[RFC|Merged] Optimized Page Titles patch

[Ger]

Still, for topics forum name is more relevant than the board name

Is it?
Let's take my previous example, about a topic to adjust lights on a carforum. In board name - forum name - topic name you'd get:

Car forum international > Elektrics > Adjusting lights

For optimal search results I'd say Elektrics is the least relevant. Of course that's just something I made up, but is seems very realistic to me.

For a real life example, let's take the topic we're reading now. Again, the most relevant for a searching guest is the "phpBB" part and the "Optimized Page Titles" part. Not the "[3.1/Ascraeus] RFCs & Patches" part, since he'll probably won't search for the internal nickname of 3.1 and not for RFCs & Patches.

Again with your example forum phpBB SEO. Let's take this one. "translation" is less relevant then "phpBB SEO", since "German translation" already states it's about translation but only the board name states what it's all about.

Your theory might work sometimes, but it doesn't work always.

Should they know how to do it? Yes, I think so

They do some nice tricks, that's right. But they don't own the holy grail. For instance, they append a suffix ".html" in the topics. Why? It isn't relevant, it only makes the url longer. As you stated before yourself:

When optimizing we need to take away as much irrelevant code/text as possible.

Kind of contradicting, isn't it?

[Stoker]

Okay then, lets make an example of a topic where the topic title an board name is used.
Car broken - Evy's place
You can make arguments proving you are right, which you will be in some cases.
But most of the times it would be better to use topic title + forum name.

Stoker wrote:Should they know how to do it? Yes, I think so

They do some nice tricks, that's right. But they don't own the holy grail. For instance, they append a suffix ".html" in the topics. Why? It isn't relevant, it only makes the url longer. As you stated before yourself:

Stoker wrote:When optimizing we need to take away as much irrelevant code/text as possible.


Kind of contradicting, isn't it?

html VS php??
You are arguing for the fun of it, right?

[Ger]

But most of the times it would be better to use topic title + forum name.

I don't think you have statistical data for that.
I'll just repeat what I said before:

Your theory might work sometimes, but it doesn't work always.

Whether it's a 50/50, a 60/40 or a 70/30 case doesn't matter in my opinion.

You are arguing for the fun of it, right?

Certainly not. Appending a suffix ".html" has no use, period. The page is served as HTML but that's already stated in the doctype.
So why would a SEO site do that? It doesn't do anything for SEO. According to you own statement it's negative for SEO. Now I don't really think it has a significant impact, but it certainly is not SEO.

[DavidIQ]

Why is this even being argued? If page titles need to be shown differently to the bots then that's already not that complicated to handle. Of course there's no code for it in place right now but detecting if the user is a bot is already possible in 3.0.x so I'd imagine that based on that (IS_BOT) you can just show the bot/crawler what they like and the users what makes sense to them.

[Stoker]

Sounds like a good idea David.
But I am not sure if showing speciel content for bots and other for users is considered cloaking?

[DavidIQ]

But I am not sure if showing speciel content for bots and other for users is considered cloaking?

Can you elaborate some more on this?

[Stoker]

But I am not sure if showing speciel content for bots and other for users is considered cloaking?

Can you elaborate some more on this?

Yes, lets take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking
The page explains that it is cloaking when we show different content to bots than we show to our users.
And I believe that was what you suggested.


A little off topic:
We are allowed to hide specific content for bots, such as signatures and profile info in viewtopic.

[DavidIQ]

But is the page title also considered content? I mean if we just hide the site's name in the title for bots, for instance, would that be considered "cloaking"?

[Stoker]

Title is content too.
But there is no problem in hiding the sitename for bots in the title.
I didnt see that option.