How to make vanilla more SEO friendly and get more indexed pages

jimw

That works fine now on my test site. The beginning of the discussion is in the description.

If you look in the DiscussionTags extension, you should see how you can get those tags to add to the meta keywords.

antonio23

damn. now with the new version, i dont see any meta tags anymore. no description is added and no keywords meta tag.....

antonio23

ok. sorry. my bad. the new version now displays the description correctly (and not like the wrong descriptions like before: see my post above). so thats excellent now. the keywords still show a generic list for each page though which is: <meta name='keywords' content='contest, Christian, free, contests, winners' /> i winder where that is coming from now?

antonio23

while we are at it making vanilla a good seo forum: please include a function that will reverse the title of each page: Now it shows the forum name first for all discussions - then it shows the discussion title after: much better would be to have he discussion title first, and then the forum name after. otherwise all titles are starting the same which is not good. And the first words that appear in the title are measured more important to google, then the following words.

Stash

Good point antonio
How to make vanilla more SEO friendly and get more indexed pages - Lussumo Community
would be much better than how it currently is:
Lussumo Community - How to make vanilla more SEO friendly and get more indexed pages

antonio23

i have an update to this extension. as google picked up the new descriptions of my forum already i went through the indexed results in google and notice that some pages still have the old standard description. i checked these few pages and saw that they dont have any meta tags. si it seems that the plugin doesnt add the meta information to all discussion pages.

Stash

So this update has fixed this problem?

Dinoboff

Since Vanilla 1.1.x, the Head control has a $Meta property. Check /themes/head.php, line 10: while (list($Name, $Content) = each($this->Meta)) { $HeadString .= ' <meta name="'.$Name.'" content="'.$Content.'" />'; }

you can use it with:$Head->Meta['Description'] = 'My beautiful forum, lots of good advices on stuff';
Or if you want to add a Meta element from a function or a class:global $Head; $Head->Meta['Description'] = 'My beautiful forum, lots of good advices on stuff';

stuartbrandon

llo Dinoboff, I see the solution is there but I don't know how to use it or where to put it exactly. I go to /themes/head.php, line 10: while (list($Name, $Content) = each($this->Meta)) { $HeadString .= ' <meta name="'.$Name.'" content="'.$Content.'" />'; And in the code above what should I replace? Could you insert the following in the right place for me to see? $Head->Meta['Description'] = 'My beautiful forum, lots of good advices on stuff'; Another thing is that the way above will add the same general description for all the pages, so how can I make all the pages unique? Maybe I need to replace 'My beautiful forum, lots of good advices on stuff' for some code? a variable? for example to get as description the first lines of the first comment? I appreciate your help

stuartbrandon

help me please, I don't understand this, check my post above this

Dinoboff

You could set up a default description for each section (discussion categories, search account), then you could use delegation to gather informations from a controler and use for the description. Like that you are creating dynamically, on discussion page maybe from the the first discussion, and the account page form the user info, etc...

stuartbrandon

But how can I do it? I don't understand what to write and where. Could you help me please? I appreciate it

Dinoboff

I have no intention to create this extension.
I don't know what would be a nice description.

But such extension would work like that:
<?php /* Extension Name: DummyMeta Description Extension Url: http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/5039/how-to-make-vanilla-more-seo-friendly-and-get-more-indexed-pages/#Item_32 Description: Add descriptions of the pages Version: 0.0.1 Author: DinoBoff Author Url: http://lussumo.com/community/account/2469/ Support: */ // global default description $Head->Meta['Description'] = 'My beautiful forum, lots of good advices on stuff'; // Description for the account page if ($Context->SelfUrl == "settings.php") { //default description $Head->Meta['Description'] = 'Profile of My beautiful members'; //Find control that give you nice information about the pace //For the account page, that would be the Account controler //Use one of the delegation to add the description function AddDescriprionToAccountProfiles(&$Account){ global $Head; $Head->Meta['Description'] = 'Profil of ' . $Account->User->Name; } $Context->AddToDelegate('Account', 'PreInputsRender', 'AddDescriprionToAccountProfiles'); } ?>

You should look at the document to see how to create your extension

stuartbrandon

Hello Dinoboff, Thank you for the input. About what you said "I don't know what would be a nice description". I think a good description for each discussion page could be the text of the first comment. There is any way to replace the code above in order to show the text of the first comment on each discussion page ? // global default description $Head->Meta['Description'] = 'My beautiful forum, lots of good advices on stuff'; Thank you

MaxM

Hello Friends, I'm a newbie here, i was looking for some hack which can add discussion title in keywords and in description. In above hack, i see description is ok but in description meta tag ... its adding whole thread in description meta tag...but i just want to add just dicussion TITLE in meta keywords and description filed. Anyways thanks all for your hard work :D

y2kbg

$Head->Title = 'Testing Page';
This will append the title to the name of your forum.

MaxM

I think we should also add discussion title of current page in keywords list like i have seen on my vBulletin forums. I tried doing like this in header.php (before </head>) <meta name="keywords" content="'.$this->Context->PageTitle.',keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3" /> I think adding title is very imp and i believe someone here will improve this mod --- We should also not forgot other imp. meta tags like: <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no"> <meta name="author" content="--"> <meta name="rating" content="general"> <meta name="revisit-after" content="1 Day" />

stuartbrandon

How did you get the whole the content of the first post on the description meta tag? Help me guys please

MaxM

Using this addon stuartbrandon: http://lussumo.com/addons/index.php?PostBackAction=AddOn&AddOnID=253

stuartbrandon

hello, thank you for the reference. There is any aditioanl setup? or it works inmediatly ? there is no configuration option? how can I know if it is working.