Embed Addon and SEO*

Dalton

Hey there,
This is an amazing feature! I really love it, it was so easy to integrate my forum into my theme: http://madebyraygun.com/forum

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how the new Embed function works with SEO. I notice the page source only shows the script, and not the actual content of the forum. Of course the actual content of the forum is hiding out in a sub-folder somewhere, but that's not linked from my main site, and that's not what I want people to find when they search Google.

Will Google actually index the content of my forum when it visits my main forum URL?

Thanks,
Dalton

rtpaul

Yeah this is a huge concern for me too. I definitely won't be adding vanilla by the embed method for SEO reasons alone. Unfortunately SEO doesn't seem to be that high on the agenda here at Vanilla. For example the page title of a category is simply 'category name' not even 'category name | My Froum'. The ability to change Page titles is paramount to improving Click through rates. Most searchers simply wouldn't click on a Google result that was a one word category name.

UnderDog

Unfortunately SEO doesn't seem to be that high on the agenda here at Vanilla.

That doesn't help. What does help is making a suggestion to improve vanilla.

rtpaul

I believe I made a good suggestion to improve the SEO of Vanilla's category pages along with that comment. The fact that Meta Descriptions and Keywords are not generated by default is a major concern too. There is an add-on which addresses this called SEO Companion ( http://www.vanillaforums.org/addon/611-seocompanion) but considering this has not been tested or code-approved by Vanilla despite being released in Sep 2010, I can only conclude that SEO isn't of the highest priority.

garymardell

There are only a few members of the vanilla team and they have a lot of stuff to do. The joys of open source is that you are welcome to submit changes to the code and ask for them to be pulled. Your plugin allows people who are bothered about seo to do something which is awesome. Don't worry too much about the approved status as if you find a single bug fix or add a feature it's back to being unapproved.

UnderDog

I believe I made a good suggestion to improve the SEO of Vanilla's category pages along with that comment.

Good, we need more suggestions like that.

The fact that Meta Descriptions and Keywords are not generated by default is a major concern too.

Excellent suggestion, keep it coming :-)

There is an add-on which addresses this called SEO Companion ( http://www.vanillaforums.org/addon/611-seocompanion) but considering this has not been tested or code-approved by Vanilla despite being released in Sep 2010

Good! maybe the SEO Companion can be included in the core

I can only conclude that SEO isn't of the highest priority

All I'm saying is : don't jump to that conclusion yet. As gary says, the developers are really really busy. We're all trying to help getting them focus on the points that matter. If SEO matters and the SEO companion is a good plugin, let's include it in the core. If more needs to be done, let's make a suggestion and suggest it to the developers. Just don't jump to conclusions yet :-)

Raize

Funny thing is, Vanilla 1 was awesome at SEO