phpBB :: Knowledge base - Viewing article Search Engine Optimisation for phpBB

Introduction

First of all, I would like to thank everyone behind phpBB, for a superb effort, and a wonderful product, all for the price of nothing. I would also like to thank the "End" key, it is an invaluable tool.

I suppose this is my little contribution to the heaving community at phpBB.com, and an answer to a question that I had, but couldn't find the answer to. My original question was "How do you edit the Meta Tags in phpBB?" I soon worked out how to myself, but that got me thinking.
I'm sure there are lots of you out there who have forums, but don't get the number of hits you would like, which inspired me to write this small novel.

Welcome to the world of Search Engine Optimisation, which is commonly referred to (and will in this article) as SEO. What this term basically means is the preparation of a web site to achieve the best possible ranking in a search engine. There are many steps to follow, but it shouldn't really take you much time using phpBB.

I suppose the main search engine you want to get a high ranking on is Google, but at the time of writing (January 2004) Google is currently on the decline due to a sharp change in the "Google Dance" (all will be explained).

Well as far as brief introductions go, this introduction is not as brief as intended, but that is the nature of my intellect (leave it Razz

), so allow me to wrap things up so we can get started. All I want to say now, is that SEO is a bit of an art form. It takes a lot of consideration, careful thought and preparation, however, it is not difficult.

The skills you learn in this short tutorial can be adapted to be used on any web site you might build, although this guide will explain what to do when using phpBB 2.0.6.

Helpful Stuff

A free tool to create the robots.txt file for you.

A tutorial on the phpBB.com knowledge base that explains how to optimise the session IDs that phpBB uses for GoogleBot.

The Words

I'm going to be using a few technical words, and it is likely you will already know the meaning of most of them. For the benefit of those who don't, here is the list with meanings.

Keyword - A word that a potential visitor will use to find your web site. When you run a search using a search engine, you type the keywords into the search bar.

Meta Tag - A HTML tag that has many uses. There are two elements to the Meta Tag the "name" and "content." The only Meta Tags that will be covered in this article are the "keywords," "description," and the "robots" tags.

Crawler/spider - The software that search engines use to move through all of the links that are submitted to them, which will read the code of your page and index it. All of the information about your site that the search engine receives is through the web crawlers and spiders.

Index - A dual meaning here, index can mean the first page in a directory that a browser will automatically open unless instructed. It can also mean that a page has been added to the database of a search engine, by being indexed, a page has been added to the directory.

The Principles

The basic principle of SEO is to get the highest ranking possible in search engines. You have to decide on keywords for your site, and then emphasize these within the file. There are tactics that can be used to bring hits in an evil fashion, by tricking search engines, and using
keywords that have absolutely no relevance. I don't support this, as it's totally pointless, especially when planning to do this with your forum (you won't succeed in tricking a decent search engine with phpBB anyway, so ha).

It's a ridiculous thing to do because;

A. It's annoying when I run a search, click the top link and get taken to somewhere that has nothing to do with the search terms.

B. It defeats the object of the search engine. People use them to find web sites on a particular topic. In theory it should work very nicely, but these terrible people keep trying to trick the search engine.

C. From your point of view, what's the point? Ok, you bring in 100,000,000 illegitimate hits every month, but I guarantee that none of them will register on your forum if it has nothing to do with what they searched for. They will just hammer the back button, tutting in a disgusted manner. So then you are wasting thousands on data transfer/ bandwidth, for absolutely n-o-t-h-i-n-g. That's why we don't do it.

Anyhow, let's create an example to better explain the principles of SEO, from the perspective of a webmaster trying to promote their phpBB forum.

Example:

You are a milk enthusiast, and run a forum named... er... "MilkZone." Yeah, that's a good name. Anyhow, you have two members, you and your milkman. You want more members, but have to reach out to the world to attract the limited number of milk fans across the globe.

So the themes of your web site will be milk, and milk related products like cheese.

Now let's say I am using Google, and I want to find a milk forum, to discuss the future of milk, the theft of milk money etc. On Google, I'm going to type in "Milk Forum."

You have to target what you think the user will search for on an engine. These will become your keywords. So we have already identified two, "Milk" and "Forum." You will need more, using up to 800 characters. I've never been able to use that many without running into obscure words
that aren't really related to the site, which we want to avoid, so if you can't use 800 then don't worry, just don't use more than 800.

Other words might include "Cheese," "Pasteurised," and "Cow." Also, try words like "discussion," "people," "chat," "board," "message" etc.

Once you have decided on the keywords for your web site, you can get started. Now you have to attempt to get these keywords into the text of your forum as much as possible, without making it noticeable to your existing users. Don't start topics just for the hell of it, you need to shrewdly name your forum, boards, etc. The index page is crucial, that takes some work. The rest should fall into place, especially on phpBB.

Hopefully you now understand what the diddle this article is about, so let's get started.

Naming your Forum

In the beginning there was nothing, and then there was something. A shiny new installation of phpBB. Or perhaps an existing version. Whether you are starting out fresh, or are an existing user, you should consider the name of your forum. Make sure it contains at least one keyword. So the name MilkZone is fine for a milk fan site, but it is not appropriate for
a money box related web site. That should be called something like "The Money Box," only with a better name.

If you have already named your forum, then you can change it's name, but as long as it is related to the theme of the site then you should be fine. It's a very easy process, which would explain the disappointing length of this section. Onwards.

Choosing your keywords

This will be another short section, mainly because I've already outlined how to do this. Just sit down with a piece of paper/ hunk of text editor, and jot down as many keywords as you can think of, relating to the theme of the site, and words relating to "Forum" and "Discussion." When the keywords start to get obscure, stop. Give somebody else your piece of paper, and ask them to add any words they think would be useful. When they start pausing, and saying "Ohhhh, hmmmmm, I dunno... How about... no, no... no" then stop them, say thanks and feel content that you have every word covered. If you feel unsatisfied with your array of keywords, then try using a thesaurus. Just stick to below 800 characters, just don't start choosing stupid, obscure or unrelated words and you'll be fine.

Defining the Meta Tags

Now you need to edit one of the files in your phpBB directory.

Open:

root/templates/subSilver/overall_header.tpl

Open the file in a text editor, and take a ganders at the top of the code. Find the part that reads