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**LinkBliss_com** · 01-15-2009 05:50 PM

This may not be a welcome idea or question because of duplicate content, but I often post replies on vBulletins site includng my own and change the title to something I think people are more likely to search for... and although my response title text certainly appears in the thread, I'm wondering if my own post also appears as a separate page?

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.. Ideally I think for traffic maximization this page MapPoint Forums - View Single Post - Palm Pre should also appear in the sitemap and my post title "Zero Hour Palm Pre Review" should be in the page title. Every post should be in the sitemap.

Am I ignorant and there Is there a setting to do it?

Any advice and insights appreciated!

Thanks!

**briansol** · 01-15-2009 07:55 PM

I recommend disabling showpost by using the vbseo option for replace showpost with permalink, NOT including showpost in the sitemap, NOT re-writing showpost with a preset or custom Rule, and finally, robots/txt out the showpost.php file.

It's a useless script, like the archive.

Your text of that post can all be found on the thead it self.

If you inlcude EVERY post in the sitemap, all you do is water it down, probably mostly with garbage that doesn't even really apply to your site.
The more stuff you send, the less weight each particualr resource ends up having, as effectively you fight yourself for your particular own ranking.

**LinkBliss_com** · 01-15-2009 09:05 PM

I gather it's contrary to the philosophy, but it seems to me that showing all posts as separate pages (as well as the archive and auto-tagging) would be better for long tail searches. ?

In general - generating as many pages as possible from our content.

What is the argument or arguments against this approach? Besides just that it's less than white hat.

Eric

**briansol** · 01-15-2009 09:39 PM

if you have 5 pages with the same content, google needs to 'pick' which one, if any should rank... instead of just 1.

Thus, you effectively make your 100% serp a 20% chance serp as it doesn't know which one to pick and you're fighting for placement against your self.

now, when joecompetitor ranks 90%, you're 20% is going to show well below him, instead of above him.

**Joe Ward** · 01-17-2009 04:26 PM

It also causes a major reduction in crawling efficiency, since every thread page crawled causes (x) new pages to have to be crawled. 10, 20? Depends on your setting, and you are only covering the same content.

Then you are also passing away internal site "link value" from the thread page to all of these other pages.

Likewise, your sitemap files dramatically increases in the # of listed URLs, if showpost files are included.

On top of that you lose major possibilities for link consensus! If user goes to a showpost page and then links to it from outside, you get the link to the showpost page, not the thread page. So if each showthread page gets a link to it, the thread page still has none! But if you give them the permalink instead, then all 10 links go back to the thread page itself!

I personally really dislike when someone links to a showpost page, because you only see the single post and I would much rather read the post right within the content of the discussion (thread).

**LinkBliss_com** · 01-18-2009 07:48 AM

OK you've almost convinced me. but I still think you should have the archive, Google really seems to dig that shit for some reason. I turned it on and off and noticed traffic follow a few times.

So onto that totally different topic, I have a decent vB site I'd let you experiment with about the archive if you are interested... also showpost.

I honestly think sometimes you guys are more about being viewed as "white hat" or just want to do it the "correct" way philosophically than do SEO based on testing and observation and what's working.. I'm sure you don't want to stretch the envelope in terms of the default settings and stuff or Google wouldn't like any of your product's output and would be inclined to discount any site with vBSEO modifications.

That said - are there some special settings that could skyrocket search engine referrals?

Eric

**briansol** · 01-18-2009 12:28 PM

google likes the archive because stock vb is garbage and it can't read it.

with vbseo, the archive is usless.

It's entirely up to you what you want to do with your site.

google sent me 80% of my visits last month. How about you?

**LinkBliss_com** · 01-18-2009 12:40 PM

Yeah I'm getting 80%+ from google, they are a nice company.

Let me look around from my sites and talk back to you.

Eric

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