This is a draft version on Google search engine optimization specific related to Xoops sites. We are looking for feedbacks and suggest, so that we may be able to release a final version. Look forward to your tips and tricks. Thank you.



What is SEO, Anyway

SEO is the implementation of a series of procedures or processes of making a site and its contents highly relevant for search engines and ultimately for searchers. The goal of SEO is to help a site gain top positionings for relevant words and phrases, thus driving traffic to the site.

Please note the domain name does not count in the terms of SEO keyword search. The top ranking of your domain in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) means nothing about your ranking, only the content page ranking counts.

SEO by itself could be worthy of several hundred pages of instructions and tips. This guide covers Xoops specific issues only. What covered in the guide are some tips that we have tried and seemed to be working.

A disclaimer - we are not SEO experts and we would welcome corrections and/or suggestions on improving the techniques. We are sharing those tips in a hope that they may be of help to you. No gurantee on the effectiveness.

This guide is for Google search engines specifically. The techniques or TIPs mentioned in this guide may or may not apply to your situation.


Site Rank vs Page Rank

You may have come cross about different terms of site rank and content page rank. Site rank is usually reserved for a site index.php/index.html page. If someone says he/she has a PR5 site, then what he/she is trying to tell you that his/her index page has a PR5.

The content pages ranks are usually below the site rank, and are differently ranked.

A content page from a site with a PR5 may rank ahead of a similar page from a site with a PR6 or PR7. Higher site PR does not mean your contents will be ranked well. Your content page will do well in SERPs only if you focus on the factors that affect the page rankings.

The goal of SEO is to increase your site PR and your content page ranking.


Improve Your Site Rank

Two things directly impact the site PR are incoming links and freshness of the contents. Google has a secret formula of assigning weights to the two factors. Nobody knows what percentage they assign to each factor, but one thing is amply clear – incoming links carries large portion weight.

Xoops.org has a site PR8 due largely to the fact that it has thousands of incoming links.

The incoming links to your site carry certain weight and play an important factor in determining your site PR. A site might have a PR5 due to a single link from a PR8 site.

So in order to increase your site PR, you would need as many incoming as possible and the higher of the incoming site’s PR the better.

Contents may play a minor role in site PR, but they are the essential focus of your SEO exercise – driving traffic to the content pages through search engines. A site with a PR6 and very little contents would not attract much traffic to it and would not be worthy of all efforts.

In the pursuit of increasing site PR, two things to Avoid:

Directory Sites Using MyLinks or Similar Modules
DO NOT blindly submit your site to a directory site with higher PR. If the directory runs on modules such as MyLinks, Weblinks, Xdirectory and other mechanism that redirects and counts clicks to your site – avoid them, especially the site has little content and the directory is the main component of the site.

The reason for avoiding them is that those sites are very likely using 302 (temporary) redirect to link to your site. If the link to your site were to be clicked in a high frequency by googlebots, then your site frontpage may be "hijacked" by the directory sites.

Xoops.org’s MyLinks directory has the potential of hijacking any sites listed in it. Fortunately, Googlebots do not crawl the directory every day on every link.

So if you are submitting your site to a directory or exchanging links with another site or partner, make sure you get direct link to your site. Other than that, there is not much value you would be gaining.

Do Not Use Interchangeable Site URL
Xoops offers a great flexibility of using both www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com as ways of reaching your site. This also creates potential confusion to spiders/bots as which is your main site. Spiders/bots see them as two different sites. In addition, if the bots splitting their time indexing both www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com, you risk of being label as mirroring your contents. Google is not very kind to mirroring. You may accidentally decrease your site PR.

To use a fixed site URL, you would need first to decide on what format you like. Once you have made the decision, make sure your mainfile.php and theme files are correctly set. We have see people using interchangeable URLs in their theme. Do yourself a favor - make it consistent.

Be consistent in advertising your URLs such as Xoops.org forums signature. If you set your site to www.yoursite.com, then don't tell the world to find you at yoursite.com. Googlebots WILL follow yoursite.com to reach your site.

To prevent interchangeable URLs, you will need to set up a 301 permanent redirect using .htaccess in your xoops root directory. Please see this tip for more information on the issue and how to do 301 redirect.

http://xoops-tips.com/news-article.storyid-92.htm