I'm running x directory 1.1 on XOOPS 2.0.16. I understand that for search engines the more links exchanges you have the better for ranking. Now, will running xdirectory help me or is this the wrong module? I also noticed that even though you input the url in xdirectory files it doesn't show up when you open a company.

I hope I have this in the correct forum, please move if not.

xdirectory is a fairly old and unsupported module built on the myLinks module. It is up to version 1.5: https://xoops.org/modules/repository/singlefile.php?cid=108&lid=1370. Upgrading may take care of some bugs.

Once upon a time it was good seo practice to have a link directory chock full of links, but since the spammers caught on and started building link farms, stuffing a page full of irrelevant links may do you more harm than good. I suggest only posting relevant links, show only 5-10 links per page (i've heard never more than twenty total external links per web page) and include at least one paragraph of text. The text description will do more for your site than anything else in the link directory.

The real seo advantage is to the external sites you put in your link directory. The search engines consider the amount of external links pointing back to a site when scoring page rank. Having links on other sites will help your ranking, especially if they rank higher than you.


In xdirectory, mylinks and most any XOOPS directory, the human sees http://www.yourdomain.com but the robot sees modules/xdirectory/visit.php?lid=##. Roll your mouse over a url link in xdirectory and read your status bar for a demo.

These modules use a redirect url instead of the sites actual url, so there is absolutely no seo advantage whatsoever to the external site. If you are trading links with external sites, you should publish their text links in your description paragraph.

You can hack the templates to use hardlinks instead of the visit.php redirect but then you lose the counter function.

There is javascript hack that works around this issue, it displays the hardlink url to human and robot until the link is clicked then visit.php is called by js. Here is SNAKES Direct Link and Redirection Hack: https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=42078&start=0#forumpost184270

I have used the hack successfully on many XOOPS modules using visit.php redirects.

Hope this helps,
TCNet

tcnet, when I go to that link and download and upload and install in Xoops, it still says 1.1. So I figure it is 1.5 and whatever wasn't changed to let XOOPS know that it is 1.5.

I also couldn't find an header.html in templates either to install that hack.

I went with 1.51 of WebLinks. Thanks for your help tcnet. That new version of weblinks seems pretty cool.