Is there every a good reason to include posts within a sitemap?

I know the general consensus is to not include posts within the sitemap. Is there ever a scenario where it is ok to include the posts?

The reason I'm asking is because I have one forum and the threads turn into epic, very heavy text driven, long threads and nearly 90% of every post is as good or better than the original post. The text content is incredibly valuable, and I want to make sure Google picks up on it and indexes it for future search traffic.

Thoughts?

If you're a brand new forum, it can help to add the individual posts to throw more content at the search engines. If you're established and have more than 100 threads, i recommend leaving it disabled.

Sitemaps are only the paths you give to Search Engines. They evaulate things abit different than we do. For example the trust of the site affects the long tails keywords traffic. If you have long aged and trusted site. You should not afraid including insitemap whatever you have to offer SEs. This can bring you safely a lot of extra traffic.

You should also understand the main idea here. The traffic come from SE produces a bounce rate. People comes and go back to SE. If your bounche rate too higher this will lower your trust. And trust reflects SERPs within periods like 6 months or 2 months. As far as i observed. If you focus only what's valuable. This can help you to lower bounche rate. In a long term strategy you should aim only targetted traffic for your website. This is what SE's and world actually needed. More valuable and optimized content brings the trust.

I personally included posts. But i have a really trusted website. it inceased my indexed page count on google and it reflects my ALEXA rank automaticly

What's the standard for "good" bounce rates?

The lower the better....

but it tends to have a trend. The more search traffic, the higher your likely bounce rate is. Either they found their answer, or didn't and clicked back, but either way have 0 intention of joining a forum at that time.

70-80% is common.

I was around 50% and since the install of vbseo it's in the high 30's to now averaging 42%

As you get more and more search traffic, the number will climb. most of my sites are in the 90s!

I thought that webmastersitesi said a lower bounce rate was better?

Thanks for your super quick responses Brian, I hope they pay you well

Lower is better, as that means they stayed and clicked through for at least 1 more page on your site.

But, you need to factor advertising in to play as well. I'd rather get a search hit, and a view, and an ad click out than anything else. I can retain them as a member later when they search for something else i rank well for. Maybe even get another click out of them.

Of course, that's an established board strategy.
A newer board should focus on retaining the members to get content and worry about income later to the point of limiting advertising.

Originally Posted by stanger

I thought that webmastersitesi said a lower bounce rate was better?

Thanks for your super quick responses Brian, I hope they pay you well

Your bounche rate is very good. But if it's going from 30 to 50 that you lost %60 amount of quality which is important.

Any rate lower than %50 is good. Ideal bounce rate is below %50 on most areas. But it's not that easy to get this rate on forum threads. Also bounch rate depends on the sector you operate. You can not decide it's alone. You can compare with some other competitors or contents listed at SERP results. Get the idea? Your bounce rate for keyword X is relevant to other results.

If your bounche rate is better than Mr B you get rank higher Not suddenly of cource takes time... If you well design your site make it more practic and simplier menus. It'll start lower. If you remove things it'll get higher. If you add suffient amount of pictures, videos it'll go better. If you speed your site it'll go better. If you can tweak your title for a better. It can help. That's an art of seo to do what tools to use. And as a webmaster you should always developing solutions for your visitors. As a result of it, search engines realise your quality and rank you higher.

thanks to both! great information to have