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

Originally Posted by marco1

Yes the individual posts will still with no-index however I'm like the permalinks here in vbseo.com because in some times I want to scroll up in the page to see more info about the thread and the permalinks allow you to do this but with showposts I can't do this

Yes, but I don't think that this is the answer he is looking for. What exactly is the benefit, SEO wise? Do we have any numbers here?

@Grumbledook I'm with you. I don't understand it as well. I implemented it 3 months and 6 days ago, but saw no difference until now. I do have users complaining that they like to have show post links back, so not sure what to do now.

Originally Posted by MartijnH

Yes, but I don't think that this is the answer he is looking for. What exactly is the benefit, SEO wise? Do we have any numbers here?

@Grumbledook I'm with you. I don't understand it as well. I implemented it 3 months and 6 days ago, but saw no difference until now. I do have users complaining that they like to have show post links back, so not sure what to do now.

That's the important with your forum SEO

• 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).

but surely just setting the showposts to noindex solves all those problems?

Originally Posted by Grumbledook

but surely just setting the showposts to noindex solves all those problems?

No, the permalinks is the best way to fix all these problems

i got that consensus on here is the case, i was asking why it is better

what does permalinks provide that noindex doesn't if you take redirecting the link to the thread which some users may not want?

Because when you replace showposts with permalinks , you'll have correct link consensus as both your showpost links and showthread links are same and showpost links are marked with an anchor. This way you will also prevent users sharing showpost links on other sites which will also help you to increase your pages rankings.

Thanks that makes sense, my new forum I was looking at implementing it anyway, though another forum i visit a lot I can see the benefit of still having the separate showpost pages and using noindex instead.

Nice to understand the reasoning behind anything I implement rather than blindly following ;]

Originally Posted by Grumbledook

Thanks that makes sense, my new forum I was looking at implementing it anyway, though another forum i visit a lot I can see the benefit of still having the separate showpost pages and using noindex instead.

Nice to understand the reasoning behind anything I implement rather than blindly following ;]

Additional of Mert reply if you will add no-index to showposts the bots can view it but can't index it so you will lose your bots because sure you will have a huge number of it.
I'm always recommended to disable include all pages in your sitemap and include only showthreads and forumdisplay because we need search engines to focus only in showthread

I'm also in all of my critiques if I see any site didn't replace the showposts with permalinks I'm suggest to replace it with permalinks

P.S : Didn't forget to remove include showposts from your vBSEO Sitemap generator

How about enabling showpost for logged in users only? Does this hurt SEO as well? My forum users want to have showpost links, because large images are shared in posts, and loading 1 post takes less time then loading the entire thread...

that is the situation I was describing saying why not use noindex and nofollow tags on the showpost links

Originally Posted by Grumbledook

that is the situation I was describing saying why not use noindex and nofollow tags on the showpost links

No exactly the same. I was saying only to add them for regged users. This way Google does not see them on the showthread page...

Date 2009-10-24 04:00
Processing time 902.30 s
Total URLs 4,412,265 (+7)
Forumdisplay URLs 2,187 (-)
Showthread URLs 254,971 (-)
ShowPost URLs 4,134,945 (+5)
Archive URLs 154 (-)
Member Profile URLs 13,327 (-)
Poll Results URLs 118 (-)
Blog Entries URLs 0 (-)
Blog Tag URLs 0 (-)
Album URLs 0 (-)
Social Group URLs 1 (-)
Tag URLs 6,619 (+2)


Does this look bad?
I seem to have millions of showpost URLS...
My site has over 4 million posts, but if I turn of "include showpost" in the sitemap generator, aren't I going to have less of a site to index?


I have been noticing in google webmaster tools that in the 2 weeks or so since vbseo & sitemap was installed that google is only seeming to index just over 20,000 URLs:

Sitemap Index Total: 4,051,312, Indexed: 22,192

If this mod is so recommended by vbseo, why wasn't it done as part of the vbseo install?

This is what the sitemap generator report looks like now. is this OK? I don't see permalinks shown in it...?

Date 2009-10-25 01:47
Processing time 125.66 s
Total URLs 277,359 (-4,134,906)
Forumdisplay URLs 2,187 (-)
Showthread URLs 254,993 (+22)
ShowPost URLs 0 (-)
Archive URLs 154 (-)
Member Profile URLs 13,329 (+2)
Poll Results URLs 118 (-)
Blog Entries URLs 0 (-)
Blog Tag URLs 0 (-)
Album URLs 0 (-)
Social Group URLs 1 (-)
Tag URLs 6,634 (+15)

Note: I do not have blogs, social groups, or albumbs enabled on our board.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice

did I do it right?

Looks good.

You don't want the showposts indxed. You want the landing page to be the thread page.