Need help with Spider Friendly URL implementation

GateKeeper · June 17th, 2006, 09:16 AM

I just started Spider Friendly URLs yesterday, but I realize today that the pages already indexed will be revisited by the search engines. This is going to lead them to conclude I have duplicate content. One with a query in the URL the other "spider friendly".
I would like to add a 301 redirect to my htaccess file that will take the showproduct.php? query URLs and the showcat.php? query URLs and properly direct them to their equivalent spider friendly version.
I'm not very good with regular expressions, and I could probably manage to knock one out for a simple, single variable replacement, i.e. changing the ? to a / and the = to a /, but I wouldn't know how to do this and address the & in a multi variable query URL, especially since each URL may have a different number of variables.
If someone has a handle on this, could they please enlighten us less knowledgeable?

Thank you,
-GateKeeper

GateKeeper · June 19th, 2006, 05:23 PM

I'm guessing this may not be in scope since there's been no reply, but any help would be appreciated.

candomike · June 25th, 2006, 10:43 PM

I'd use VBSEO, it's supposed to be the best there is. I am gonna Install it after I install all of the Photopost Products and I'm Using VBPortal. So this should be Very Interesting. What's the Product you are using??

GateKeeper · June 26th, 2006, 12:18 AM

vBSEO will work for the vBulletin, and maybe vBPortal, but I don't believe it has any effect on the PhotoPost products. I may be wrong, and it may be dependent on the directory hierarchy you deploy, but I simply don't know.
What I am referring to here is the simple deployment of spider friendly URLs available directly from within the PhotoPost software. It requires mod_rewrite be enabled, which is pretty standard. However, the issue I have is with deploying it after some of the query based URLs have already been indexed. Changing to a new style URL mid-stream would effectively create two different URLs pointing to the same page, a no-no in SEO terms.
I have since solved this problem with the help of a website called http://forum.modrewrite.com/. I don't know who runs this site, but they offer free help with mod_rewrite rules.
Good luck with your vBSEO implementation. I use it on my forums, now, but I can't say yet whether there will be any better SERP postions as a result. All of the pages had been previously indexed by Google, so I wonder if there will be any value added. I only hope it won't hurt.

Chuck S · June 26th, 2006, 08:01 AM

vBSEO in fact will break the photopost scripts and you can not use it with them. vBSEO in fact has some code you put in your htaccess files to not do the photopost products

GateKeeper good call on finding that site but to my knowledge the more links in google the higher ranking you have. So one url with spider and one without I do not think does no harm and if anything it is better. However if you have spiders crawling your site they are only going to get spider urls and not duplicate content your talking about old links and they will disappear in time as the content is updated and they clean out there old data

mjm · June 26th, 2006, 01:50 PM

Google spiders both my vB Archives and forums

Why doesn't PhotoPost offer the use of both methods by providing spider friendly version in an archive format?

I can't switch to spider friendly because all the links to img pics from gallery to forum are the standard method and it would screw them all up

Michael P · June 26th, 2006, 01:56 PM

Other than providing a second entry-point for the same content; is there really a need for an archive version of the PhotoPost gallery?

mjm · June 26th, 2006, 02:45 PM

I don't know how an archives format would look with PhotoPost.

With vb it's a much more efficient method to search through a long list of threads.

How do I... PhotoPost Archives:
http://www.photopost.com/forum/archi....php/f-69.html

And I see in my whos-online that visits are often made through the archive links

To be honest, I've never got around to optimizing my site for search engines, and as I'm in a special niche market they seem to find it alright.

But with the forums, since vB added the archive method it seems to have improved site searches.

Finally my request is self serving because I've got too many pics linked the standard way and it's too late in the game for me to switch to spider friendly, which one day I may regret...

Michael P · June 26th, 2006, 02:49 PM

As I was saying, IMO, because the focus of a photo gallery is the actual photos themslves, I'm not sure that an archives section provides much benefit. Whereas in a forum the content used for "searches" is the text of the threads.

mjm · June 26th, 2006, 03:27 PM

I doubt if many members at our forums know or even use the Archive link at the bottom of the page ...
It seems to have more benefits to those finding the site through search engines...

One thing of note re vB and PhotoPost ...
(BTW vB's been offline for a number of hours ... wonder whats cooking?)

... we switched the title bar around so that
- Forum Category/Gallery Category name shows before the name of the Forum or Gallery
- and the same for the Forum Thread Title and Gallery Description Title to show before the name of the Forum / Gallery

By popular demand ... in a recent upgrade, vB switched this around to make this the default for the forums, but we still need to change this around manually with PhotoPost.

I think, at least for our site that having the Category title and Photo description Title first gets us more finds by the search engines.