Pimp'ed Minerva Seo At Invision Forums

Seems like there are a lot of SEO noobs for this discussion.

So let me define
URL Rewriting or Mod Rewriting is done at the WebServer level usually Apache only as IIS server don't natively support this, but this leads to SEF (next)

SEF = Search Engine Friendly, turns "http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=269810&st=20" in to something like "http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=URL_Rewriting_ in_ the_ future". The idea here is to allow search engines to catalog url strings with actual meanings, yes it is part of SEO, but different.

and lastly
SEO = Search Engine Optimization is the combination of SEF, sitemaps, key words, descriptions, alt tags for images, tag clouds, internal linking, external linking, marketing, on and on and on. I highly suggest you go read SEOBook (google it) its worth the investment.

AND SPEAKING OF INVESTMENT I support Bfarber on this to a point. I use SubDreamer on my site (CMS) and it has the ability of using or not using mod_rewrite and the reason for this is mod_rewrite is NOT installed and configured on every Apache web server out there.

It makes sense to me to offer mod_rewrite as a built in option, but have IP.B test the server during install and turn it on in the software if enabled on the web server, if not give an alert and maybe its time to change servers or perhaps hosts.

The SEF is very beneficial to dynamic sites that use databases to hold content as I stated earlier it helps search engines categorize URL meanings, which will always be part of SEO and will most likely never change. What will change is how search engines relate the url string to the header tags, key words, description and content.

As for fully integrating CSEO and IPB I am against that and agree with Bfarber, enough changes in SEO its better to let each company really focus on each product.

As to why CSEO is more expensive, SEO is the new up and coming Internet business. With the Internet becoming cluttered with spam at a exponential rate, SEO helps filter out what people are really searching for. Not every site builds around SEO and there are no hard set guidelines as these are industry trade secrets in each search engine camp and will never be released. The only thing you can do is make base line charts, make a change and see how it charts with your web analyzer of choice. You will NEVER hit #1 position on every key word you have in your site either, so don't try and don't pay someone who says they can....best to focus intently on your own content, build a 'sitemap.xml' file and submit it to the search engines.

I am not a SEO know it all, but it has been a major focus in my life for the past 5 months and is worth investigating. However doing SEO with forum software is a MAJOR challenge so using products like CSEO and the free product MinervaSEO will help greatly if you have a forum only site. It should at the very least (assuming you put effort in to it) pay for itself in advertising revenue or member traffic in 6 months or less. CSEO knows this, thats why their price structure is the way it is.