set all internal links to DoFollow

CyberGene I just don’t understand why the crawler needs internal links. The crawler already has all the discussions from the sitemap and will crawl through all the posts in each discussion because the posts are part of the discussion, so it can directly crawl through them. It doesn’t need internal cross-post links to function properly.

This is not about indexing, but positioning in search results. Internal links increase "strength" of linked pages, which increase its position in search results. Google may be able to index all forum with "nofollow" on all internal links, but position of some links may be lower than without "nofollow" on internal links.

CyberGene has this been confirmed by Google?

I'm not sure if Google officially confirmed it (they rarely share how their internal algorithm works), but I feel like this is a common knowledge, you can read about it on any SEO blog: https://yoast.com/internal-linking-for-seo-why-and-how/, and I've seen how improvements in internal linking improve position in search results.

To me it seems very easy for a website to create fake ranking by creating zillions of internal cross-links to trick Google into thinking the website links are high-ranked but I highly doubt Google would be so stupid to work this way.

That would be true only if you implement it in dumb way. But it does not work as simple "one internal link = 1 point, 1 million links = 1 million points". Every page shares its own link juice, which is shared between all links. The more links you have on one page, the less value each link will have. Also "amount" of link juice depends on strength of particular page. If you have garbage page with millions of inks, you get nothing from internal links. But if you have regular page with natural linking, this allows you to bump some pages and suggest which pages are more important. For example if you have support-like forum, where you have one canonical discussion with question and answer, and 10 duplicated discussions with the same question, you close duplicates with link to canonical discussion. In this way you suggest, that if someone search the same question in google, search results should promote canonical discussion over one of 10 duplicates (because canonical discussion have more internal links).

Only external links should matter for ranking.

External link are not that much more reliable - you still could have farms of links on external domains, so Google needs to mitigate linking manipulations anyway.

CyberGene I just don’t understand why the crawler needs internal links

Because that's how link juice flows. It's a part of on-page SEO. It can't be ignored.

CyberGene I strongly recommend to read this thread, it was already explained what it is about. And no, it is not about "noopener".

rob006 which thread? You forgot the link.

CyberGene There is no link, because you are already in discussion I was talking about. I already explaied why it matters. It also does not cost anything and it could improve SEO. So amount of posts advocating against this is just mind boggling. It really should be straightforward bugfix included in core - since core is responsible for adding nofollow rel tag, it should do it properly, without compromising SEO.

rob006 ahh, OK. I have read this discussion a few times already. Just did again.

I think I have the answer to myself already. It’s all about user posted links. Like copy/pasting a link to one discussion in another.

I got confused that there’s a bug which prevents Google from indexing all posts. Which BTW is what the author @Hari alluded to in one of his posts.

Now that it’s all bright and clear for me what exactly the issue is, I understand what some people believe it can help them with: higher ranking. There’s no proof if that’s really the case but I’m perfectly OK with people asking for something they believe is true.

However on my forum we rarely post links to the forum itself (cross-discussion links), so to me it’s a total “noissue”, pun intended I’ve disabled the extension already.

But I think I learned something from this discussion, both technically about how indexing works (and presumably ranking), as well as how touchy the topic about SEO ranking for some people is, so I apologise if I was being insensitive.

CyberGene There’s no proof if that’s really the case but I’m perfectly OK with people asking for something they believe is true.

It is funny that you're questioning influence of nofollow rel tag in terms of removing it for internal links, but you don't questioning idea of automatic adding it to all links (which Flarum already does). If nofollow does not change anything, then there is no point of adding it by Flarum.

rob006 these are two separate things. Using nofollow has been a recommendation by Google itself which was introduced to combat deliberate schemes for improving page ranking, see this: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify

It concerns user generated content which is what a forum is about: posts with user generated content.

Now, internal links should usually not be marked as nofollow but, and that's the important thing, the reason is to allow for better indexation of the websites, so that the crawler can follow the internal cross-links and crawl through the entire website. But, this is valid only for regular websites where you have a bunch of pages, some of which may not be otherwise known to Google unless linked to from other pages on the same website. And this is not what a forum is. A forum has threads/discussions with posts. All that is visible to the crawler. All posts are available and accessible and you don't need to post links to one post from another post.

There's just a lot of misunderstanding and people just follow (no pun intended) blindly some generic recommendation about SEO they read on the Internet, without actually realizing what's the real meaning behind that. I stand behind these words. Can you tell me why you would need to have cross-post and cross-discussion links to your Flarum to improve its SEO? I never had answer to that question. Nor I have seen Google recommending that you provide such links for a forum to improve its ranking, nor its indexation. As I said, you have the sitemap provided to Google and it already sees all your discussions and posts, that's about it. Linking to particular posts from other posts is a dubious advantage.

But anyway, there's an extension which @luceos prepared, that's pretty nice of him, so problem solved, all people are happy What I wanted to clarify is why that is important because by reading this discussion I thought something was wrong with Flarum and my forum won't get indexed correctly, or will get ranked really low due to a faulty link handling. Which is not the case, and I doubt you would disagree.

CyberGene There's just a lot of misunderstanding and people just follow (no pun intended) blindly some generic recommendation about SEO they read on the Internet, without actually realizing what's the real meaning behind that. I stand behind these words.

I'm sorry, who you are exactly to make such statements? I'm curious what kind of experience and authority you have to void tons of articles about internal linking and link juice from SEO experts? Or even insights from Google employees: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/internal-linking-critical-for-seo/441381/

CyberGene Apparently you didn't read what I wrote since you posted a link that basically repeated it: internal links are important for traditional websites with pages where internal links help establish the hierarchy and the relation between pages. A forum is not like that.

I literally gave you an example of support forum, where internal linking is relevant to bump important content. And this is not some rare case, in any healthy community people will link to existing posts and discussions, building natural hierarchy of content importance.

My SEO expertise doesn't matter. I have a Flarum forum which appears on Google search results high enough without me doing anything about SEO besides having a sitemap and the SEO extension.

So in short, you have no SEO knowledge, but you're trying to debunk some "myths" about internal linking, and contradict pretty common SEO knowledge? In that case, I'm done...

rob006 if you believe SEO is black magic where you just execute some rituals others tell you without thinking logically, there’s really no point in arguing either, so I’m done too here.

Hey everyone,

First and foremost I am going to lock this discussion. Core now offers the ability for extensions to fully change handling links in posts, I don't see a reason to keep this up if the request has been satisfied. I am aware that my little example extension isn't entirely supporting all use cases, but any developer should be able to pick it up and extend it for personal taste or create a settings page for a broader user base.

Having said that, I'd like to point out that going back and forth in a discussion between multiple people can get heated. This is okay as long as our community guidelines aren't breached, most specifically:

"Make sure your replies provide constructive feedback and support to allow for an inclusive community."

This is one of our vaguest rules, but it is absolutely necessary. Understanding that people have different opinions, and the right to have them, should indicate that swaying someone to adopt yours shouldn't be the goal of your interaction. The back and forth in this discussion could have easily ended sooner by accepting that opinions differ. This applies primarily to @CyberGene and @rob006.

@Hari I am very sorry if people calling you obsessed makes you uncomfortable. I see this level of obsession as an attribute of being passionate. I admire your level of commitment and I wouldn't want to see it differently. Understand that this obsession actually resulted in better handling of links for SEO in Flarum. A victory you can claim for yourself! If you ever feel annoyed about these kind of remarks, feel free to DM me on Discord to chat about what this means and why these kind of things aren't necessarily a bad thing