New Message Board

Trying to Resolve Dup Content Issues With Main Site

[LostOne]

I have a phpbb message board that we've been trying to achieve better search traffic results, but I have a feeling the main site is preventing it. They are both under the same url.

If we moved over to an entirely new domain I'm thinking it would help, but the Google sandbox concerns me as it would be a new site and the content changes frequently. I know there are some theories behind the sandbox that indicate new sites are affected by adding content fresh out of the box. The message board itself is over two years old.

Any thoughts on this issue?

Thanks in advance.

[rogerd]

When you say they are under the same url, what do you mean? E.g., the main domain is example.com, and the forum is at example.com/forum/? That shouldn't hinder your search traffic to the forum at all, unless the main site has some kind of problem (penalty, etc.).

I think staying with the same domain will get you traffic faster than moving the forum to a new domain. If you are running phpBB, check for the SEO hacks that are often mentioned here.

[LostOne]

Rog:

Yes..example.com/forum. No problem with the main site..tons of search traffic because it has tons of content. We are doing work on the hacks but I find phpbb may not be the board to use at the present time?

[MThiessen]

example.com/forum

This is pretty much the standard implememntation of forums. I do not think this is causing you problems. The BIGGEST problem with phpbb is duplicate content.

Search phpbb's website for "duplicate content" you will find several free mods, and you will also see examples of peoples robots.txt.

Also, on the forum's home page, you might want to becarefull not to duplicate any of the rest of the site's content.

A few stickies in each forum with original content would be helpful as well.