With all good things there are always downfalls. Simple Machines Forum isn't the best when it comes to Search Engine Optimization though. This is why I had to go in a tweak the code to make the Forum more SEO friendly.
If you're interested in tackling a Simple Machines Forum yourself, here's some of the things I needed to do to make the site more SEO friendly:
- Had to update my urls with the Pretty URLs module.
- I went into the code and changed all important headings to h1 and h2 tags.
- I made a sitemap manually for the Forum with regular pages, boards, and topics. The mod that you can download from SMF didn't work for me.
- I made a simple if and else statement to provide a canonical link for the home page, plus a unique description and keywords. All other pages I kept the same.
- This also removed the annoying - index behind the title on the main page.
- I also went in on links that ended in /index.php for home page and changed them to /.
The description and keywords aren't as important on regular pages. That's why I added h1 and h2 tags because search engines pretty much take from the text on the page and look for a heading.
Anyway, feel free to sign up for a free account at the Forum and post your link. Forums are a great way to build back links to your websites. Simply put, it's a free way to get traffic back to your websites for life, so sign up and enjoy!
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