Is there something wrong with my flarum install in terms of SEO?

marlon

Hey guys! ?
I've read the two SEO topics here (https://discuss.flarum.org/d/2398-tags-and-seo/) and here (https://discuss.flarum.org/d/3103-is-the-flarum-s-seo-seriously-messed-up-or-am-i-doing-something-wrong), but none of their reported items are the same case as mine.

I've installed Flarum Dec 2016 at a blank test website just to see how it is like installing Flarum and it seems to have SEO issues until now.

SEO issues encountered:
1. searching site:example.com on Google only returns 3 pages (1 is a wordpress homepage)
2. Searching for a specific topic that's actually in the forum on Google and then adding example.com in the search doesn't generate search results.
3. Checked sample link http://example.com/talk/d/sample-topic/ on seositecheckup.com, and it says "The meta description tag is missing from your page. You should include this tag in order to provide a brief description of your page which can be used by search engines. Well-written and inviting meta descriptions may also help click-through rates to your site in search engine results."
4. Checked Google cache on http://cachedview.com/, and it only generates results for the homepage which is a wordpress installation, and not for the other flarum pages.

I am now planning to install Flarum on my much bigger project, I would just like to know if there's something amiss in my implementation so I can identify even before I start on this next project.

Also there is a newer version since I last installed (Dec2016), do you guys think all above issues are addressed? Because I can already great Flarum sites in production that look awesome on Google search. ?

As always, thanks to this helpful community! ? More power to us

Sanguine

marlon go to Google Webmaster Central and check for crawl errors or other issues?

luceos

We still need to improve a lot in terms of SEO. It's been hardly been looked at so far, our focus momentarily is to get to stable.

marlon

luceos thanks luceos, I'm just really curious as all the other production sites I see have their SEO well done, I checked their sites posted in the thread for production sites in terms of SEO, and all are good. When I search their topics on google, everything shows up.

I think it's just my installation that's having these issues. What do you think?

Also, is there anyone else experiencing this? Or is it just me?

luceos

marlon I think it's just my installation that's having these issues. What do you think?

Your wordpress site might affect the results of Flarum. If you look into the comparison in terms of SEO between subdomain and subfolder you might get a hint of what I mean. Please note I am not an SEO expert.

Frink

marlon I am experiencing this issue with my site right now. Whenevery I punch my site (https://zaptech.ca) into google, it gives me some of the discussions, but it just uses my default meta tag, not the text from the discussions. Is there a plugin or something that can help with this?

ExZiByte

Flarum is still very much a beta software they are working towards stability before they work on seo and other not as important stuff.

marlon

ExZiByte Thanks for the prompt feedback! Appreciate it! ? I totally agree with you ?

I understand that it's still in beta version so tons of issues are there, and I know that no fix is guaranteed and no support is even promised since it's beta. However tons of lovely flarum production sites have their SEO very well, and this is what I want to find out about.

I'm just curious, if I did something wrong with the setup (after tons of search and looking around, it seems even the live sites with default settings are ok in terms of SEO and it's only my own website so far that has this issue, so there must be something else that is amiss other than the fact that Flarum is still in beta),

Or if these lovely sites did something to fix it, someone please help? pretty please?

Thanks so much guys for this wonderful community! ?

marlon

luceos Wow this makes a lot of sense! Hmm that might actually be it! Thanks Luceos! ?

I was thinking of installing Flarum in the /subfolder but now that you mentioned that, I'll explore installing it in subdomain/ instead. Thanks for your great help as always luceos! ?

I hope this helps others out there too who's also confrazzled by this issue!

Fla

Do not be offended, but the site you do not understand. Google best indexes pages.

Write the text on the main page of the site. With it, give links to the forum.
Rename / talk / to / forum / or / community /
Collect search requests and adapt headers

to start

Or delete the wordpress in general and make one page with text and a photo.

marlon

Fla no not offended at all! I'm learning so much from you guys! ?

Does this mean it's possible to install in /subfolder (example.com/forum), and then just link from the homepage each topic? I already have a link to the community (example.com/forum) from the wordpress homepage (example.com) but it's just one link.

Because as much as possible, I'd like to have it in /subfolder. But if not, then I guess I'd have to install it in subdomain/ (forum.example.com).

If you have suggestions, I'm all ears. ? thanks!

marlon

Fla @luceos @Fla @Hiob @addtocartips

These are two examples of /subfolder forums that are doing well in terms of SEO
halfminer.de/forum/
nefald.fr/forum/
addtocart.tips/forum

If possible, hope the two owners of these sites can share their feedback ? thanks!

marlon

Sanguine Thanks Sanguine, I will do just that ?

marlon

Sanguine By the way, do you know how to add verify a flarum website in Google Search Console? Thanks much! ?
Because for now, I can only authenticate the wordpress homepage but not the flarum subfolder.

Fla

marlon halfminer.de/forum/
nefald.fr/forum/

they are not successful from the point of view of SEO

marlon addtocart.tips/forum

interesting unusual implementation.

There are forums on flarum with attendance from google at least 1,000 people a day?

Sanguine

marlon For Google, subfolders are part of the same site. So if there are crawl errors, they should show up in your main site report.

Other suggestion, you could look through your webserver logs to see if Google visited your forum at all: grep -i googlebot access.log | grep forum

marlon

Sanguine Thanks Sanguine!

marlon

FIX for everyone having same issue: i tried requesting index for each forum topic in Google Search Console and it now appears in search! ?

I wasn't able to move on though because of an extension I installed that broke the test forum but that's for another topic.

Thanks all for your support!

Sanguine

marlon You can also install a sitemap (theres an extension for that) to help google find all of your discussions.

marlon

Sanguine Thanks for the advice. I considered that, however the fact that each extension makes me nervous , fearing the fact that it'll break with each click makes me want to avoid.

Now I upgraded to V7 from V6, then after that I went back to the Extensions list to re-enable the extensions, I encountered this issue (https://discuss.flarum.org/d/8626-admin-page-is-blank-screen-with-after-upgrade-to-flarum-v0-1-0-beta-7) and now I'm stuck, not knowing how to proceed.

But thanks much Sanguine for your responses, I really appreciate it.. I really love love love Flarum.. but me being a newbie in tech and not being able to fix issues makes me do a double take on everything...

I'm thinking I should just do a fresh install? but I want to be able to perform a successful upgrade first to make sure I can handle when the next version becomes available....

marlon

Fla Thanks!

Fla they are not successful from the point of view of SEO

I'm curious, why are the two not successful when it comes to SEO?

Fla There are forums on flarum with attendance from google at least 1,000 people a day?

I'm sure discuss.flarum.org is one of those with at least 1k views. I hope there are more flarum forums in the same neighborhood because I really want to start my community using flarum. ?

I think about each day: should I implement flarum, or should I just choose the other forum softwares? After more than a year of testing (and waiting before I start my community), my heart still goes back to flarum. ?

Zeokat

marlon I'm curious, why are the two not successful when it comes to SEO?

And why you say that those two forums are SEO successful? What do you rely on to affirm that?

I only see that addtocart.tips/forum is the unique forum that implemented some extra SEO stuff.

About put the forum into a domain or into a subdomain, from SEO point of view has no effect. You can choose the option that you prefer. The best recommendation is that you choose the system that you can maintain in the long term.

Here you have the official video by John Mueller that comes directly from Google:

If you want proper SEO on Flarum... you will have to wait or simply choose another software to build your forum. At the moment, devs are working in hight priority stuff and SEO isn't a priority for dev team.