SEO

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

The vBSEO creator, Juan Muriente, supports the use of the vBSEO-optimized archive. The theory is that the archive becomes an efficient sitemap. Here is how that works:

Option 1: With no archive: bots crawl the sub-forums page by page, finding each thread.

• They then crawl each thread.
• But each sub-forum page only contains a fixed # of threads. Then it must go to page 2, page 3, etc, etc.
• So the more pages of the sub-forum it crawls, the deeper it crawls, and the farther away from the homepage.

Example: Thread on page 1 of Sub-Forum A


Example: Thread on page 3 of Sub-Forum A

So its deeper into the hierarchy, with more of the page rank that it could get a higher levels diluted.

Option 2: With vBSEO-optimized archive: bots crawl the site in the normal way, as in option 1 (above). But they also crawl the archive.

The archive helps "flatten" out the hierarchy bring some thread pages close to the homepage.

Why? Because the archive pages often list many more threads per sub-forum list page.

In comparison to the main site, the archive typically does not require as many clicks/levels in to get to the thread.

The page rank is still diluted, because the pages contain more outbound links, but the dilution may be slightly less.

Also - getting closer to the homepage (i.e less clicks to get there, and not as deep a structure) has also traditionally been considered a positive SEO factor.

Why Suggest to Remove It?

Others, like myself and Brian, often recommend disabling the archive completely (if it is not already delivering significant traffic). Personally, I like to channel the search engines directly within the actual site ignoring the archive. And I believe that the vBSEO sitemap (extra plugin) itself reduces the necessity of a physical archive sitemap for the forum.

When content starts to get buried too deeply with the archive or not, it's ability to rank highly for more competitive terms will start to be diminished significantly.

Unique niche content will help over come this. And 3rd party links to specific older thread content will also help greatly.

This one reason I would also remind admins to try building links to specific content, not just always links back to their homepage; and also to interlink their own content within the site to help bring older content more search engine focus.