[Aziz]

Hi all,

Can anyone tell me how to make a SMF forum as Search Engine optimized as possible? How to make it SE-Friendly and avoid situations like duplicated content etc.

Thanks

[chetanmadaan]

this might help.

Making your Smf forum as SEO friendly as possible? How to Tips

[texashiker]

SMF can be a difficult one to SEO for. There is this one kinda big SMF forum that I am a member of. It has 52,127 threads, and 629,718 Posts - google has only indexed 1,820 pages of that forum.

From around July 2008 - January 2009 I ran an SMF forum. When I switched to VB in Janaury, the number of pages that google crawled daily went up by 4 or 5 times.

I highly recommend a sitemap generator, and put some site links to some of the important sections in the footer of the forum.

If you have a blog somewhere, provide site links to some of the forum sections, and deep link to some of the threads.

[whatthehell]

i think there are plugins/mod for optimizing SMF forums.

[Aziz]

thanks guys, it helped a lot. I have installed some mods like (pretty urls, sitemap generator) and more mods to make it SEO friendly and also restricted pages like sort, action and msg to avoid any duplicated content / titles etc. If you would like to see the forum you can visit at TPS Forums - Index and tell me what you think

Sitemap
http://www.top-private-servers.com/robots.txt
Example of pretty url: Forums Launched

[whatthehell]

nice theme. i do have a SMF too. Cebu PC Tech - Index but haven't optimize it yet.
let me know if the SEO mod works.

[texashiker]

I highly recommend that you get rid of that standard captcha phrase and get recaptacha installed.

The spam bots broke the standard SMF captcha phrase a long time ago. If that is your only spam protection, your gonna be flooded pretty soon.

[Aziz]

Originally Posted by texashiker

I highly recommend that you get rid of that standard captcha phrase and get recaptacha installed.

The spam bots broke the standard SMF captcha phrase a long time ago. If that is your only spam protection, your gonna be flooded pretty soon.

Oh, thanks! there were actually some suspicious accounts created but there were no spam posts. thank you for the advice, I will update it soon along with a website revamp. I'll be requesting reviews on it when it's out

P.S @whatthehell: the mods do work! and I think they're effective and made the forums SE-Friendly specially the URLS

[texashiker]

Originally Posted by Aziz

Oh, thanks! there were actually some suspicious accounts created but there were no spam posts.

The accounts might get created now, but may not receive any post. A couple of weeks later you will get up one morning, and find your forum filled with all kinds of spam.

When I installed recaptcha, about 90% - 95% of the spam stopped.

It was getting really bad there for a little while, 3 - 5 spammers a day were signing up.