How to optimize your forums to get more pages indexed with search engines.

PART II

[PART I] [PART II]

Method 1 : Manually remove session IDs from the page template URLs.

You can probably call this the dirty and quick way to get ride of session IDs.  So far, lots of forum administrators have tried these changes and it appears the changes do not affect the performance of forums.

The templates you have to make change to vary depending on the forum you use.  However, the format should be roughly the same.

The following is the list of templates you have to edit for vbulletin forum version 2.3:

forumdisplay_forumbit_level1_nopost
forumdisplay_forumbit_level1_post
forumdisplay_forumbit_level2_nopost
forumdisplay_forumbit_level2_post
forumdisplay_multipagenav_pagenumber
forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost
forumhome_forumbit_level1_post
forumhome_forumbit_level2_nopost
forumhome_forumbit_level2_post

Just log into your admin panel, go to "modify templates", find these templates and click on edit.  Make sure you save (backup) a copy of your existing templates before you make any changes. This is just a cautious measure so you can revert back to the old ones in case you mess up.  Go through every template and look for the link URLs, and get ride (delete) of the "s=############" part and you will be all set.

For phpbb forums, please visit http://www.phpBBHacks.com, there's a perfect mod you can install on your phpbb forum to get ride of the session IDs for search engine indexing, it does a wonderful job!  If you're too lazy to dig around, here's the direct URL on phpBBHacks http://www.phpbbhacks.com/viewhack.php?id=1502

Method 2: Install a forum hack mod for a forum archive.

When you install a hack for an archive, you will have a directory for the pages of your forum.  This is a virtual "archive", since it updates at the same time as your forum.  The pages in the archive are in "html" format, the PERFECT format for search engines.

vBulletin is coming out with an archive that come along with their version 3.0 of the software.  If you search around, there should be something similar for other types of online forums. 

We recommend you visit http://www.vbulletin.org and http://www.phpbbhacks.com for good mods to add on to your forums.  Mods are separate additions added onto your existing forum software to extend its functionalities.

Once these changes are implemented, the search engines will quickly index your forums, which will in turn increase the traffic to your sites.   Good luck optimizing your forums!