Is it effecting my forum?.. for bad? :O

[rockinaway]

Hey, i am using vBSEO at my forum AdminFuel

I am not sure i am using it properly. My results in google have reduced from 4000+ to around 2000, and it is mainly the thread tag ones that are showing: site:www.adminfuel.com - Google Search

What am i doing wrong? Am I not using the correct settings?

And just another small question - what is TrackBack?

[rockinaway]

Some modifications that I have installed, that may effect SEO:

Add keywords-description to each forum
Guest Redirections
Spider Display

[Shadab]

1. Get rid of the vbacmps homepage. Serves no purpose currently. Use forumhome as your site home.

2. "Add keywords-description to each forum" : seems to add too many keywords to your forumdisplay pages;

<meta name="keywords" content="Community,Start,Up,Management,Community Start
Up / Management, administration,advertising,articles,community,directory,
exchange,forum administrators, forum admins,forum management,forum owners,forum
seo, forum software, ipb, phpbb, portals, revenue, smf, traffic, vbulletin,
adminfuel" />

3. Turn your guest welcome text into an image. (would fit well as it's a fixed width layout). See this thread :
[HOW-TO] Make your Welcome Headers an image!

4. If possible kill the sidebar on the forum pages. The search and navigation boxes are kinda redundant. If the Poll and Recent Threads really need to stay; then you can try having a collapsable box below the navbar for it.

5. [How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy

6. "Guest Redirections" : What does it do ?

7. Are you using the sitemap addon ? If not, then try it. And use the sitemap settings described in Briansol's guide.

EDIT:

What about your search engine referrals ?

EDIT2: (after 10 mins.)

Searched for that plugin. And apparently I landed on my own Forum .
Found the link to the addon description from there : http://seovb.com/vb-addons/vbulletin...-system-deluxe

[Joe Ward]

What does the Guest redirections plugin do?

Great review Shadab.

[rockinaway]

Thanks again Shadab, I will work on all that. Getting rid of the portal etc is going to take a while. Is this effecting the performance by alot? Also the sidebar

The guest redirections plugin redirects guests to the registration page when they can't view a page.

[Joe Ward]

Actually I like your homepage. I would just look at ways to keep optimizing it. It looks very nice.

[rockinaway]

Yeah, I like having the homepage, there msut be some way to optimise it. Plenty of websites have one and theirs is fine. I will work on the other things.

EDIT

Do you suggest I remove the keywords modification then?

[Joe Ward]

Do an analysis. What links do you *not* need to have their for guests? Then remove them with conditionals.

Evaluate your widgets. Which of them adds real value for guests? If they don't either remove them completely, or remove them for guests with conditionals.

Evaluate your content. Is is high value niche specific content, or maintenance notices, etc? If none of it is related to your niche (i.e. server will be down for 2 hours type stuff) then it's not adding value for search engines.

Do you have some content that gets a huge # of reads and replies? If so, something is compelling about it. Why not get it covered on the homepage to use it as a converter for your users.

Evaluate your sub-forums. For those that have great titles strongly tied to your niche, why not cover them on your homepage as well. This brings them "closer to the surface". A small module will allow you to place links to your most important forums. Skip links to "chat" or "off topic" sub-forums as they don't add much extra value, and should not be consuming link value from your homepage.

The above is just a few guidelines that can help improve most homepages.

[rockinaway]

Thanks, but why are the thread tag results filling up sooo many pages?

[Joe Ward]

Well - your tag cloud that you have right on your homepage is likely contributing to this.

By the way, I noticed that your homepage has the same title as your forum homepage. Neither title says much about your niche. You should consider updating both so that (a) they cover a few more niche keywords via a tag line or descriptive 1-line statement, and (b) they are different from one another.

[rockinaway]

I had that before, I wasn't sure whether to have it or not. Right, here is a lsit of things I have down so far, to do:

- Remove Tag Cloud and other Content from guest view
- Rename portal and homepage with tagline
- Remove the add keywords and desc. product
- evaluate other content
- change guest message into image
- [How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy
- And use the sitemap settings described in Briansol's guide.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[rockinaway]

I have made my sitemap, but when I navigate to AdminFuel - Error it gives the 404error :S

[Joe Ward]

Please open a support ticket for help troubleshooting your sitemap installation:
vBSEO.com Helpdesk

[rockinaway]

how do I access supports tickets I have submitted? :S

[Michael Biddle]

Go to vBSEO.com Helpdesk then click your questions.