Briansol's Ultimate Guide to vBSEO

Editors Note:
This guide was written for vbseo 3.2 and sitemap 2.2 and is now mostly deprecated due to new features. Use as a GUIDE only. DO NOT Import the settings file into a newer version, nor use non-range values in the sitemap.
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I've been inspired to make this post due to my own soon-to-be lack of time. I am most likely starting a new job and projects in the next few weeks, and thus my online time is going to get cut. I find myself repeating myself day after day to new people asking the same questions, as well as experienced forum owners who are still tweaking their forums day in and out

So, it's time to compile my thoughts and opinions and setting suggestions for the ultimate in vBSEO-optimized forums.


DISCLAIMER:
All of the below ideas/settings/suggestions are that of my own, and do not necessarily represent vbseo.com, crawlability, etc, nor may not have 100% proven results. These are what I feel work best for the best SEO experience.

Before you do anything, MAKE A COMPLETE BACKUP.
Before you do anything, TRY IT ON A STAGE/DEV area, not your live forum.


SUPPORT:
This will not be fully supported. Please don't PM me for help unless you are offering me $$$ Keep any questions in this thread, and i'll get to them, or someone else will, when i/they can.


Foreign Note: All these settings and suggestions are designed for english-based forums. If your forum language is not English, you will need to modify several areas to handle the proper charset, etc. that I am not familair with. Your global parter rep can probably help you better than I on any of those suggestions.



Now, to the list.


For optimial SEO, I recommend:

1. Use these attached re-write settings. If your site is already up and running and indexed, it's probably not a good idea to change. The basic idea here is that you want non-hierarchic, folder-style urls. NO EXTENSIONS.
   
   Be sure to edit the file with your license key, analytics code, and so forth. Several areas are intentionally left blank for you to fill in
   
   It is also a good idea to limit usernames to alpha numeric chars only. You can place the following regex into the vB options:
   
   Code:

   ^[a-zA-Z0-9\s]+$
   

   This means only letters, numbers, and space characters are allowed. By dis-allowing special chars, you can use /[username] in url's without the worry of duplicates, or having to add in the ID to the url.
2. Re-write everything you want indexed, and DON'T use extentions in your re-write(This includes .html). I have added some re-writes to the settings file already for common areas. If you have more/extra, be sure to set up CRR's for them if you want them to be indexed pages.
3. Use a robots.txt file. If you follow the above rule, your file is simple. Block all .php scripts. To fool would be-hackers, block all other web extentions too (asp, cfm, etc). ( As in #2 above, if you are not fully re-written, you will need to do this line by line per script which is why i suggest it). Further, NEVER include any private areas, such as /admincp, as this basically tells would-be hackers where your admin directory is located. See attached.
4. In the sitemap, think lean. All you want is your main info. No bloat. The idea is not to index every little bit.. it's to index your important info. If you have more than 4 or 5 files per million posts, you're doing it wrong. I can't tell you how many times i've seen sub-million post forums with 70-odd sitemap files. Doing that is entirely counter productive. I recommend the following settings:
   
5. Incorporate Heading tags into your template. This is a farily simple process. I do mine in the navbar, as it's a global template. I use something like this:
   
   Code:

   <div id="pageheading">    
       <if condition="$show['forumdesc']">
           <h1 class="descr">$navbits[lastelement]</h1>          
       <else />
           <if condition="(THIS_SCRIPT == 'tags')">
               <h1 class="descr">SiteName Thread Tags</h1>
           <else />
               <if condition="(THIS_SCRIPT == 'blog') OR (THIS_SCRIPT == 'blog_post') OR (THIS_SCRIPT == 'blog_search') OR (THIS_SCRIPT == 'blog_ucp')">
                   <h1 class="descr">SiteName Blogs</h1>
               <else />
                   <if condition="(THIS_SCRIPT == 'album')">
                       <h1 class="descr">SiteName Photo Albums</h1>
                   <else />
                       <h1 class="descr">SiteName Forums</h1>
                   </if>
               </if>
           </if>
       </if>
   </div>
   

   Obviously, replace SiteName with your sitename. There are other areas you may wish to add this to as well. The conditionals can get pretty big, so keep them in check. Another option is to use vbseo's Relevant Replacements to achieve something similar.
6. Linkbacks - Leave 99.99999% moderated. Most of the time, you don't want to approve them. Keep it for your own knowledge of who's linking in to you and where at a glance.
7. choose www or non-www version of your site. I prefer non-www.
   [How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects
8. Disable the archive.
   Why the vBulletin archive is useless and counterproductive
   [How To] Completely Turn Off the vBulletin Archive
9. Create a custom 404 page
   Create a Custom vBulletin "404 Page Not Found" Page, and direct vBSEO to use it.
   
   If you are interested in logging your 404s, i have created a mod to do so:
   Advanced 404 Tracking Mod/Add-on
   
   With this information, you can possibly set up custom re-directs to popular content to it's new or replacement source. Don't lose visitors (or bots!)
10. Avoid generic welcome headers. Come up with your own 'call to action' that incorporates a few keywords. No one cares about 'reading the faq' anyway. Keep it lean, keep it on topic, get the registration conversion.
11. Avoid 'portals'. I am not a fan of a 'homepage for the sake of having a homepage'. If you don't have anything that's not IN the forums to put on the homepage, your forumhome should be your homepage in root.
12. Avoid subdomains unless you have a good reason to use one. If your forums are the same topic, and/or 'support' the rest of your site, it should be in the same subdomain (usually, www). The same applies for add-ons. I see a lot of people want to do memebername.sitename.com for profiles and blogs.sitename.com for their blog areas. The only time I would suggest using a subdomain is:
    1. when you need to point forums.site.com to a different IP/server and have no other choice (rare)
    2. When the forums (or blog or memebrs) have NOTHING to do with the rest of your site
13. Validate your site's HTML: The W3C Markup Validation Service
14. Validate your site's CSS: The W3C CSS Validation Service
15. Avoid 'cool' mods/addons from .org, etc. Many of these are great, but a vast majority can be detrimental to your SEO. Most mods are not coded well. Not to cut on the community, but jsut because it 'works' doesn't mean it's the best way to do something. A lot of mods have html problems, invalid javascript, and anti-productive SEO elements. Be very selective in your add on products.
16. Moderate your forums heavily. Fix typos in thread names, and replace "HELP ME!!!" with "Problem with XYZ" for natural keyword ability in the title.
17. Be Concise. A lot of forums are spread to thin due to trying to cover everything. Stick to your roots. A global heading should hold several sub heading forums. If you run a site about gaming, and have an offtopic section that has subforums for tv, movies, music, etc, etc, you're wasting space. Keep one off topic forum at most. If you find you have 20 threads a day about movies, you are in the perfect situation to start a spin-off forum of that topic. Set up a re-direct forum to your new forum, and you'll instantly be on your way to successful forum #2
18. run through joe's list. Some are re-covered here as well, but he has a couple more suggestions that I don't touch on.
    Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First

I think that's it for now. I'll reseve the next couple spots to add to in the future.


Since people keep messing up, i'll make this as big as i possibly can:

DO NOT USE MY ROBOTS FILE IF YOU AREN'T USING MY SETTINGS FILE. And Vice versa. THEY ARE DESIGNED TO WORK AS A PAIR. Running one or the other can result in NEGATIVE effects.

Part 2 of my ultimate guide.

Consider this a FAQ reference of commonly asked for items of help. I find myself searching daily for the same things over and over again to find the link with the answer, so why not compile it all here?


VBSEO plugin
formats, extras, config, etc

rewrite profiles - VBSEO Wiki

Custom Rewrite Rules for FAQ and Blogs - VBSEO Wiki

forum files from /<forum-threads> to /forums/<forum-threads>


Troubleshooting

Internet explorer cannont open the internet site [thread] Operation Aborted

Users getting logged out

Can't delete an album because of vBSEO ?

Fatal error: Memory size exhausted

100% CPU usage with vBSEO

Two Groups same page



SiteMap plugin
formats, extras, config, etc

http://www.vbseo.com/f2/delete-se-bo...ity-log-26415/

Include old urls - yes or no?

fast deletion of download log

Easy to follow guide for implementing extra-urls.txt?

Sorting of Sitemap Downloads Log



Troubleshooting

Thousands of 404 Not Found with Google Web Crawl

Warnings: URLs not followed

ever since i move server - site map dont get downalod

Unsupported Sitemap format - Google Error

Sitemap-cronjob-error - "MySQL-server has gone away"





General SEO related questions (non vbseo specific)

Giving bots there own usergroup?

For SEO purpose, do you using or remove print version?

Is it possible to do a seamless move of servers?














more will be added on a daily basis as i find myself searching for common post questions

mods, etc, feel free to add a link.

First one to say very nice post.. most of the topics which are in mind you have bundled them all together.

Will subscribe this post now

Do you have an explanation for "non-hierarchic, folder-style urls." ? I've never read anywhere that it matters between that and extensions.

Great guide Brian!

btw, the link in your sig is broken

Hey brian, great guide but I was wondering because if in your robots.txt you have disallow rule for all .HTML files and .PHP files, are my topics going to get indexed... at all?

For example I have this page:

http://www.mafia-mp.com/forums/privacy-policy.html

Rewritten from privacy.php, does it mean privacy-policy.html is NOT going to get indexed?

Thanks!

Read the rest of Brian's tips! (Specifically Item #2)

Originally Posted by briansol

non-hierachic allows you to move topics/threads from forum to forum without altering it's url/causing 301's.

non-extension allows you to always have 1 source for 1 resource. php or html may be dead in 4 years... who knows. Look back 4 years at all the cgi-bin/script.pl files that were everywhere. It's dead today.

Further, it is the W3 suggested way of organizing your site.
Hypertext Style: Cool URIs don't change.

meh, there's no going back for me now. I'm happy with my google standings.

Ah, well. I guess it is kind of too late now that I have over 9000 URLs in Google of which are 8000 rewritten URLs.

Is there any way to add a 301 redirect?