Fine-Grain SEO Controls for CS 2008?

I agree that we need better control over the meta data.  I wouldn't think the it would take to much to add two meta data fields when creating a new forum or blog.

Hello Alex,

i have one question about this approach. You are using these:

cscontext.PostID
cscontext.PostName
cscontext.ThreadID
cscontext.GroupID
...

To determine where in the community you are. But my problem is - i do not have these properties on cscontext object? Is this changed in newest CS? Im using rewritten urls to determine this - and currently this is completely ok. But i would like to have more control over it. What do you think about this?

I went through this just yesterday.  Those IDs are no longer available on the context object, but what I did was use cscontext.GetCurrent<Item>() != null instead of cscontext.ItemID > 0.  Replacing Item with the right thing - Post, Thread, Section, Group, etc.  It seems to work pretty well with that change.

Jeff

Could you post the full modifications you made?

Jeff,
thanks for fast answer...This approach is very elegant.

I realized i can maybe use this approach - but considering that im newbie in cs and fact that going through rewritten urls is completely ok for our situation (we need page by page control) - i implemented catching pages by rewritten url....

Here is the code that I used, or a rough approximation of it, as there were a couple bits I had to change.

    
    protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnInit(e);
        //SEO Stuff

        CSContext cscontext = CSContext.Current;

        // If we're in a forum Thread, add the description of the first post in the thread as
        // the Meta Description, and keywords of that post as Meta Keywords
        if (cscontext.ApplicationType == ApplicationType.Forum
            && cscontext.GetCurrent<CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Thread>() != null)
        {
            CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Thread t = cscontext.GetCurrent<CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Thread>();

            Head.AddMetaDescription(t.ForceExcerpt, cscontext.Context);
            if (t.Categories != null)
                Head.AddMetaKeywords(String.Concat(t.Categories), cscontext.Context);
        }

        // If we have a specific post, add the post excerpt as the Meta Description
        // and if the post has any tags, add those as Meta Keywords
        else if (cscontext.GetCurrent<Post>() != null)
        {
            Post p = cscontext.GetCurrent<Post>();
            Head.AddMetaDescription(p.ForceExcerpt, cscontext.Context);

            if (p.Categories != null)
                Head.AddMetaKeywords(String.Concat(p.Categories), cscontext.Context);
        }
        //If we don't have a post, do we have a Section
        else if (cscontext.GetCurrent<Section>() != null)
        {
            Section section = cscontext.GetCurrent<Section>();

            //Add Section Description as Meta Description
            Head.AddMetaDescription(section.Description, cscontext.Context);
        }

        // Are we in a Section Group, add the group description as the Meta Description
        //N.b. Groups as in Forum Groups, Blog Groups as opposed to Hubs
        else if (cscontext.GetCurrent<CommunityServer.Components.Group>() != null)
        {
            CommunityServer.Components.Group group = cscontext.GetCurrent<CommunityServer.Components.Group>();

            if (group != null && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(group.Description))
                Head.AddMetaDescription(Formatter.RemoveHtml(group.Description, 250), cscontext.Context);
        }

        // If we're on a user profile page, put the User Bio as the Meta Description
        else if (cscontext.RewrittenUrlName.Equals("user_ByUserName"))
        {
            User u = cscontext.User;

            if (u != null && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(u.Profile.Bio))
                Head.AddMetaDescription(Formatter.RemoveHtml(u.Profile.Bio, 250), cscontext.Context);
        }

        // If we are on a Tags page, add tags as Meta Keywords
        // We might be on a tags page in a specific section, so don't use ELSE on if statement
        if (cscontext.Tags != null)
        {
            Head.AddMetaKeywords(String.Concat(cscontext.Tags), cscontext.Context);
        }
    }

bojan

I realized i can maybe use this approach - but considering that im newbie in cs and fact that going through rewritten urls is completely ok for our situation (we need page by page control) - i implemented catching pages by rewritten url....

If you need page by page control then I would say that following this pattern, but catching them by rewritten url is the right solution if you are a newbie or an long time CS dev.

Hi Jeff,

Great stuff!

I'm just getting an error when I try to implement it:

Compilation Error

Description: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.

Compiler Error Message: CS0246: The type or namespace name 'CSContext' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

Source Error:

Line 15:         //SEO Stuff
Line 16: 
Line 17:         CSContext cscontext = CSContext.Current;
Line 18: 
Line 19:         // If we're in a forum Thread, add the description of the first post in the thread as

Can you tell me what's wrong?

You need a:

<%

@ Import Namespace="CommunityServer.Components" %>

in your file.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you that helped!

Hi Jeff,

I just want to thank you one more time for this post.

Of course I'm not 100% sure, but I can see that I'm getting more and more hits from Google after this change. And that's in only 2 weeks. And of course I also have less and less "errors" in Googles Webmaster tools pages with identical meta descriptions. But it takes some time for google to index all my pages (100000+).

Glad to hear that things seem to be perking up a bit in terms of traffic. Alex deserves most of the credit here as he did the intial hard work. I just came along and did a bit of an update based on some API changes in Community Server and tweaked a couple small things.

Sorry if this is a stupid question but where do I put this code? Do I need to create a .cs page for the master.Master.aspx file and place it there?