[How To] Replace Showpost Links with Permalinks - Max Out Search Engine Crawling Efficiency

It may seem very basic, but replacing showpost pages with Permalinks can really mean the difference between waiting weeks or months for full search indexing, to waiting multiple years!

The number of posts on each thread page is set within your vBulletin Control Panel. Let's say that you have 15 posts per page. That means every thread on your forum, if it had the maximum posts per page, would create 15 extra pages for search engines to crawl (bad,when non unique).

There are some fundamental problems here:

• Duplication - Showpost pages are partial duplicate content (repeated text)
• Inefficient - Showpost pages create unnecessary work for search engines (inefficient)
• Slower Indexing - Causes slower indexing of thread pages.
• Reduces Ranking - Steals large amounts of link value away from threads & reduces their rank.
• Sitemap Overloaded - Makes your sitemap less effective.
• Confusing - Showpost pages are bad links, out of thread context. (Non-SEO factor).

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Google does NOT favor massive content if it's not unique!

Any spammer can create a content grabber to populate a site with millions of pages of recycled content. Google wants to find unique content, no matter how much you have of it. Quality versus quantity.

Thread pages tend to be unique. Showpost pages are not.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In our example, each thread is filled up with only 15 posts (1 page). In reality, many threads will have so many posts, they will create many different pages.

It can mean the difference between waiting weeks or months for full indexing, to waiting multiple years!

• Click here for insights on how to estimate your crawling inefficiency.

You can use the above information to get a basic estimate of inefficiency due to showpost pages. It may be somewhat shocking to you.

Note: Before making this change, you should use Google Analytics to find out if you are receiving any significant traffic to your showpost pages. If you find that you are, then please create a discussion here before proceeding, so that we can help you determine the best strategy.

Here are the steps required to replace your showpost links with Permalinks:

• Verify if your showpost pages are getting significant traffic before proceeding (Google Analytics).
• Login to your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php)
• Use the Quick Jump links to go to the "Permalinks" section.
• Find the "Forum Permalinks" section. It should be the first section shown.
• Enable the following option:

Replace post number link with Permalink
Will replace individual showpost links with the "Permalink" link. Note: Posts will no longer be accessible individually.

• Scroll down and click the "Save Settings" button.

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vBSEO will instantly replace your showpost links on every thread page with a Permalink version instead. However, there is an important additional step required for your sitemap:

• Login to your vBulletin Control Panel.
• Find the vBSEO heading in your left column.
• Click "vBSEO Sitemap Settings".
• Scroll down to the option for "Include Showpost Pages".
• Select "No" for that option.
• Scroll down and click the "Save" button.

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Now the vBSEO sitemap will no longer include your showpost pages in the sitemap. However, the current sitemap files still contain those showpost links, so they must be deleted and regenerated.

• Connect to your forum via FTP.
• Navigate to your sitemap data folder, stored within your forum root.
• /vbseo_sitemap/data/
• Delete all .gz ending files listed there (DO NOT delete the .htaccess file).
• Login to your vBSEO Sitemap control panel: yoursite.com/forum/vbseo_sitemap/
• Click "Run Sitemap Generator". Then confirm when the dialog box prompts you to continue.

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After doing so, your sitemap files will be fully re-generated without the showpost pages, dramatically increasing your crawling efficiency.

The next time search engines like Google download your sitemap, they will be directed to your thread pages only where you have the most potential to build your long tail traffic.

If you have any questions, please post them here and the vBSEO Total Support Team will assist you.

Where is the max posts per thread page setting?

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Note: Forums that are already active should NOT change this setting for max posts per thread.

This sounds good. I believe I am already doing this. But will double check to make sure everything is right.

Can search engines still index other content even tho it is not included in the sitemap? Because I am sure there would have to be some fantastic unique replies on my site which would get many hits from the search engines.

Yes, the search engines will find all of your content unless you have it blocked with robots.txt, or have no link to it, etc.

The sitemap is designed to make that crawling process more efficient, letting you give them a list of resources and their relative importance.

But the sitemap does not say exclude anything not contained in this list. Whenever possible, of course, you still want to get everything included.

Regarding "unique replies":

Unique reply posts will certain be indexed. But keep in mind that post content is included in the thread pages already.

For those who still have showpost enabled, then before disabling them it is very wise to first check to see if any traffic is being received to them:
Do your ShowPost Pages Get Search Hits? - vBulletin SEO Forums

Thank you very much for the tutorial.
Very usefull for me..and I guess for all of others, too.

So I guess 15 is a good number for max posts per page ?

Originally Posted by mikeinjersey

So I guess 15 is a good number for max posts per page ?

It's important NOT to change this setting for forums that are already active. If changed, it will cause all thread pages with more than the max posts to change. If set much higher, it will significant reduce the # of thread pages there are in total (i.e. from multi-page threads).

There may be support for setting this # higher when first getting started. Again I do not advocate changing this setting for current forums.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

For those who still have showpost enabled, then before disabling them it is very wise to first check to see if any traffic is being received to them:
Do your ShowPost Pages Get Search Hits? - vBulletin SEO Forums

I received the following result by doing this:
Search sent 209 total visits via 129 landing pages containing "-post"

Is it useful to disable the showpost pages then?

Originally Posted by falscherSchiri3

I received the following result by doing this:
Search sent 209 total visits via 129 landing pages containing "-post"

Is it useful to disable the showpost pages then?

Over what time frame (30 days?) and also how many total search hits from the same time frame?

In other words, what percentage of your total search hits are from showpost pages?

Yes, it's over 30 days.
In that time there were 41,367 total search hits.
I guess in that case the showpost pages can be disabled?

Yes, that's less than 10 hits per day, while you have over 1,000 hits per day overall.

Based on the major efficiencies you can obtain by disabling them, my recommendation would be for you to remove the showpost pages.

If you do, remember to follow all the steps.

Then let us know in 30/60/90 days if you've seen measurable improvement.

Why if you click in a multi-page thread linked with latest post in home page (like that vBSEO 3.3.0 RC1 Released - Page 6 - vBulletin SEO Forums) and then you try to click on post number, it reload that page?

It's not re-loading the page. It's jumping to the location of the post within it, and updating the browser's location bar with the Permalink.

I've been doing this for a while. It's really a great thing to do! Thanks!!

Maybe this is a dumb question: What will a "dramatically increased crawling efficiency" bring?
Can anyone say: "I've done this, and the number of visitors increased from x to y per day?"

All of your thread content is going to definitely be indexed and re-indexed faster.

Your link structure will definitely be optimized.

Of course, the results will vary from forum to forum, and it won't be possible to give a definitive %-age of increases in traffic, members, or revenues - but these increases should be expected.