[HOW-TO] Remove the Forum name in Post Titles

[ctfortner]

Your not the only one spaced here....doh!

done, thanks

Well if you changed the forumdisplay template to have vbseo's RR, then you can still do this. This edit is for the showthread template.

[mobiledevices]

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. My rankings completely screwed up when board titles added, traffic down etc. I 'm pretty sure nothing else could have caused that.

It's really really bad to use the board title on all pages, vbulletin should get rid of it.

BTW i see it's still being used here too, you guys should think about removing it too.

I would just like to know if anyone else can confirm the positive impact the removal of the forum name from the post titles is supposed to have on the search engine traffic.

[Joe Ward]

The idea behind this optimization is that the title plays a very important role in the ranking of each page. By removing the forum title, the focus is shifted more specifically on the thread titles for each page.

In terms of long tail search strategy, this could result is quite a significant boost in traffic. More about long tail search here:
What is the Search Long Tail? - vBulletin SEO Forums

[meonet]

does it work also on 3.7.0 version?

because i have removed the "- $vboptions[bbtitle]" in forumdisplay and showthread templates but still in my indexing pages i have again the site name on it.

[Lee G]

I'm trying this on a section where I have over 55k posts and earn very little from hits.

See how it goes, as its a very little hit part of my forum

[Swissbob]

Can this not become an option in VBSEO?

[MikeMpls]

As I was implementing this in my 3.7.0 & 3.7.2 boards, I also did this in the tag-search template. If the spiders find their way to your tag cloud, up to 70 (default tag cloud size) additional thread indices could be referenced; might as well get the most out of it ....

So for me the 5 templates with this mod are:

FORUMDISPLAY
SHOWTHREAD
MEMBERINFO
tag_cloud_page
tagsearch

If they get much use and are public, your social group threads might be another candidate.

[len backus]

You will see this in the templetes, just remove - $vboptions[bbtitle] and you will be done.

I removed that from the showthread template but the forum name did not disappear????

[Michael Biddle]

I removed that from the showthread template but the forum name did not disappear????

Do you have Relevant replacements setup?

[len backus]

Figures it out. THanks.

[Michael Biddle]

Was it a RR problem?

[len backus]

Too dumb to admit. I have 2 forum sites. I was making changes in one and viewing the results in the other!

[Michael Biddle]

That's not bad, been their done that . Or I was editing the wrong styles template and getting frustrated as to why it was not showing up. Glad you got everything fixed.

[Marvin Hlavac]

Hello everyone

I just implemented this template modification. I will report back when/if I observe a noticeable effect (good or bad).

I wonder if Google is going to dislike my 800 pages suddenly changing page titles. It is a bit scary, but I've done the change, and all I can do now is to sit and wait.

[Johnny5]

Where in the directory structure can I find the files I need to edit to remove the forum name from topic titles? Thanks!

[EDIT: Nevermind, I just found this topic which explains how to do it and illustrates that vb templates are edited via the admin control panel. I'm used to phpbb2's .tpl files. :P]

Please feel free to delete this. I would have but I didn't see an option to.