Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Number of forum posts per topic page
-
When optimizing a forum topic page for SEO, would it be better to have a higher number of posts per page than seperating the topic up into multiple pages?
For example, out of the box a forum may display 15 posts per topic page - would there be any SEO benifit in changing that number to say 30 posts per page? I.e. more content per page and decreasing unnecessary "page 2, page 3, page 4"... etc.
Your thoughts and comments are most appreciated.
-
I'd also consider page load time. Do you have people that put 40 pictures in one post? Then you may not want 30 posts displaying, as that could really bog down page load time. My forum usually has only a couple of pictures per post, if any, but I do sometimes get ones that have 20-40 pictures.
-
Either add the page number at the beginning or remove them completely, yeah. Rand recommended removing them here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience
-
Thanks for that reply. What about paginated META Description tags? Remove them completely?
-
In normal paginated results it makes sense to have the page number first for pages 2+ as page one has the highest SEO value - you want to show Google that that is the most important page for the topic term. Adding the page number at the start of the title tag for pages 2+ gives an indication to the search engines that they're not quite as important as the first page. I imagine this will more often than not be the case for forum postings too, though there's always a chance the best content will be posted pages along the thread.
-
Thank you for your responses.
I think 30 is a reasonable number as we currently have 15 per page.
Also, for the numbered pages - what would be preferred titles:
"Page Title (Page 2)"
or
"Page 2 for Page Title"
-
What would be best for the user? I think it's about finding a balance between load speed and content without spreading the content too thinly across multiple pages, and being aware that constantly clicking to the next page can be time-consuming. Think about how the forum will be used - will people regularly come back to read one or two new posts? If so they won't want 40 posts loading on a page. Do users often make lengthy or short posts?
Things like signatures and images will slow the load speed down, so take that into account when you come to a decision. Perhaps make signatures visible to logged in users only, if applicable and possible? While 'content is king' faster speeds do have an SEO benefit too.
It's a balancing act, perhaps start with 15 and adjust that over time when you start to get a feel for the content that's posted.
-
30 posts per page surely increase the long tail of the forum page and can solve the pagination problem, even though that issue could be solved using the first forum thread page as canonical or using the noindex,follow meta robots tag in the pages 2,3...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Images on their own page?
Hi Mozers, We have images on their own separate pages that are then pulled onto content pages. Should the standalone pages be indexable? On the one hand, it seems good to have an image on it's own page, with it's own title. On the other hand, it may be better SEO for crawler to find the image on a content page dedicated to that topic. Unsure. Would appreciate any guidance! Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater1 -
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
What if page exists for desktop but not mobile?
I have a domain (no subdomains) that serves up different dynamic content for mobile/desktop pages--each having the exact same page url, kind of a semi responsive design, and will be using "Vary: User-Agent" to give Google a heads up on this setup. However, some of the pages are only valid for mobile or only valid for desktop. In the case of when a page is valid only for mobile (call it mysite.com/mobile-page-only ), Google Webmaster Tools is giving me a soft 404 error under Desktop, saying that the page does not exist, Apparently it is doing that because my program is actually redirecting the user/crawler to the home page. It appears from the info about soft 404 errors that Google is saying since it "doesn't exist" I should give the user a 404 page--which I can make it customized and give the user an option to go to the home page, or choose links from a menu, etc.. My concern is that if I tell the desktop bot that mysite.com/mobile-page-only basically is a 404 error (ie doesn't exist), that it could mess up the mobile bot indexing for that page--since it definitely DOES exist for mobile users.. Does anyone here know for sure that Google will index a page for mobile that is a 404 not found for desktop and vice versa? Obviously it is important to not remove something from an index in which it belongs, so whether Google is careful to differential the two is a very important issue. Has anybody here dealt with this or seen anything from Google that addresses it? Might one be better off leaving it as a soft 404 error? EDIT: also, what about Bing and Yahoo? Can we assume they will handle it the same way? EDIT: closely related question--in a case like mine does Google need a separate sitemap for the valid mobile pages and valid desktop pages even though most links will be in both? I can't tell from reading several q&a on this. Thanks, Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
How long takes to a page show up in Google results after removing noindex from a page?
Hi folks, A client of mine created a new page and used meta robots noindex to not show the page while they are not ready to launch it. The problem is that somehow Google "crawled" the page and now, after removing the meta robots noindex, the page does not show up in the results. We've tried to crawl it using Fetch as Googlebot, and then submit it using the button that appears. We've included the page in sitemap.xml and also used the old Google submit new page URL https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url Does anyone know how long will it take for Google to show the page AFTER removing meta robots noindex from the page? Any reliable references of the statement? I did not find any Google video/post about this. I know that in some days it will appear but I'd like to have a good reference for the future. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabioricotta-840380 -
Dummy links in posts
Hi, Dummy links in posts. We use 100's of sample/example lnks as below http://<domain name></domain name> http://localhost http://192.168.1.1 http:/some site name as example which is not available/sample.html many more is there any tag we can use to show its a sample and not a link and while we scan pages to find broken links they are skipped and not reported as 404 etc? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Maximum number of links
Hi there, I have just written an article that is due to be posted on an external blog, the article has potentially 3 links that could link to 3 different pages on my website, is this too much? what do you recommend being the maximum number of links? Thanks for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Number of Indexed Pages are Continuously Going Down
I am working on online retail stores. Initially, Google have indexed 10K+ pages of my website. I have checked number of indexed page before one week and pages were 8K+. Today, number of indexed pages are 7680. I can't understand why should it happen and How can fix it? I want to index maximum pages of my website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0