xF2 Add-on [OzzModz] SEO & Index Tools 1.0.6 Release Candidate 3

General FAQ​

Q: What is indexing?
Search engine indexing is whether or not pages are included in search results, such as in Google or Bing, or blocked to these search engines. "Noindexing" a page means it will not be included in search results. It also affects your site's ranking and search placement.

Q: Why should you "index" or "noindex" content?
Typically, you don't want "junk" content or pages which offer no valuable text content or keywords, to be shown in Google. Rather, the goal is to only include valuable pages which you want people to click to visit your site. Think threads, your homepage, useful articles, etc. If a user makes a silly post about "Look at this funny cat", chances are you don't want this in Google search results!

Q: Can indexing affect my site's rank?
This is complicated, but YES! At the very simplest, by including tons of junk URLs in your search results, you're diluting the authority & positioning of your important pages. This can ultimately affect the overall Domain Authority of your website itself.

By blocking search engines to junk pages via the "noindex" or "nofollow" directives, you theoretically should cause a bump in the rank of your important content.

Q: Will it include AMP?
Unlikely no.

Q: What versions of Xenforo will it support?
This addon is one of my few that will only develop on a running current version of Xenforo, due to the many and rapid changes. It would be impossible to support this addon on older or legacy Xenforo, so a very recent margin of versions will be officially supported at any time (at least for addon updates).

Q: Will it actually improve my site's SEO rank?
If you configure it correctly, yes.

Q: Will it work with X addon or style?
A: There's already comprehensive addon support, and more will of course be implemented with requests. Styles are more tricky, as customizations to templates in a style can cause the addon's automatic Template Modifications to fail. However, this can also be patched.

Getting Started​

First Steps​

1. After installing the addon, edit usergroup permissions for setting meta tags on content
2. Set "Manage SEO" admin permissions under Users -> Administrators
3. Review any alerts at the SEO -> Recommendations page

General Settings​

Visit the SEO -> General Settings page and make sure the following are checked:

1. Use full friendly URLs
2. Include content title in URLs
3. No pagination for canonical URLs

Next, set the usergroups to ignore Google Analytics, such as administrators.

Show signatures to guests
Consider disabling this option if you allow links, images or length content in signatures, which could detract from your thread ranking or send page rank to external websites.

Remove username links for guests
Use this to remove all links from usernames and avatars to guests, including search engines, which can prevent discovery of member profile URLs if you do not wish to include them in search engines.

Google Snippet Settings
Use these to enable the Live Google Preview feature for supported content

Open Graph Settings
Check whether to assign various attached images as the open graph image

Page Titles​

On this page, you can set custom forum list title and descriptions, meta tags, and set custom page title suffixes for various supported content.




The live preview will show how your browser tab would appear. This can be very handy for using a shortened suffix when you want the page's title to take the most space, or showing the category name.

Links​

On this page, you should use the recommended settings which will add link title tags for supported content. More content types will be added in future releases.

Webmaster Tools​

On this page, you can add various scripts for different services without the need of editing templates directly.

Index Management​

On this page, you can set indexing rules for various supported content, noindex specific pages, and set global default indexing criteria.




Q: I really don't know what to block from indexing. What should I do?
If you're not sure, don't do anything at first. Ask questions or research. It is best to have a plan to shape how you want to index your site before making potentially damaging changes.

Q: Should I noindex my members?
This is a major question and will differ drastically for various sites. If you need all rank focus on your valuable content, you may wish to noindex your member pages and profiles, especially if you have a large amount of members which may be diluting the rank of your important pages.

Q: Should I noindex the What's New area?
This is another tough question and depends on how much you require page rank to focus on your important pages. It is possible that What's New pages can outrank the destination content in some situations, or cause duplicate content. You should probably review these implications with an SEO auditing service before deciding.

Recommendations​

On this page, you can see any errors or suggestions detected by the addon. This page is heavily under construction and will be significantly added to over new releases.

Advanced settings​

On this page, you should read the description of each option to choose whether to enable them. It is generally good to enable all settings with the Recommended label.

Additional indexing controls​

You'll find index status labels when editing categories in Admin for any supported content:



Supported content:

• Forum categories and nodes
• Product categories
• Resource categories
• Article categories
• Media categories

You can set the indexing rules or criteria when editing nodes or categories by expanding the "Search engines" group at the bottom of the page:




You can also directly change the indexing for content via the front-end by clicking the green or red index status icon: