. SEs do not read PHP code, so they don't even know it's there.

You could two pages with identical content, except that one page uses PHP in the code to output different pieces of content and they would be identical. PHP is a server side script, so visitors and search engines wouldn't know if it's being used or not.

I"m not sure as to the technical aspects of this other than the fact that the html vs. php (and other newer extensions) issue has been kicking around for awhile. It used to be that you were told to stick with html or risk not being crawled properly and now it's said that they are catching up and there's not a great deal of difference between them but it's not a level playing field yet. I take it that it's not anything intrinsic in php but it's more in the way the pages are spit out. In particular with a forum the spiders don't seem to be able to follow like they would with all html pages and this can make it take a lot more passes to crawl. I've got some forum pages for instance which have been up for months and haven't been indexed yet even though they've been in my sitemap. I've found the same thing with forum backlinks as well and even on very busy forums it takes quite a bit longer to get the links indexed than the html ones. So I'm not sure exactly why but there still appears to bel some glitches there.

[GregW]

I imagine that the high code to content ratio on forums has an effect on indexing. Within reason I don't think that the amount of code makes a difference, but this thread alone is nearing 4000 lines of code (I know lines isn't a solid indicator of the amount of code, but just for quick reference) and I don't even know if the unique content in this thread contributes to anything more than 100 lines of that. I'd say that makes it a little trickier for Google to find out what the page is about, especially if no h tags are being used.

I really don't think the issue of whether or not PHP is being used has an effect on indexing or ranking. Maybe when you think of PHP pages/sites you think of big busy pages and lots of code that is out of your control, as opposed to HTML pages having connotations with "clean code"?

[Randy Ray]

The linking factor is something that's entirely within your control. If you want to link to a forum thread from every page of your site, there's really nothing stopping you.

As far as forum threads being harder to index, you should certainly be using some kind of SEO-optimized software like vbSEO. I don't see any reason why you would have any trouble getting a forum thread indexed if the URL's are structured well. (I'm not convinced that you'd have much trouble getting your forum threads indexed anyway, provided you pointed enough links at them from your other pages.)

[Spry]

The linking factor is something that's entirely within your control. If you want to link to a forum thread from every page of your site, there's really nothing stopping you.

As far as forum threads being harder to index, you should certainly be using some kind of SEO-optimized software like vbSEO. I don't see any reason why you would have any trouble getting a forum thread indexed if the URL's are structured well. (I'm not convinced that you'd have much trouble getting your forum threads indexed anyway, provided you pointed enough links at them from your other pages.)

speaking of vbseo (and this might should be it's own thread but).

Lets say you have a well established forum with tens of thousands of posts that does not have vbseo installed.

1. should you install vbseo on the existing forum and change all the urls?
2. how in the hell do you fix it so google doesn't see duplicate content everywhere when you change your slugs with vbseo?