[getfree]

I would like to make the URLs more SEO friendly.

For example, if I have a thread in some subforum the slug is now just /topic/thread_name, whereas I think a more appropriate slug would be something like /forums/subforum_name/thread_name.

The same goes for the subforums which are now /Forum/root/subforum_name, and I would like to get rid of the root here as well (it doesn’t show up in the forum index). What is the purpose of the Forum Root slug, anyway??

I was quite surprised I couldn’t find any discussion about this.
Disclaimer: I am not an SEO expert, so if any of this doesn’t really matter please let me know 🙂

[Robin W]

The same goes for the subforums which are now /Forum/root/subforum_name, and I would like to get rid of the root here as well (it doesn’t show up in the forum index). What is the purpose of the Forum Root slug, anyway??

dashboard>settings>forums>forum prefix and exclude it!

[getfree]

Thanks Robin.

I had it unchecked. Which got me more confused.

BUT, the reason was that the root had the exact same name as a category (main forum), that I used as an example, so the slug for a (sub) forum is actually:
/Forum/category_name/(sub)forum_name

Is there a way to remove the “Forum”? Even that feels unnecessary to me. Again I’m no expert in SEO.
And is there a way to include /category_name/(sub)forum_name in a thread URL?

[Robin W]

Is there a way to remove the “Forum”? Even that feels unnecessary to me. Again I’m no expert in SEO.

given that you don’t know if having these makes SEO worse, neutral or even better, you seem a bit obsessed by it 🙂

Like you, I am no SEO expert, but I have seen nothing in any discussions of forums for SEO that even mentions the URL’s, and most forums I have seen use this structure.

[getfree]

🙂
Well not many really KNOW how Google’s algorithm works, but there are just educated guesses. And mine is that the URL’s should be hierarchical:
/category/forum/thread/post would be hierarchical, but apparently not possible.

Anyways, thanks for the help and comments Robin. SEO isn’t that important to the site, but I thought I’d give it a go as the weird structure bothers me 🙂

[Robin W]

No probs – if you can find an article on the net that talks about SEO and URL hierarchy I’d be interested to see it. From my albeit brief googling, I found nothing that indicated that URL’s structure mattered, just the words.

[alexandermerle]

Have you found the article?

[Driven 2 Services]

Google’s current head of search, and the previous (Matt Cutts) have both said that keywords in the URL don’t have any impact on ranking. This is specifically because people were stuffing URLs with keywords to try to game the system. I’d care more about a descriptive title that catches people’s attention, and engages them to click through.

[getfree]

Thanks, that is good to know.
I am more interested in making the hierarchy logical, but for now I will play with the cards I’ve been dealt. The forum and subforum names are logical, and they don’t contain the same words (much).