Okay, two days ago I installed CMPS. Last week or so I have been averaging about 150-225 bot crawls on my site. Yesterday, the first full day I had 349 and today at 9 PM my time (so with 3 hours left in the day) I am at 497 (about 2 to 3 times the normal).

I have put content in the right hand collumn and tried to keep all the SEO issues in mind. It seems to me that Google really likes vbadvanced (though it could be only that sitemap generator tells google about the changes and it picks up on it fast).

I suspect there may be some good synergistic effects between vBSEO and Vbadvanced. I will post back about traffic in the next day or so, but it seems higher, too.

Yesterday, 111 visits
Today, 222

Again, I know small numbers make for bad stats, but it's a big deal to me!:thumbsup:

Google has me now at 1470 indexed pages. This is up from 938 a few days ago.

Yahoo has me at 632, so a ways to go yet with them. But they have uped my inlinks to 477, which is near triple when I started 3 weeks ago.

Check out the attached Analytics stats!!

They speak for themselves, but today I had more visits then ever (overall and uniques). Google indexed 1200 of my pages from 931 two days ago....Looks like something is happening!! GREAT SUCCESS!!!!
Thanks, vBSEO!!

Well, traffic was off a little today, maybe because of my lost day yesterday (uniques were about the same percentage, though)...

Only real news is that with 45 min. left in the day I got 337 bots today. This is more than double the average number of bots. They were looking at showthread (155) and member profile (151). I changed my user titles from "New Member" to "New PEB Forum Member" today for users with no posts. Since "PEB" is one of my keywords, hopefully this will have some effect on SERP.

My indexed pages haven't really jumped up (938 on google). Again, hopefully these bots going crazy today will help.

About 20 days after install (vBSEO and Sitemap generator)

PR 3 in google (up from 2)
site: www.pebforum.com shows 994 pages

My keyword Physical Evaluation Board Forum is 4 for Google and 3 for yahoo. Yahoo 308 Inlinks, site:www.pebforum.com shows 203 pages.

Remember, I installed right after New Year's so, the data is probably skewed by the holidays. I am getting about a hundred visits per day, about half from new visitors. This compares to roughly 50 when I installed.

Okay, nothing to do with vBSEO, I just don't have anywhere else to post since my DOMAIN IS DOWN!!! I am hosted with GoDaddy, and I am gettin 500 Internal Server Errors! AGHHHHH....

On the phone with tech support now. Will post when I know more :mad:

UPDATE: They elevated my issue. After 2 hours, they sent me an e-mail saying they fixed it. My homepage is showing, but none of the showthreads/showposts are working. So, it was a great e-mail, I just wish it were true....Who said this stuff isn't fun?

AGHHH!!! After several hours of me waiting, and them not fixing it, I called back. Turns out my .htaccess file was gone. By gone, I mean they must have deleted it while fixing the 500 Internal Server error, because I sure didn't touch it. :sad: But, a quick upload later, and I was back in business. Pretty frustrating day, but even so, traffic was up...I am sure most saw a non-working site and left, but at least I got the referrals from SE. Hopefully, some of those folks will check back.

I have only data for the past few weeks. But, on January 3rd, I had 14 visits from SE referrals. Today, I had 49, with almost 4 hrs left in the day. It seems like I am getting more targeted visitors, i.e., my new members are posting and discussing more.

There I was, thinking that not much happened today....something like 17 more URLs from sitemap...slightly less traffic than yesterday...2 new members....and then my eyes drift up. Hmm, that's strange...my page rank toolbar...nah, that can't have happened can it? Wait, yes, it looks like the bar is longer... My homepage has been PR2...and now....PR3!!! Again not earth shattering, but made me happy to see!...

I'll update as more good things happen.

This is not earth-shattering...if you are easily bored, I recommend you stop reading NOW!

My most productive keyword, Physical Evaluation Board, has jumped up in SE results...number 4 for yahoo, and 5 for Google. That is an increase of one position for each...only reason I am optimistic is that for 7 months there has been no appreciable move in this.

Any ideas where to find good vbulletin freelancers? Looking for experienced and quality work...need help with the welcome message into image.

"The waiting is the hardest part..."

Date Run Time Total URLs Change

2008-01-02 2.02 s 2,198 -
2008-01-03 1.54 s 993 -1,205
2008-01-04 47.20 s 1,041 +48
2008-01-05 2.31 s 1,075 +34
2008-01-06 4.62 s 1,101 +26
2008-01-07 3.02 s 1,118 +17
2008-01-08 2.80 s 2,400 +1,282
2008-01-09 2.44 s 2,457 +57

So, while only nominally higher than last week, I am guessing/hoping the sitemap is submitting higher quality CRUs and this is a sign of good things to come.

Not really, but some of the members and staff here have pointed out that I should change welcome message to an image. I had vaguely heard of this before, but hadn't given it a ton of thought...Actually, I figured I would "get around to doing that after I bought vBSEO." Well, coincidently, I used a tool I found at Link Vendor SE Spider Crawl .
It allows you to see what the SEs see when they crawl your page...holy bad SEO.

This is what they saw on mine:
"Physical Evaluation Board Forum User Name Remember Me? Password Register FAQ Members List Calendar PEB Tools Go to Page... PEB Tools PEB Benefits Calculator VA Rates 2008 Welcome to the Physical Evaluation Board Forum forums. You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today! If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us."

My keyword "Physical Evaluation Board" had a density of 2.4% and this is the first thing the SE sees. Wow! Definitely going to have to fix this.

I have been trying to figure out how to have a better SEOd portal page. It seems to me that vbullettin layout may be flawed for trying to get traffic to forumhome.

Also, now I want to work on skin, but don't really know where to look. The free ones don't fit with my header image/logo. I just don't know where to look to find good quality custom work.

I really appreciate the time everyone has put in to giving me advice/critiques.

BTW, I changed my RRs. I inserted a H2 tag inside, and took out the template mod h2 tag I had before. I also put a RR in the footer. I don't have enough data to be able to track how this will effect the SEs view of my pages, but I figured I would try it.

One thing about my niche...it is really a niche. There are hardly any websites that mention Physical Evaluation Boards, and none except mine that are non-government site and focus soley on this niche. So, unless I screw this up badly, I feel confident of being able to "own" this niche...just have to be patient.

Seems like more bots are crawling. Not sure what more I could expect after these few days. Still, progress!

Okay, that raises another issue I have been thinking about. Metrics. Bottom line, for a site like mine (no adsense), the only metric that counts is new members. But much of that is content and presentation driven. There is nothing vBSEO can do about the content, if it's bad, members won't join, if good...well, you get the idea. So, number of pages indexed, PR, all these other things are nifty and exciting, but like all SEO, all they indicate is that more folks are able to find my site. I suppose there would be some good lessons drawn, like if I had a high number of uniques, but low registration, probably somethng wrong with my content. The corrolary is true, if I had a high percentage of registrations against visits to my page, the content must be interesting to members.
Bottom line, this should not be a surprise, SEO can only optimize opportunity for folks to see the page. A good page without SEO is not likely to do well. A bad page with SEO is also not likely to do well. Kinda obvious, but worth remembering.

This is great all the stuff I am learning. Part of the problem is that it is a lot of info and for every question answered, it seems like more questions pop up. Nature of the beast in learning new things....

I read up on directories today. Submitted to 4 or 5. We'll see if that does anything or if I get listed.

I feel a little better about user guide question I had. I just read VBSEO GOLD GUIDE TO LINKBACKS....that is the kind of stuff I was looking for. I am hoping there is similar content for other features.

Well, I hope this will help my results. I installed a robots.txt file on my server.

If I understand correctly, the idea is to limit SE robots counting irrelevant material in order to get a better keyword to content ratio. And this should help the relevancy of my pages...right?:o

I copied and pasted the contents of my robots.txt from a post in the forums here.

If you have been following my blog (thank you, fans), you know I am new to vBSEO and while not completely a newbie, I have a long way to go in getting smart in SEO. I think it would be great if there were a "Top x number of things to do" post or file or FAQ on vBSEO on what you should do. I am saying this as a new customer, while I have faith that the product will help me, and I may reap great benefits from just install and forget, I have also noted some posters with disappointing results. My best guess is that there are three variables (probably more that I am not thinking of): vBSEO product, webpage itself, and Google algorithm. It seems to me that a better guide on what to do may help maximize the vBSEO and help users control/optimize their website, taking control of two of the variables.

Okay, if I am missing the guidebook/manual/faq, someone please tell me. Until then, I will continue to learn by going through the posts.

As far as results? drumroll...I am seeing more bots on the site, and one of my main keywords, "Physical Evaluation Board," has moved up from five to four position on yahoo. I suspect that this is the sitemap generator and not the main plug in. But any improvement is good, right?