Meta description

DavidONE · 2008-08-19 13:22:56

Prompted by discussion at http://fluxbb.org/forums/topic/1667/usi … ser-forum/

Flux is currently populating meta description with e.g.:

<meta name="description" content="Using FluxBB in Production Environment - 16,000 User Forum (Page 1) - FluxBB discussion - FluxBB.org Forums  -  Unfortunately no one can be told what FluxBB is - you have to see it for yourself." />

...and meta title:

<title>Using FluxBB in Production Environment - 16,000 User Forum (Page 1) - FluxBB discussion - FluxBB.org Forums</title>

We're therefore getting lots of duplicate content - between 'title' and 'description' and also with all post descriptions containing category name and tag line. That's not good for SEO.

Google probably gives some weight to meta description as a ranking factor (http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/interne … actors.htm + http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors), so making this different to meta title is important.

Google (+Yahoo) use it for SERPs description, e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=using+ … production - so people are just seeing duplicate content. Providing unique content may provide extra keywords that make the SERP more visually appealing and likely to be clicked.

I think a better solution would be to take the first 200 characters of the first post for topics. Forums should use title and description ("FluxBB discussion - Any other FluxBB related discussion."). The forum root should output title and tag ("FluxBB.org Forums - Unfortunately no one can be told what FluxBB is - you have to see it for yourself.").

raptrex · 2008-08-19 18:46:44

i agree, goggle doesnt like duplicate stuff
and my google webmaster tool dashboard gives me alot of errors because the title and description are the same

Jérémie · 2008-08-20 05:16:06

DavidONE wrote:

I think a better solution would be to take the first 200 characters of the first post for topics. Forums should use title and description ("FluxBB discussion - Any other FluxBB related discussion."). The forum root should output title and tag ("FluxBB.org Forums - Unfortunately no one can be told what FluxBB is - you have to see it for yourself.").

Agreed, it seems the best way of doing it.

For special pages where Flux doesn't know what to put (User list, Profiles, etc.) there's two way of handling it:

- either supply a custom meta description string page by page (from the language file), like : All public data (such as name, location, etc.) for the %name’s account on the %forum’s forum for a user profile page (yes that description could be improved, it's very very late right now )

- not setting a meta header description tag at all for these.

katexter · 2008-08-20 09:00:06

Actually, google won't penalize for duplicate title and description. My site's php code is poor at SEO but is still ranking for specific keywords.

However, this does not mean that fluxBB should not be modified to fix the problem. I hope this gets built into the core. Doing so will widen adoption further vs other boards, IMHO.

Smartys · 2008-08-20 11:19:52

Not sending the meta description has lead to penalties in the past. That's why we have this basic auto-generation.

Jérémie · 2008-08-20 22:53:40

What kind of penalties?

Smartys · 2008-08-20 23:17:48

When Google still had a supplemental index, many of the forum's pages would go there.

DavidONE · 2008-08-27 17:04:27

katexter wrote:

Actually, google won't penalize for duplicate title and description. My site's php code is poor at SEO but is still ranking for specific keywords.

It's best not to speak in absolutes about SEO - what's true today may be false next week, and it's impossible to be certain what weighting is given to the hundreds of factors used to determine SERPs. All we can do is follow Google guidelines and best practices, e.g. avoid duplicate content, provide unique and meaningful meta title + description. Flux is already very good, and this little tweak would make it even better.

P.S. I didn't receive notification of replies, hence delay in replying.

katexter · 2008-08-28 20:58:19

I agree. Changes to Google's rules vary from day-to-day and all we can do is use what's working and follow guidelines.

fluxrux · 2008-11-03 06:47:36

I noticed this issue as well, but didn't look too much into it. However, I definitely agree that something like the first few characters or so of the thread content should be used as the meta description instead. Or at least do this:

Name of subforum - Thread title

So for this thread the meta description would be: FluxBB discussion - Meta description

I've seen this done on MyBB, and seems to work well.

Forums

#1 2008-08-19 13:22:56

Meta description

#2 2008-08-19 18:46:44

Re: Meta description

#3 2008-08-20 05:16:06

Re: Meta description

#4 2008-08-20 09:00:06

Re: Meta description

#5 2008-08-20 11:19:52

Re: Meta description

#6 2008-08-20 22:53:40

Re: Meta description

#7 2008-08-20 23:17:48

Re: Meta description

#8 2008-08-27 17:04:27

Re: Meta description

#9 2008-08-28 20:58:19

Re: Meta description

#10 2008-11-03 06:47:36

Re: Meta description

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