The Organic Book of Search Engine Optimization
The Organic Book of Search Engine Optimization
A session id is a unique identifier that is usually placed in a cookie or in a url as a parameter that will help you collect data about a particular visitor as they go along through your web site. A typical example of a parameterized session id would be something like "www.yourdomain.com/index.php?sid=6543dfICujmeud83ebe894e5".
The main problem with using session ids (SIDs) is that spiders do not index them well. Part of the problem is that when a site gets indexed by say Googlebot for example, there are several spiders that come out at once. They each get their own session id (see url example above), and spiders tend to see them as unique urls. This creates sort of a catch-22 for the spider where they keep returning thinking they are on different pages, but infact it's the same page with a different session id in the url. Googlebot, and probably many other spiders, simply ignore urls that have common session id parameter names in the url, like 'sid=' or 'id='.
It's a must to disable session ids in PHPBB forum software, so that spiders can crawl it.
Note: Guest posting must first be disabled in order for this hack to work.
#
#-----[ OPEN ]------------------------------------------
#
includes/sessions.php
#
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------
#
$SID = 'sid=' . $session_id;
#
#-----[ REPLACE WITH ]------------------------------------------
#
if ( $userdata['session_user_id'] != ANONYMOUS ){
$SID = 'sid=' . $session_id;
} else {
$SID = '';
}