SEO - basics issues

[oliverlutz1]

Hi 

We've recently launched our community: community.upc-cablecom.ch. We're happy with the platform overall, but not with the SEO features. I was wondering if there are other customers around which are not happy regarding SEO? Or what are your experiences?

I'll have a call with Lithium's responsible team next week and hope, that some of the (basic) SEO points below are on the road map. 

Some SEO points: 

• URLs: The subcategory is always named twice: https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/TV-Sport/bd-p/tvsport (should only be there once), furthermore no uppercase letters
• Heading structure (landing pages, categories and threads): it's not possible to change the structure: page.head.structure & the H1 etc. tags
• Heading structure (blog posts). Can't be changed. Furthermore it's not possible to set h2 subtitles
• Meta description (blog): it's not possible to set meta titles & description (WordPress for example provides this feature & more) for free

[VarunGrazitti]

@oliverlutz1 - Just an update on your first question, 

• URLs: The subcategory is always named twice: https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/TV-Sport/bd-p/tvsport(should only be there once), furthermore no uppercase letters

This first occurance of TV-Sport is the board name here, and the second occurance, tvsport is the ID of this board. You can change the name of the board but not ID. Your ID could be anything, it is just that in this case, it is same as the name of the board.

In general, the URL structure for lithium is:

youcommunity.com/t5/BoardName/bd-p/board_id

youcommunity.com/t5/CategoryName/ct-p/category_id

For other SEO threads, please have a look at these areas.

https://community.lithium.com/t5/Other-techie-stuff/Understanding-SEO-Friendly-URLs/ta-p/6560

https://community.lithium.com/t5/Search-tools/Set-SEO-options/ta-p/108583

I hope this helps.

[oliverlutz1]

@VarunGrazitti Thanks!

But it would be better, to have the following url anyway: forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/tv-sport

And if we could drop the categories (t5 etc.) it would be a ++ 😉 

I've already checked the general posts in the community. I've opened this thread to get general feedback, if other Lithium customers have done SEO analysis and what the outcome was. 

[VarunGrazitti]

Well, that could be a case if you can set up some vanity URLs, but I am not sure how it would impact your SEO efforts. Vanity URLs would only work if you have limited set of boards, but that's not scalable as you'll have to have a new vanity URL every time you have a new board.

Regarding dropping t5, that would really not matter from SEO's perspective.

[oliverlutz1]

Clear, that the t5 is not the biggest issue. But there are other things like the cannonicals. Most ouf our pages have a correct cannonical, but there's always a second cannonical to the landingpage. Impact can be, that Google just ignore both. 

Anyway. I'll check again with Lithium. 

[PaoloT]

Hi @oliverlutz1

a duplicate canonical does not sound right. Is it perhaps an unintended side effect of some customization? As far as I am aware, there is a unique canonical tag generated by the platform.

Thanks,

[oliverlutz1]

Hi @PaoloT

Im not sure. My question/request was: "Page contains a second canonical to the landing page which is not neeeded. Please remove it. On the categories we only need the original-url. For example: /t5/Fernsehen/ct-p/Fernsehen and not /t5/Fernsehen/ct-p/Fernsehen/interaction-style/forum (duplicate content). 

Got this information back: "This is not currently possible as the application dynamically generates URL's based on various factors, including discussion style. Additionally, features such as highlighting/permalinking will take you to specific posts in a thread using the initial thread URL with an anchor appended to it."

[PaoloT]

Hi @oliverlutz1

I've replied privately with details - in this case the duplicate canonical seem to be an issue with your custom skin.

Thanks,

[NickWilsdon]

Hi,

I'm also very interested in the optimisation of Lithium for search engines. Thanks for starting this thread Oliver, it's been useful. 

I seem to be having some issues with the following URLs though - access denied Varun? I am using a logged in forum account. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For other SEO threads, please have a look at these areas.

https://community.lithium.com/t5/Other-techie-stuff/Understanding-SEO-Friendly-URLs/ta-p/6560

https://community.lithium.com/t5/Search-tools/Set-SEO-options/ta-p/108583

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can you help?

Thanks,

Nick

[oliverlutz1]

Hi @NickWilsdon

Could be a problem with the permission. If the links still aren't working ask support to set the rights.

Regarding the topic itself. Any news from Lithium here? 

[NickWilsdon]

Thanks @oliverlutz1 - I've asked support for some help on my permissions. 

I noticed on the Lithium home page (http://www.lithium.com/products-solutions/online-communities/forums) that "SEO optimization" is highlighted as one of the features of the platform, so I'd like to get as much background information as possible on that point. I would be happy to use this thread to discuss these features and what development would help us in further optimising Lithium.

Thanks,

Nick

[oliverlutz1]

+1 for this statement. 🙂

[PaoloT]

Perhaps @JeffSp can chime in on this area to share the latest news?

[JeffSp]

Hi Everyone,

We've recently run a few SEO audits and we've received audit results from a handful of customers -- thanks! We found that we're pretty solid on common best practices and, generally, our SEO practices look ok. However, we did find areas in need of improvement. This is such an important area, we're working on updates to the platform behavior around the following:

• Handle “thin content” pages (intelligent noindex, nofollow)
• Update and optimize our use of canonical
• Redirect code hygiene 
• User-agent directives
• Update and optimize heading tags, title tag, metatags, and microformat usage
• Re-implement sitemap
• Audit and improve SEO controls in Admin
• Add backend instrumentation and monitoring
• Produce SEO technical documentation

Updates in these areas will start to roll out over the next few releases and we'll be monitoring for improved pagerank and referral traffic. 

  -- Jeff

[oliverlutz1]

Thanks for the update @JeffSp!

Looking forward to hear about the details. 🙂 

[PaoloT]

Update: the latest details are available in the 15.10 Release Notes  . Hope this helps!

[NickWilsdon]

Hi Paolo,

Many thanks for the update. and really appreciate your help on these SEO issues. 

I'm unable to view that link, seems I don't have the right permissions. I signed up to this community directly. Would you be able to point me in the right direction to get this fixed?

Thanks,

Nick

[PaoloT]

Hi @NickWilsdon

you can send an email to our community team ( communityhelp@lithium.com ) to gain access to the customer release notes.

Thanks,

[oliverlutz1]

Well, "not necessarily" doesn't mean, that Google doesn't care at all. 😉 But I agree with you, that the URL structure is more important.