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Optimize the single post template (SEO)

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by , 03-06-2008 at 08:57 AM (2911 Views)
The default single-post comes a little too stripped IMHO. User feedback says that they miss the normal navigation and don`t know how to get back to the forum. If visitors click on a direct link to a single post e. g. in a google search result the bounce rate is probably very high as they don`t find the way into your forum.

The template name for the single post view is "SHOWTHREAD_SHOWPOST". The first thing I changed was the title.

default:

Code:
<title>$vboptions[bbtitle] - $vbphrase[view_single_post] - $threadinfo[title]</title>
changed version:
Code:
<title>$threadinfo[title] - $foruminfo[title_clean] - $vboptions[bbtitle]</title>
Now the title of the thread comes first, followed by the name of the forum containing the thread/post. The last string is your forum name. This should give better ranking results than the default title.

After that I inserted the
Code:
$header
$navbar
vars directly after the body tag but it seems that they don`t get parsed in this template. So the default navigation and header won`t appear above the single post. Does anyone know how to change it?

Without the navigation on top the only way for a visitor to get (back) to the forum is to click on the close window link at the bottom of the page or the "Thread: Threadname" link on the top right of the page. I prefixed the latter link with "Go back to " to make it a bit more clear that this is a way back to the forum.

On the top left we find the following output: "View Single Post". Is this relevant? I don`t think so and that`s why I replaced the code
Code:
$vbphrase[view_single_post]
with
Code:
<h1>$threadinfo[title]</h1>
. So now the title of the thread is displayed as a first level headline instead which also should be better for SEO.

The last thing I did was to create a new channel in Google AdSense and add a 728/90 google add after the
Code:
<if condition="$show['reputation']">
condition.

The result doesn`t look very pretty yet but I hope it`s more usable: Eure absoluten Lieblingsrezepte vom Wunderkessel! - Was kochen wir heute - Wunderkessel - die Koch-Community mit Herz
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Comments

  1. Joe Ward's Avatar
    I like your approach here. Although I always advocate getting rid of showpost pages by replacing their links with permalinks (option in vbseocp.php), IF you're going to keep them, it is a great idea to do further optimization of the page.
  2. FightRice's Avatar
    Nice idea if you use the showpost page, i've set mine up to not use it and just use the permalinks so its no longer possible to link to single posts and it seemed to help lower the bounce rate a few percentage points
  3. goddess_dix's Avatar
    i opted to use permalinks only for the same reasons you talked about: i don't think the showpost page added much for seo, and for using the forums, having the info in the context of the thread almost always was more helpful than a single post anyway...

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