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ericw
06-03-2013, 06:06 PM
Hey - have the moderators considered doing SEO on this forum? The title tags would be a good place to start...

vangogh
06-03-2013, 07:13 PM
The admin of this forum (me) knows quite a bit about seo and receives a pretty good amount of search traffic to this site.

Out of curiosity are you aware that page titles here aren't created by admins of the site, but rather by whoever creates the thread. It's kind of how every forum on the internet works and how user generated content often works in general. While it would be great if every person who created a new thread wrote an optimized page title, it's highly unlikely to happen because there's no reason why the people posting to a small business thread would be seo experts or feel the need to take the extra time to craft a title for the site. Also given how forum threads can meander in topic over time, it's rather difficult to know what the best title for any given thread will be when creating it. Trying to go through every thread of the site later and rewriting all the page titles probably isn't going to be the best use of time.

I'd could also add "physician heal thyself" as the page titles of your own site could use improvement from their current About, Services, Our Team, Contact Us, etc. You might not be aware of this, but you can set the label for the menu items in WordPress to something different than whatever you decide to set as the main heading on the page. Since you're using Yoast's SEO plugin you can also create a page title different from the page heading. While you're at it, it's generally good practice to remove stop words like "at, the, to, of" etc. from the url or post slug.

nealrm
06-03-2013, 08:19 PM
Vangogh, when did you start doing that SEO stuff???? I thought you just spent your time reading the posts here. :rolleyes:

billbenson
06-03-2013, 10:37 PM
Not to mention this site ranks 1 for small business forums....

vangogh
06-03-2013, 11:21 PM
I thought you just spent your time reading the posts here.

Shhh. Don't let my secrets out. That's how I work on the site. I just read what's here and envision good things happening.


Not to mention this site ranks 1 for small business forums

For "small business forum" too I think. Neither is as big a traffic driver as you might thing though. Still not bad considering we're ahead of sites that had a several year head starts on us. I think our domain helps quite a bit too. Most traffic comes in through long tail keyword phrases, probably because of our awful page titles.

ericw
06-07-2013, 10:52 AM
I am aware that inidividual page titles are at least partially determined by thread titles. That makes perfect sense, and as I've administered a few forums myself, I know how great it is when a user writes a well-optimized title. I was mainly thinking of the home page as I asked that question - http://www.small-business-forum.net/ There's just the URL in the title, which IMO is a huge opportunity missed.

vangogh
06-07-2013, 12:13 PM
Seems very well targeted for the phrase "small business forum" if you ask me. What opportunity are you suggesting was missed? Could the title be better? Depends on what phrase is being targeted. Depends on the goals of the site here and the business. Day one of joining a new community is usually not the day to assume the people running the community don't know what they're doing, especially when the page titles on your own site are probably even less effective.

Quite honestly by the time I'd seen this thread I'd come across a half dozen other posts from you that were quick on the reply and light on the content. Nothing specifically wrong with any of your posts, but taken together they came across like someone posting less with the idea of contributing and more with the idea of generating some signature links.

Then I saw this thread which seemed even lighter on anything that seemed a genuine attempt to help. It makes some negative assumptions about the people in charge, namely me. Again not really the best thing to do on day one in a new community. Would you walk into a party and ask the host if they've ever decorated before and that new paint on the walls would be a good start? I would hope not. Beyond that it doesn't really offer helpful advice beyond the most generic seo advice anyone can offer.

Let's assume you're right and the home page here is poorly optimized. You could have started this thread with a question. You could have said something like you noticed the home page has a page title of its domain name and were wondering if this was done on purpose and if so why. Then add something about how what you've learned about seo might suggest something different. And then offer a few ideas of what you consider a better title. Finally you could close by repeating the question again and mentioning how you're just trying to understand and looking to increase your knowledge. That would have been more useful by offering some specifics and by using a question it doesn't make assumptions about our knowledge or lack of knowledge.

I realize some of what I'm saying above is also making assumptions about why you posted, which isn't fair since I'm suggested it's not the best thing to do. Just so you know I think you are a real person who might genuinely be here to contribute and become part of the community. I'd be more than happy if you do. However do understand how your initial posts came across, especially this one.

PayForWords
07-18-2013, 09:43 AM
This site also ranks on the first page of Google for "business" forum so that makes two very effective search terms.

vangogh
07-19-2013, 03:17 AM
Good for us. I just checked and I see the site listed at #4. Now if we ever manage rank first page for any of the singular words small, business, or forum we can really celebrate.

Harold Mansfield
07-19-2013, 09:27 AM
I'm just going to throw it out there, but being new on a forum ( that you obviously found) and criticizing the admin on how they run the SEO of it, is like asking a parent that you've just met if they've ever thought about discipling their kids and dressing them better. And then saying "I was only trying to help since you don't seem to know what you're doing".

Not exactly the way to win friends and influence people.
I'm just saying.

Besides, the site ranks #1 for Small Business Forums, has 1000's members, keeps fresh, relevant topics going, is free, and is not a big spam fest like all of the other "business" forums out there.
What more do you want?

Karry
01-17-2014, 03:03 AM
I also came first time this website from Google from any forum post.