[How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy

[Joe Ward]

You specify the title of your forum within your vBulletin options. By default, vBulletin will include your forum title on all sub-forum, thread, and member profile pages. However, this is not optimum for SEO.

vBSEO helps you optimize your forum on a page by page basis, for the content that occurs on the page. Therefore, it is better to allow the title of the page to be evaluated on its own, without the forum title keywords included.

Doing so can help boost long tail SEO traffic:
What is the Search Long Tail? - vBulletin SEO Forums

How to Remove the Site Title from Your Pages:

• Login to your vBulletin Control Panel.
• Select: Styles & Templates -> Style Manager
• Select your style & "Edit Templates"
• You will edit the SHOWTHREAD, FORUMDISPLAY, and MEMBERINFO.
• In each template, find the TITLE tag near the top.
• Within the title tag, located the $vboptions[bbtitle] code.
• Delete $vboptions[bbtitle] from each file and re-save them.

What should you expect?

Originally Posted by dutchbb

I've actually thoroughly tested this change, used it 6 months without the title and 6 months with the title, you won't believe how much the difference is.

[gedsta]

Interesting, I have just done ours now, so will report back when and if I spot a difference.

[meonet]

What you think about to delete this tag's: $vboptions[bbtitle] - $vbphrase[view_single_post] - also in the "SHOWTHREAD_SHOWPOST" template?

[Joe Ward]

My recommendation is to use our replace showpost links with permalinks and remove showpost from your forums entirely.

If you keep them, you don't want the title to be identical to the thread, but you can get rid of the bbTitle.

[meonet]

Oh Ok Joe but how to remove showpost entirely from my forums?

[Future]

Indeed a good implementation, title of any webpage plays another important role in SEO.

[Joe Ward]

Originally Posted by meonet

Oh Ok Joe but how to remove showpost entirely from my forums?

If you use our feature to replace showpost with permalinks, they will be effectively blocked. Make sure not to include them in your sitemap.

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Also removing thread prefix from SHOWTHREAD template is another good step.

[Bonus Paradise]

How to Remove the Site Title from Your Pages:

• Login to your vBulletin Control Panel.
• Select: Styles & Templates -> Style Manager
• Select your style & "Edit Templates"
• You will edit the SHOWTHREAD, FORUMDISPLAY, and MEMBERINFO.
• In each template, find the TITLE tag near the top.
• Within the title tag, located the $vboptions[bbtitle] code.
• Delete $vboptions[bbtitle] from each file and re-save them.

I have done that
many thanks

but now I have very short title tags like only
Lets Talk

I see you here on VB Seo Forum
have the Category and then the thread in title
How can i do that?

Or will it be ok to have such short titles too?

[Mike]

Is there any reason why this isn't being implemented here?

[Martyn]

FORUMDISPLAY - im using the vbseo style. doesnt have it, but i have the RR's setup... should i remove it from them?

[Joe Ward]

Originally Posted by Martyn

FORUMDISPLAY - im using the vbseo style. doesnt have it, but i have the RR's setup... should i remove it from them?

Content within the page, like Relevant Phrases, are a little different. The title holds greater weight, and therefore should be more focused.

However, the page has more diversity in terms (i.e. the title is short, but the page is filled with text content), so it's acceptable to have extra terms including the site title repeated there.

A good rule of thumb would be to only keep the site title enhanced in something like Relevant Phrases if the keywords in the site title are valuable. Some arbitrary or unique business name that does not have search value beyond people searching for your business itself would not be a good choice for further enhancement on the page.

[Bonus Paradise]

oh sorry Joe
but I understand here now exact nothing
can you please tell me, is it ok if my titles are as short as "lets talk"

thank you

[Joe Ward]

Short titles are not optimal, but they are going to happen on forums because of the massive amount of content by users who do not pay much attention to SEO or properly titling their threads.

I recommend having your moderators fix bad titles like "let's talk".

[Bonus Paradise]

thank you Joe
I will try to fix the most short titles