Few Quick Tips for mid sized forums

[Olney]

Recently my site went from 400 pages indexed to 20,000 pages
indexed. The site is less than a year old.

These are a few things that I've done to increase ease of content being indexed.

1. Make your listed post in threads longer. I would suggest going 20 to 25 post
2. Use the sitemap showing up at the bottom of the site.

I know many will think it may look bad but I have to admit the spiders took to it like a fly on.. well you know the rest. I would highly recommend letting them spider the sitemap.

Doing well in search results even got out the sandbox recently. I don't think my site would have been in this position when I was using another free board or just the standard version of vB...

[Juan Muriente]

Thanks for the tips

1. Make your listed post in threads longer. I would suggest going 20 to 25 post

I've upped posts to 20/pp @ vBSEO.com.

[Olney]

No problem it just brings more content to each page. Hope it brings an increase to user's forums...

[Ace Shattock]

Having just done that on NZB .. I should re-generate my sitemap now, yes?

(Given that the number of showthread pages will have halved...and any of the Threads with many many posts will have lost several of their URLs.)

[Keith Cohen]

I've always used 30 posts per page and 30 threads per page since my site was started.

[Juan Muriente]

I should re-generate my sitemap now, yes?

Good catch - Yep, you should..

Although the total number of SERPS will get reduced theoretically by 50%, this may have a positive SEO impact and most importantly, IMO it improves the user experience by allowing a more fluid read on longer threads, taking the forumsphere one step closer to the blogosphere (or the other way around )

[Joe Ward]

I would recommend (for sites that are already doing well with indexing) to NOT change this setting as it can cause SERP fluctuation as outlined above (re: re-pagination).

[Mike]

Since I am going to be completely re-indexed I am increasing my settings from 20 threads and 20 posts to 30 threads and 30 posts.

[Philipp Herbers]

Will do this on my community too.

Thanks for the tip

[Nicke]

I have been using 40 threads in one page and 35 posts, works fine for me.

[zompus]

My content is good enough not to warrant this. =D

[JD76]

2. Use the sitemap showing up at the bottom of the site.

What is this, i dont see this at the bottom of my site.

For unregistered users i do see a whole bunch of numbered links at the bottom, what is that?

Thanks.

[JD76]

no matter found it in the vbSEO settings, thanks...ill be trying this out

Peace

[briansol]

i use 25 posts per page, and 50 threads per forumview page as default options.

as for the sitemap links, i recommend turning it off and disabling the archive/sitemap altogether, including a robots.txt exclusion of /archive/ or /sitemap/, depending on how you have it set up.

all it does is pull weight away from your REAL content.

the archive is great for standard vb, but with vbseo, i feel it is entirely un-needed.

if your archive is out-ranking your real showthread pages, its probably because your skin sucks.

[°°Ben³]

Hm,
I do not know why , but we only use 10 postings per thread page and 20 threads per forumdisplay page.

Is it recommended to change this to higher values?
I'm not really an expert in SEO, but how it was mentioned before

Originally Posted by Ace Shattock

Given that the number of showthread pages will have halved...and any of the Threads with many many posts will have lost several of their URLs.

I do not know if that is a good idea!?

I would be pleased, if you can describe advantages and disadvantages of such a change.

Thanks in advance!