URL parameters

alexfox

Can we use thread IDs instead of including their names in the URL? That will make 'em shorter and easier to use.

Berlyn

alexfox Bad for search engine optimization and indexing though.

aprilorange

Not that hard to achieve this by using some plugin IMO.

Ditchmonkey

Berlyn This really isn't true. URLs should follow best usability practices rather than the latest SEO voodoo.

Ditchmonkey

I did some further reading on this and I'm divided on the subject. There is a great discussion here:

http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/47342/are-keywords-in-urls-good-seo-or-needlessly-redundant

While keywords in the URL provide no benefit in SERP results, they likely do have an impact in SERP CTR rates, which is important.

Franz

Ditchmonkey http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/47342/are-keywords-in-urls-good-seo-or-needlessly-redundant

I like how that URL is itself a friendly URL. 🙂

[deleted]

Franz

I agree its nice http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/47342/are-keywords-in-urls-good-seo-or-needlessly-redundant

but i got something even better (as it cant be duplicated ever with real date)
what about this with flarum seo
http://flarum.org/2015-07-23/the-best-seo-urls-ever-to-be

[deleted]

[deleted]
now if someone were to happen to write the same topic the same day by chance ever
http://flarum.org/2015-07-23/the-best-seo-urls-ever-to-be (same day by chance)
http://flarum.org/2015-07-23/0/the-best-seo-urls-ever-to-be (same day 2nd topic by chance)
http://flarum.org/2015-07-23/1/the-best-seo-urls-ever-to-be (same day 3rd topic by chance)
etc....
or
http://flarum.org/2015-07-23/the-best-seo-urls-ever-to-be (if someone tried to make the same topic the same day the person would get an error thrown at them saying hey there is already another topic of such on here today please go here to same topic?

Felli

[deleted] That would (imo) stretch out the url too much, not to mention would look rather unappealing to the eye(s).

Cheun

[deleted] I'd understand if Flarum were....say...Wordpress or some other blogging software but this is a minimalistic feature rich forum software....

spasi

Offering permalink settings like in WordPress then?

Berlyn

Is there any reason people care about URLs so much? I always focused more on the interaction of a page and less about the URL it's generated. This is why we use so many front end frameworks like Angular and React now, so we care less about page driven post backs and more about the seamless experience.

spasi

Berlyn Mostly about SEO and maybe it's easy to remember the url. I don't think it's that important though, focusing on content is better.

Berlyn

spasi At the end of the day, the URL currently gives a post ID and text overview of the post title. It's not going to get much friendlier than that. The end user really doesn't need to care about the URL, that's for spider crawlers.

Dominion

I don't think I've ever needed to type in a friendly URL to a forum page from memory...

...so in that sense, the URL being easy to remember probably doesn't matter much. Where it comes in handy is when you're doing copypasta links. The easier a URL is to read, the easier it is to glance at it and make sure you've pasted the right linky.

[deleted]

alexfox don't agree. I like my SEO.

[deleted]

spasi

an option like permalink defiantly

[deleted]

Does anyone really know the best SEO tactics to get ranked higher in search engines?
To be honest i think this is probably the most important topic for me and every other web-master here i think?

Berlyn

There's literally thousands upon thousands of articles and discussions online about search engine optimization. 🙂

Kobaia

Berlyn That's not the case anymore.

Putting the title of the thread in the URL is wrong in my opinion.
- makes the URL longer
- doesn't provide SEO benefits anymore
- when you want to change the title of a thread, the old title will still be visible in the URL. And you can't modify the URL because that would be realy bad for SEO and every external links would be broken. Thread titles in URL just don't work for forums.