Suggestions invited getting HM better ranks in G!

[Creator]

Hi all,

What do you think about optimizing HM forum for better ranking in google. I know IPB is not good for SEO, comparing vbulletin and phpbb. But as we are currently using IPB, we should atleast try some SE optimization techniques to get HM better ranking in google.

Keywords of choice : Free Web Hosting , Free Hosting

If you have any ideas about improving HM ranking please post them below. Any information about SEO is appreciated.

Thanks in advance. :)

[Sage Tech]

Firstly you need to give each page a unique title. The title tag is the only tag that Google gives any relevency to. If you cannot do this with IPB your going to struggle and it is worth investing in a board that would allow it.

I also wouldn't concentrate on too few keywords there is over 10k pages here that will contain a lot of different keywords, each page having a unique title (i.e. the title of the thread) will give visitors more entry points to the site.

Have you submitted to the DMOZ directory, if not do so but be warned it could take months for the site to be listed.

As you already know use the Coop network, it works.

HTH :)

[Creator]

Originally posted by Sage Tech@Jan 30 2005, 02:00 PM
I also wouldn't concentrate on too few keywords there is over 10k pages here that will contain a lot of different keywords, each page having a unique title (i.e. the title of the thread) will give visitors more entry points to the site.

Have you submitted to the DMOZ directory, if not do so but be warned it could take months for the site to be listed.

As you already know use the Coop network, it works.

HTH :)
25463


I think our beloved "Tim" can help us this time too. Lets see what he can come up with. He is a great IPB "modder".

Yes, I have submitted to dmoz in about nov 2004. But I think it takes atleast 8 months before getting listed.


EDIT :

Do you have any idea about using the keywords in title. And what you think about metatag, description etc. Also will it help adding another <h1> tag with the top sentence "Welcome to Host Matrix Forum, One stop solution for your free php hosting needs. Before you start posting please read the forum ".

What do you say? :)

[Sage Tech]

Originally posted by Creator+Jan 30 2005, 02:21 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Creator @ Jan 30 2005, 02:21 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>I think our beloved "Tim" can help us this time too. Lets see what he can come up with. He is a great IPB "modder".
[/b]
That would be very useful for the forum. The more unique pages you have in Google the better chance of getting traffic from keywords you have never thought of. So if Tim can do it you'll owe him your gratitude.

Originally posted by Creator@Jan 30 2005, 02:21 PM
Yes, I have submitted to dmoz in about nov 2004. But I think it takes atleast 8 months before getting listed.

As DMOX is manually edited it can take a long time to be listed. It all depends on the sections editor. If your lucky and they are very eager it may take a few weeks, alternatively it could take months (if ever). All you can do is try.

<!--QuoteBegin-Creator@Jan 30 2005, 02:21 PM
Do you have any idea about using the keywords in title. And what you think about metatag, description etc. Also will it help adding another <h1> tag with the top sentence "Welcome to Host Matrix Forum, One stop solution for your free php hosting needs. Before you start posting please read the forum ".
[/quote]
Apart from the Title tag other Metatags in the header are no longer beleived to be used by Google. It may be worth having them for other engines though. I personally wouldn't spend much time and effort doing them.

It is worth having your keywords in the header tags <h1> etc, and also mention them in the empasis tags [b], [b] etc.
You may want to break you suggested sentences into H1 and H2 so that it doesn't look like keyword spamming. At the end of the day the text has to pleasing to your readers just as much as it does to search engines.

[shwaza]

Guys, i may be completley wrong, but if you wanted to make different titles on each page, why not just have like <title>Host Matrix: Free Web Hosting And Web Master Resources .:. <? echo '$whatever_ipb_calls_topic_titles'; ?> </title>

I believe that would work, if someone looked at the ipb source codes and found out what variable they use to declare the title of a topic, then use that above script and it would make the title, " Host Matrix: Free Web Hosting And Web Master Resources .:. (topic title)"

Maybe tim, you could build off of that, and maybe make it more... better? lol. Just an idea :P