Stop Using Keywords in URLs by default!

I know some people are in love with Keywords in urls and I fail to see why considering the problems that they present.

The number one reason people say that they use the forum title or thread title in URLs is because it puts keywords in the urls for search engines. I fail to see how this helps at all in the year 2007. It may have netted you a gain that was worth using them back when search engines were just getting started but as search engines have matured they have taken away any gains from methods that can easily be exploited such as the keyword meta tag and now I believe keywords in urls.

There are some pros to them but not in the SEO area. Keywords in urls make it easier to check stats and knowing what the page is without clicking on the link. The same for anyone linking to the thread or forum from an outside forum (if the url isn't truncated). It also helps in some SERPS because if you have the keyword searched in the url it bolds it, possibly bringing more attention to it. Those however do not out weight the annoyances in using them and possible harm in letting your members control what kind of words are in your urls. So let me take a look at the cons:

1) The urls can get ridiculously long! The example below isn't even the longest I have seen. Some people don't even filter stop words (which imo if you do makes the url make little sense in some situations).


2) The urls will change if you alter the forum name or thread title! If you change your forum name it will alter the url of it as well. Doing so will cause all the urls you have gained to be lost to a 404 page (unless you 301 direct them, which is less than desirable as search engines handle 301 redirects in iffy ways). Sure you have forum slugs but if you alter the forum name completely it will make no sense to keep using the old one. If you alter the thread title, which many people end up doing a lot, it will 301 redirect the old one automatically but like I said before the 301 redirects are iffy.

Another thing is if you include the forum name and thread title in the url together, like in the example above, and you move the thread it will change the url as well resulting in a 404 or 301 depending on what you do.

All of that for what? Keywords in the urls that mean little to nothing for search engines? mod_rewrite wasn't created to put keywords in urls, despite what many people believe. It has many many uses, one of which just happens to let you put the keywords in.

The power vbseo gives you is not the Keywords in urls. The power comes from this: Pin the Tail on the SEO Donkey (with Link Consensus)!

Link Consensus. Not keywords. The gain comes from combining all your links to one url and then allowing you to build your links to one url only increasing the amount of power that your thread or forum gains.

It really bugs me when reading this forum and other forums and people complaining about their forum not taking off right after installing vbseo. That simply isn't going to happen. VBSEO is not a miracle worker for a forum with little to no quality content. You have to build links if you want your site to do anything in search engines.

So with all that being said I hope that vbseo will reconsider the default option of including keywords in urls and more toward a much more static approach that prevents any of the urls from changing. This is the goal afterall to prevent multiple urls from appearing. I hope that everyone thinks about the user end side of this as well in preventing urls from changing.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me but I know there are a few out there that do, which is why I decided to post this. Look forward to hearing your opinion on this.

Damn no other feedback lol?

Originally Posted by BamaStangGuy

Ex:

i think i have just been owned.

lol

either way, i like 'em and moreover, they seem to be working for me, so i'm not going to change them.



heck, i rank 5th for a very general computer term... something my site doesn't even target specifically.



or, the fact that my "motorcycles" forum has all of 25 topics in it, and yet i beat out all but 2 bike boards

(hehe, including keiths old Fireblades forum )

i'm not proved otherwise.


i don't move stuff. i don't change forum names. if i move a thread , 99% of the time its long before google ever indexes it in the first place (ie, within 10 min after posting)

I used yours cause I knew you

If you don't change forums then I guess that isn't a problem for you. I do though and I am sure I am not the only one. I rename a lot of them as well since my forum topic is changing on a year by year basis.

Plus I just think the urls get ridiculously long

I like it, I ditched the subdirectory structure and have forums/thread-title.html for all of my URL's, with 6 words max and a nice list of stopwords, so mine don't get nearly as long as that example.. and if I move them, the URL is still the same as long as they're not renamed.

That said, I've also seen some of my pages come up in a search where the "description" of the page had none of the key words bolded, but the URL and title did..

I think it's more user friendly as well to be human readable incase the link doesn't actually contain the title of the thread, someone will have a better idea what /forums/why-BamaStangGuy-uses-a-southpark-avatar.html is over a URL like /forums/t12345

I would think it makes more sense to title a page about your site 'about' than it does /1 ..so following that same logic for thread URL's, categories and so on and so forth would just seem a logical extension of that.

Here's what Matt Cutts had to say about it:

- doing the query [site:windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com] returns some urls like windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!D85741BB5E0BE8AA!174.entry . In general, urls like that sometimes look like session IDs to search engines. Most bloggy sites tend to have words from the title of a post in the url; having keywords from the post title in the url also can help search engines judge the quality of a page.

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Scoble visiting the Plex

While it's obviously abused by certain companies (get-your-mortgage-today) or whatever, I don't see any evidence that it actually hurts you as long as you're smart about your link structure, stick with it, and are careful about renames, etc..

The point is people aren't smart about this and use the structure without first thinking through if it is best for them. At the very least I hope this thread makes people think about the setup of their forum and what url structure fits them.

I don't bother listening to Matt Cutts anymore. It's always the generic basic SEO principles he talks about.

Whether or not it helps determines the "quality" of the page is up for debate but does anyone in here want to have a search engine that they own, that prides itself on quality serps be putting much weight on keywords in the urls?

VBSEO is not user friendly in the least bit when installing. There is very little documentation given with the software for first time installers about what they should be doing during the setup. A red bolded warning telling someone they could cause harm to their board if they change something is not sufficient.

If you are going to keep keywords in the urls as a default the user needs to be made aware of the possible side effects of using that url rewrite structure. They need to be told during the setup that every time you rename a forum or thread the url also changes.

I think too many people are losing valuable links to their threads and forums by changing them around. When I first installed VBSEO I used the default because I was very new to SEO and running forums in general. I lost backlinks to forums and to threads because of the dynamic nature of my topic. I am not the only one that has had this happen.

Obviously Brian and Liberty do not have the issues that I do and they like using the keywords in the threads and forums. It works for their forum and that is great. I wish I had the traffic Brian has so he is a testiment that they do not hurt you if you use them correctly.

I just hope people start using them correctly and more documentation is provide (quickly, not a year from now) so that other users have the information needed to successfully install vbseo in an optimal form for their forum.

IMO we all win when this happens. Everyone is a lot happier with their purchase and less time is wasted from the users end.

I am not trying to put anyone down for using a certain url structure and if I have come off like that I apologize. This is just something I feel strongly about causing problems for users.

Sorry to say this but your points are totally wrong in my point of view. Long urls so what ? There is a limit which everyone uses and search engines loves keywords in urls. Check any kind of keyword and make a search. Always you'll see the first couple result with keywords included. If you change the forum name it can hurt you but SEO is an ongoing business and if you want to succedd you shall not change your forum names. If you can't handle without changing forum names you may of course only use forumid. It will hurt you a little since the main target you want search engines to focus on threads instead of forum sections.

Originally Posted by Lizard King

Sorry to say this but your points are totally wrong in my point of view. Long urls so what ? There is a limit which everyone uses and search engines loves keywords in urls. Check any kind of keyword and make a search. Always you'll see the first couple result with keywords included. If you change the forum name it can hurt you but SEO is an ongoing business and if you want to succedd you shall not change your forum names. If you can't handle without changing forum names you may of course only use forumid. It will hurt you a little since the main target you want search engines to focus on threads instead of forum sections.

It won't hurt you at all to not use keywords

That's my opinion of course though. I think I have outlined my views pretty well other than it will "not hurt you". I have given quite a few reasons how it could harm someone who is new to VBSEO to keep the default urls.

Including keywords in the URL is a popular technique, used by many well known CMS systems, and large high traffic sites like CNN.com.

Every factor that can deliver even a fractional SEO advantage to a page should be considered. Since we're focusing on long tail search queries that net thousands of different search phrases from your user generated content, small factors can be far more important than you might realize at first.

Consider a small factor that makes the difference between position 11 (page 2) and 10 (page 1) of the Google results. We know that traffic drops off exponentially with each additional page of search results. If a small factor can make *some* of the thousands of user generated pages on your forum, make such small improvements, the multiplicity results in a traffic boost.

Now - you might consider some factors having such a minor contribution that it's not worth the time, effort, and/or expense to implement them. Fortunately, with vBSEO, there is no extra effort required. You install, and all SEO factors we include will be working for you.

You've also noted some of the additional advantages that may result from using them:

Originally Posted by Bamastangguy

There are some pros to them but not in the SEO area. Keywords in urls make it easier to check stats and knowing what the page is without clicking on the link. The same for anyone linking to the thread or forum from an outside forum (if the url isn't truncated). It also helps in some SERPS because if you have the keyword searched in the url it bolds it, possibly bringing more attention to it.

Re: Long URLs

Remember, we support the "Limit URL Length" and "Stopword Filtering" for those who wish to limit the URL length.

Re: Change in thread title

If you change your thread title, vBSEO will automatically 301 redirect the page to the new location.

Re: Forum Name change

If you foresee frequent forum name changes, you can use our slugs feature:
vBSEO Slugs - Custom Forum Titles

However, if not using slugs, and you wish to change the forum name, please contact our vBSEO Total Support Team, and we will provide you with a custom 301 redirect that can be used to direct the old URLs to the new location for the affected forum.

301s work well. Of course, we always prefer not having to create an additional 301 requirement. It is certainly preferred (when it comes to forum names) to stick with what you have. If that's not possible (and using slugs is not suitable or preferred), then 301 redirects will be your safety net. And they will certainly work better than just moving it and having the search engine crawlers discover a bunch of 404 errors (not to mention your incoming visitors).

Re: Link Consensus

One thing is for sure. Link consensus is a more significant SEO factor. But, not mutually exclusive. They can co-exist happily together.

While Matt Cutt's comments generally support it, we made vBSEO completely configurable for the sole purpose of allowing each customer to implement a setup that is most consistent with their own theories on SEO.

*Personally*, I would not be so quick to get rid of keywords in the URL. However, I might consider using slugs to limit the forum title length, and limiting the URL length to something reasonable, that would prevent extremely long URLs from occurring.

Originally Posted by Matt Cutts

having keywords from the post title in the url also can help search engines judge the quality of a page.

Re: Documentation

You're right. We do need to provide more documentation related to this topic. We are also *considering* adding a setup wizard to our process to make it much easier for novice users to configure the application.