Add Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Keywords & Description to each Forum

[Neutral Singh]

Add Search Engine Optimized Keywords & Description to each Forum
Keywords: SEO, Search, Engine, Optimization, Meta-tag, Keywords, Description, Meta, Tags

Context:
This plugin gives you the facility to add some special keywords and descriptions to each forum thus allowing you to optimize each of your forum for its relevant keywords. No need to inform you that Search Engine Optimized (SEO) keywords and description for your forums is essential to enhance your presence in search engines as well as increase your web traffic for relevant keywords.

How this Works?
http://www.sikhphilosophy.net (View the source of each forum to realise the effect of this plugin on your forums.)

Recommended Usage:
Only Text based information should be added in keywords and description for maximum results.




*** Installation Instructions: (Also attached here)
*** -------------------------

1. Installing the Plugin:

Admincp > Plugin System > Manage Products
Click: Import Product
Browse: Your computer for downloaded file "product-forum_seo.xml"
After selecting the file, click Import button.

************************************************** ********************
2. Only Template Edit: headinclude


i) Edit - headinclude Template:
************************************************** ********************

Find:
<meta name="keywords" content="$threadinfo[title], $vboptions[keywords]" />
<meta name="description" content="<if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$threadinfo[title] $foruminfo[title_clean]" />

Replace With:
<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords],$threadinfo[title],$vboptions[keywords]" />
<meta name="description" content="$foruminfo[forumdescription]. <if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$threadinfo[title] $foruminfo[title_clean]" />

************************************************** ********************

Find:
<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[title_clean], $vboptions[keywords]" />
<meta name="description" content="<if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$foruminfo[description_clean]" />

Replace With:
<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords],$threadinfo[title],$vboptions[keywords]" />
<meta name="description" content="$foruminfo[forumdescription]. <if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$foruminfo[description_clean]" />


And you are done with modification !!

Now, simply Go to > Forum Manager > Edit a forum > Towards the bottom you will find the fields to enter your relevant keywords and description. You can play with the template modification to suit your needs.

Enjoy !!

If you installed this plugin, please click INSTALL for future support. :devious:

Thanks

[firstrebel]

Interesting, will try on my dev site.

Bob

[HaiLua87]

XML Error: not well-formed (invalid token) at Line 3
Why ?

[Neutral Singh]

Let me checkout.

[Neutral Singh]

Try this xml now.

[sensimilla]

sounds like a fun :) thanks

[HaiLua87]

OH thanks

[Zia]

Thans Neutral..
would u mind to describe some more...
such as.. seo.
Google site map gen: just generate the site map..
vbranking: convert php - html.

and this will add meta tag/keywords for each & every forum? This will generate Auto?
From where this will collect surce of metatag?
In Acp there are way to put key-words or meta tag & description...but it work for whole forum.

This hack will add separately???

Plz help us ....

Thanks

[Dean C]

This modification really will have very little, if any effect on your rankings. Hardly any search engines use meta keyword tags anymore.

[Andreas]

Maybe not meta keywords, but what about meta description?

Check google site:planet-liebe.de for example - several 10.000 hits, but almost all of them show the same text (the meta description) - not really that good IMHO ;)

[Dean C]

Meta descriptions are being used by google when you use site:domain.com but only for the simple purpose of displaying a description of a website when it's matched. It is not used in ranking.

For example. This is just a small scale example to illustrate my point.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.teckreviews.com+norton&btnG=Google+Search

I know that there is a review on my site which discusses norton-antivirus. So say if someone searched for "norton" on google, the result-text from google will not include the meta description but it'll include a snippet of the matched text from your content.

This really serves no benefit.

[Zia]

Hello...

Umm so finally should we install it??
Will it bring something good? with meta tag or description?

Thanks

[Neutral Singh]

Hello,

This plugin is inspired from the ideas of T2DMan (Micheal Brandon) (www.time2dine.co.nz). Just have a look at his forums for his keywords and be amused. :)

I fail to adhere to dear Dean C's observations. Metatags mainly tell a search engine: what to expect in the contents of that page? If you have word, "norton" in your keywords as well as in the description in first few words, then the search engine will be suggested to focus on "norton" keyword in the contents of that page. This means that although in the google search the metatags description does not show up but it still guided the search engine to map your page's content as a page dedicated to word "norton". Please have a look at the number of memberships on my forum and i would like to tell you that most people are finding my forums through google search only (95%+). For example, my website is based on "Sikhism" but unfortunately now i rank around 100 for this keyword after the jagger update but even then there are many other keywords, where my website features prominently on top searches and i getting new members all the time, although those words have nothing to do with my websites theme i.e. sikhism.

EDIT: Beauty of this plugin is that if you dont want to enter keywords, you can also enter a small description in the keywords box.

Practically, i see no harm in search engines mapping my webpage based on a forums theme. Benefits in will surely occur in the long run. :)

Choice is yours. Enjoy !!



Thanks Neutral..
would u mind to describe some more...
such as.. seo.
Google site map gen: just generate the site map..
vbranking: convert php - html.

and this will add meta tag/keywords for each & every forum? This will generate Auto?
From where this will collect surce of metatag?
In Acp there are way to put key-words or meta tag & description...but it work for whole forum.

This hack will add separately???

Plz help us ....

Thanks


You will have to enter keywords by going to Admin CP > Forum Manager > Edit any Forum > Go towards the bottom of the screen. There you can see two new boxes, one is for keywords and other is for description.

For example:

Your forum name is : Sikh Youth
In Admin CP > Forum Manager > Edit a forum > goto bottom > Enter Special Keywords : sikh,youth,sikh youth
In Admin CP > Forum Manager > Edit a forum > goto bottom > Enter Special Description :
Sikh Youth of Today

Try similar pattern on your forums and view source to checkout the results. Enjoy !!

[Zia]

Umm ...im all most clear....
We will install this one..
Hope to get more help around this one
Many thaks

[Neutral Singh]

Please click install!! ;)

[Robru]

*Clicked install* :)

[Dean C]

At the end of the day Aman, SEO boils down to your content. The better your content, the better your ranking. And it seems you have a lot of good content. I have extreme doubts that this plugin has helped your ranking whatsoever :)

[Snake]

Excellent! I was looking forward to this. :D

[GamerJunk.net]

Awesome I will install this later

[zajako]

At the end of the day Aman, SEO boils down to your content. The better your content, the better your ranking. And it seems you have a lot of good content. I have extreme doubts that this plugin has helped your ranking whatsoever :)

It cant hurt, but can help. So ease up on the guy :P
But I also thank you for pointing it out.

[bashy]

I dont care what anyone says this cant hurt, if it helps then its a bonus, if it dont that i've lost nothing barring a few minutes spent installing..

Well done m8 for releasing this :)

Happy New year

Bashy

[sportsoutlaw]

While it may not provide alot of help in search engines, I could see this providing some help in terms of adsense if you use it.

[Zia]

While it may not provide alot of help in search engines, I could see this providing some help in terms of adsense if you use it.


umm would u mind to xplain ?? what it did for adsence??

[Wachtmeister]

Great add-on.

If i have empty keywords and descriptions on my forum admin, vb351 still uses my keywords, given in vb3 admincp, but with 2 leading "," before:

<meta name="keywords" content=",,msn,animoticons,.... /> Am i the only one?

[Neutral Singh]

Yeah, as i said in the first post, you can always play with template modifications. You can try removing commas " , " from headinclude template and add commas only in the space provided in forum manager.

like:
Change the following code in headinclude template:
<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords],$threadinfo[title],$vboptions[keywords]" />

With the following code:
<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords]$threadinfo[title]$vboptions[keywords]" />


Now, the commas should not show up in your metatags even if they are blank. Please let me know if it worked for you now.

I think i will make this a permanent change in first post.

Thanks.

[rlamego]

Seems to be working fine, thanks for the mod =)

[irishblacknight]

umm would u mind to xplain ?? what it did for adsence??
Adsense displays ads based on the content of the page, so if you want to improve the targetting then the meta content can definitely help.
A lot of search engines do not use meta content for the ranking, but they will use it in the display of results. If there is no meta content then Google will display the first few phrases in the body content, which may not be as readable as your meta content.

[Snake]

Yeah, as i said in the first post, you can always play with template modifications. You can try removing commas " , " from headinclude template and add commas only in the space provided in forum manager.

like:
Change the following code in headinclude template:
<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords],$threadinfo[title],$vboptions[keywords]" />

With the following code:
<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords]$threadinfo[title]$vboptions[keywords]" />


Now, the commas should not show up in your metatags even if they are blank. Please let me know if it worked for you now.

I think i will make this a permanent change in first post.

Thanks.

Yeah good it's working now but what if you DON'T want to input something in those fields? It still shoudn't supposed to say " , " or something.

[Snake]

Bump!

[jmw]

Great! Does this plugin work fine with 3.5.3?

[Snake]

Of course.

[Brandon Sheley]

this is very interesting, I'll follow this hack, and thank you for coding it :)
I've already editing some of my templates for this exact reason.. I'll want until another vb upgrade come out and i need to revert the templates.. then I'll install this hack..

thx again, I give a vote and say this is helpful, and definitely not a harm :D

* Brandon Sheley clicks install for later on ...lol

[Dreamchaser]

Hi Neutral Singh,

Just installed my in my vB 3.5.3 and I should say I did not get errors, everything went really smooth, thanks a lot for your plugin! Clicked Install :)!

Regards,
Dreamchaser

[icare]

thanks COOL

[icare]

Can you please give me example of metatag?

ANd neutral hor did you managae to get adsense uder your user name on each post?

[Neutral Singh]

ANd neutral hor did you managae to get adsense uder your user name on each post?

That is a small plugin which shows adsense on the first post of each page. Ihat plugin dynamically also shows adsence of different sizes based on the size of each thread. :) So if the size of the topic content is more than say 1000 characters, a bigger adsense banner is shown otherwise a smaller adsense so that adsense does not ruin the layout of my forums when the topic content is not that long. i will release this plugin soon.

[Snake]

Yeah good it's working now but what if you DON'T want to input something in those fields? It still shoudn't supposed to say " , " or something.

Is there a fix to this yet?

[Snake]

*bump*

[Totti]

i think a simple <if $vb[forumdesc]=""><meta description="$vb[defdesc]"></if>
could do it ... cannot make it, though ... :(

[Snake]

What the hell are you talking about? :confused:

[Host Directory]

Will this work on Vbulletin 3.0 ?
If not, does anyone know of a similar hack?

[Snake]

It does work on all 3.5 versions.

[Host Directory]

It does work on all 3.5 versions.

Yes but i am using verson 3.00 - will it work with that?

I don't really want to upgrade because i have a lot of other hacks & some of these won't work on the new version...

Can anyone confirm it working on 3.00 ?

[Hostboard]

It can't work with any version prior to 3.5.x as the plugin system was not developed/incorporated in to your version of VB yet.

[Host Directory]

ok... i guess i will need to look if my current hacks have updates... & make a decision, unless anyone knows of a similar hack for 3.00 ?

[redspider]

does this change my key word set in vBulletin Options ?

[Neutral Singh]

nope just adds more keywords for each forum as well as thread. :)

[Snake]

Neutral Singh, could you PLEASE fix up all the errors for this hack? I would like to use it so badly but I can't 'cause of the known bugs you see.

[blueberry]

thanks.. went fine.. i gave u my vote..

[Neutral Singh]

Neutral Singh, could you PLEASE fix up all the errors for this hack? I would like to use it so badly but I can't 'cause of the known bugs you see.

Known Bugs !! :surprised: What bugs? Nobody has reported them as yet. please provide details. Thanks

[SaN-DeeP]

We had same setup done on 3.x series :)

[Snake]

OK dunno if this is a bug or not but here's how my current content tag looks like.

<meta name="keywords" content="Site News &amp; Updates,Site News and Updates, Site News & Updates, Site News Updates, Site News, Site Updates, Site, News, Updates,Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Bone Thugs N Harmony, Bone Thugs, Bone Thug, BTNH, Bizzy Bone, Bizzy, Flesh-N-Bone, Flesh N Bone, Flesh, Krayzie Bone, Krayzie, Layzie Bone, Layzie, Wish Bone, Wish, Ruthless Records, Ruthless, Eazy-E, Eazy E, Sony, Forums, Boards, Message Boards, Community, Discussion, Biography, Media, Official, News, Information, Download, Gallery, Album, Lyrics" />

How do I get rid of the first one "Site News &amp; Updates"? Is it because I am using vBSEO? I really don't know. Also how do I add an extra space right next to "Updates" so it'll look like this:

News, Updates, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,

[Neutral Singh]

OK dunno if this is a bug or not but here's how my current content tag looks like.

<meta name="keywords" content="Site News &amp; Updates,Site News and Updates, Site News & Updates, Site News Updates, Site News, Site Updates, Site, News, Updates,Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Bone Thugs N Harmony, Bone Thugs, Bone Thug, BTNH, Bizzy Bone, Bizzy, Flesh-N-Bone, Flesh N Bone, Flesh, Krayzie Bone, Krayzie, Layzie Bone, Layzie, Wish Bone, Wish, Ruthless Records, Ruthless, Eazy-E, Eazy E, Sony, Forums, Boards, Message Boards, Community, Discussion, Biography, Media, Official, News, Information, Download, Gallery, Album, Lyrics" />



How do I get rid of the first one "Site News &amp; Updates"? Is it because I am using vBSEO? I really don't know.

Yes thats right. You would have to disable both vbseo options under "Dynamic META TAGS."



Also how do I add an extra space right next to "Updates" so it'll look like this:

News, Updates, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,


well, i think for that you would have to edit that particular forum in Forum Manager and edit the metatags added by you manually and correct the entry yourself. That should rectify the error. Hope this helps.

Regards

[Snake]

Excellent that worked but when I add an extra space at the end of "Updates", then check back in the Forum Manager field, the extra space that I have inserted has been automatically removed by itself. Dunno why and how but that's weird.

How can I sort this out?

[Neutral Singh]

Ha Ha the gr8 vBSEO again... try disabling another vbseo option which removes all the unwanted html from the forum pages, this should do the trick for you... but it hardly matters for your forum's SEO. Search engines do consider "," as a sufficient break in words, so you dont have to worry about putting that extra space after comma at all. :)

[utw-Mephisto]

lol .. keep disabling vbseo to run this plugin 100% ...

no offence, it sounds nice, but I guess if you got vbseo installed you don't really need this hack ..

[Neutral Singh]

I know vbseo is a gr8 product and my forums have really profited from it but No Offence!! You Still Need My Plugin!! :) The disabling i suggested are the only things which you need to disable nothing more.

Just have a look at the following my thread on vbseo.com which inspired me to create this plugin....

--> Optimizing Meta Tags in Description using vBSEO (http://www.vbseo.com/f2/optimizing-meta-tags-description-using-vbseo-1221/)

Enjoy!!

[letsjoy]

nice one

[Neutral Singh]

I havn't tested it but is this plugin working with vB3.6 ?

[Snake]

I thought you were the author of this hack. :D

[Neutral Singh]

yeah but i am still on 3.5.0!! didnt get the time to upgrade lately... :( hopefully i will upgrade to 3.6.0 sometimes soon...

[IrPr]

First my special thanks to you Neutral Singh,

A little question about Meta Tags,
My Downloads Forum is limited to my registered users and i SEOed that with this AWESOME mod!
should i open my forum to guests to let my Rank/Search Rank increase? or Search Engine BOTS will update their DB using logged in accounts?

[deni_z]

I belive this is an important mod. I'm going to do install it soon! Promise

[Manoel J?nior]

Please, update for VB4.0.6:

i) Edit - headinclude Template:

************************************************** ********************



Find:


<meta name="keywords" content="{vb:raw foruminfo.forumkeywords}, {vb:raw vboptions.keywords}" />


<meta name="keywords" content="$threadinfo[title], $vboptions[keywords]" />

<meta name="description" content="<if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$threadinfo[title] $foruminfo[title_clean]" />



Replace With:

<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords],$threadinfo[title],$vboptions[keywords]" />

<meta name="description" content="$foruminfo[forumdescription]. <if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$threadinfo[title] $foruminfo[title_clean]" />



************************************************** ********************



Find:

<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[title_clean], $vboptions[keywords]" />

<meta name="description" content="<if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$foruminfo[description_clean]" />



Replace With:

<meta name="keywords" content="$foruminfo[forumkeywords],$threadinfo[title],$vboptions[keywords]" />

<meta name="description" content="$foruminfo[forumdescription]. <if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase>-</if>$foruminfo[description_clean]" />