No brand free option can hurt business

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Smack:

What is the business model for your forum? Are you using it to generate CPC ad revenue, placed banners/sponsorships, and/or to promote a product/service? Or, is it a hobby/general interest/passion? If so, what are your success goals for your forum as a non-profit?

Hi Joe,

I own vBSkinworks I do no CPC or ad banners on my site. I do, however, have an affiliate program. My sites (this is the only vb based one I own) generate quite a bit of income for me with the skin site providing the bulk. My traffic has actually increased since dropping vbseo and concentrating on quality backlinks and utilization of google analytics and adwords. I used adwords and had pretty good backlinks whilst I ran vbseo, btw.

Not to be snide, but I see the "no branding free" situation here as a strategic move on the part of Crawlablity. The backlinking alone is of tremendous benefit I would suspect.

Ok - I know your site. Great work with your skins.

So, in your case, increased traffic will relate directly to increased sales of your skin product. For you to see an ROI for vBSEO, you would require 6 additional sales to result from search engine traffic delivered due to optimizations from the combined SEO enhancements included in our solution (over the lifetime of having vBSEO installed).

Upon looking at your forum, I can make a few quick suggestions:

• Move your CSS code to an external file.
• Remove vBSkinworks from every forum/thread title. It dilutes the potency of the keywords relevant to the page. After all, anyone who searches for vbskinworks already knows about your company and you rank #1 for that term already.
• It would be nice to have dynamic meta tags on everypage.
• Acronym expansion from "skin" to "vBulletin skin" might help
• You might want to do some keyword research and create either threads or forums that include those keywords
• I'd probably get rid of the "on vBSkinWorks.com - top selection and great prices for vBulletin skins." text that occurs on every thread page, or move it somewhere else (put it into an image), etc. I think it can dilute your top text.
• I'd get rid of the output/compression stats at the bottom.
• AND... I'd install vBSEO.

Since vBSEO installs quickly (you can set it and forget it), I'd install vBSEO and then STILL concentrate on building quality backlinks, monitoring your analytics, and driving more *SEM/PPC* traffic via AdWords, etc!

BTW Building quality backlinks is greatly helped by our new trackback/pingbacks. Find related blog entries & if you discuss them on your forum... trackback/pingback. This will create a relevant outbound link (which is good) and may earn you a reciprical linkback from the blog (or any other vBSEO-enabled forum with pingbacks/trackbacks enabled).

smack: Where is your signature? You're missing an opportunity at building a backlink from a forum highly related to vBulletin!

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

smack: Where is your signature? You're missing an opportunity at building a backlink from a forum highly related to vBulletin!

Thanks for the tips. Some of the items you listed were done for me as part of a service I paid a member here a rather hefty fee to "improve" my vbseo install. :-\ On the css suggestion, vBulletin doesn't parse external files which screws up alot of skins that rely heavily on css, hence that setting. That is a bug that has been reported numerous time to vb to no avail.

On the signature thing...my permissions apparently don't allow it.

Sorry. I forgot about the signature permissions.

The cost of the vBSEP product was never a concern for me. Success can be measured is many ways. I also know some site owners who have very popular web sites that they cannot afford to keep running because of hosting costs. If success means having a lot of traffic then I guess some people consider themselves successful. On the other hand traffic can be both a blessing and a pain. How do you measure success?

Originally Posted by smack

I'm curious how people can justify spending more for vbseo than your vbulletin license...I just have a hard time seeing that kind of cost justification. I know many hugh sites that are very successful (some in a very short period of time) using traditional, manual means of seo.

Success with a forum is entirely dependent upon the admin's expectations. However, I think that "a higher volume of highly targetted traffic" is what likely leads to a successful outcome for all - whether it be simply expanding your viewing audience, generating more revenue from ads/products/services, or just finding others who share your interests and will join your community for discussion/date/contribution of info on your favorite topics.

Joe Ward - I can understand your situation, you run a company with a product people love to hate. It creates a circumstance where you know that you offer a great product and until someone comes out with a better mouse trap, you are set but to say that you are unaware of when the release date is just makes the company seem unprofessional an uncaring those those watching.

I think vBSEO does a great job, has an awesome product and assuming no one comes out with something better will continue to do well but simple research shows that your company isn't that big so to say that you are unaware of a release date is not professional to the customers who do respect and value your companies feedback. Fact is, you probably don't have a board of 10 people nor an advisory group of 20 people to sign off on such items so chances are you in fact do know your companies plans. I as a loyal customer would prefer, we will make this release on X date or not at all becuase that is honest.

I can completely understand why vBSEO doesn't want to roll out a branding free option. In fact, I see it on every page. Over 16 Million pages referenced, that's one hell of a selling point. I myself hate the idea that I can not even buy an option of a branding free option but the fact is that you guys have great support, good people and an awesome product so I have to live with it. My advice, for those who don't want the options presented, go elsewhere and if that doesn't work, then live with it until something changes. For vBSEO, just come out and call it for what it is, you want to keep that name out there for as long as you can and for now, the few hundred dollars you may charge on branding free options isn't worth it to offset the exposure you receive.

I don't want to make waves, I have a lot of respect for you guys but I really think that the issue should be addressed for what it is. I personally would feel better if a company which I respect showed me that same respect in return and gave an honest answer and if for what ever reason they didn't have that answer, to find out from someone who did.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

The team has achieved consensus that we will be releasing a branding removal option. The date of release has yet to be determined. That is all the information that is available at this time. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Hi precharge,

The team has not made a final decision on the release date yet.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Hi precharge,

The team has not made a final decision on the release date yet.

Some friendly advice from someone who has been in business and the ecommerce sector for 15 years, you have a great design and a good size forum but people come here for the product.

You are a single product company which is one of the worse positions to be in when it comes to longevity. I would suggest that if you want to keep you loyal fans, that if you don't have an answer to that pressing question that you find one. It will be a matter of time before someone comes out with a better product and I can assure you the lack of an answer on that single question while may not break the company, would definitely hit the company where it hurts.

Even if the answer is we've decided not to release it, that's an answer but I would have a lot more respect for a company that would come out with that rather than what appears to be stringing people along.

I've seen a lot of companies go under in my time because they underestimated a customers ability to go elsewhere, I'd hate to see that happen with you guys.

Originally Posted by precharge

Joe Ward - I can understand your situation, you run a company with a product people love to hate. It creates a circumstance where you know that you offer a great product and until someone comes out with a better mouse trap, you are set but to say that you are unaware of when the release date is just makes the company seem unprofessional an uncaring those those watching.

I think vBSEO does a great job, has an awesome product and assuming no one comes out with something better will continue to do well but simple research shows that your company isn't that big so to say that you are unaware of a release date is not professional to the customers who do respect and value your companies feedback. Fact is, you probably don't have a board of 10 people nor an advisory group of 20 people to sign off on such items so chances are you in fact do know your companies plans. I as a loyal customer would prefer, we will make this release on X date or not at all becuase that is honest.

I can completely understand why vBSEO doesn't want to roll out a branding free option. In fact, I see it on every page. Over 16 Million pages referenced, that's one hell of a selling point. I myself hate the idea that I can not even buy an option of a branding free option but the fact is that you guys have great support, good people and an awesome product so I have to live with it. My advice, for those who don't want the options presented, go elsewhere and if that doesn't work, then live with it until something changes. For vBSEO, just come out and call it for what it is, you want to keep that name out there for as long as you can and for now, the few hundred dollars you may charge on branding free options isn't worth it to offset the exposure you receive.

I don't want to make waves, I have a lot of respect for you guys but I really think that the issue should be addressed for what it is. I personally would feel better if a company which I respect showed me that same respect in return and gave an honest answer and if for what ever reason they didn't have that answer, to find out from someone who did.

Very well put Alex.

Joe Ward doesn't have the slightest idea of when a branding free option will be made available. And he is offering his most honest response. Now I'll serve you mine: the branding removal option WILL be made available, just not yet and we WILL NOT give ETAs on this, or any other vBSEO change/feature.

Reason is that I believe we've learned the lesson: most times ETA's are either missed or delayed due to the dynamic nature of our product/industry.

Thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it. My personal promise to you and everyone else out there is that the copyright removal option WILL be made available in the near future.

I agree with precharge ...

My personal promise to you and everyone else out there is that the copyright removal option WILL be made available in the near future.

Personally I don't believe it anymore .. the word near has simply been said way too often for over a year now .. For me its not a big issue anyway, but I can understand the frustration .

OT: Juan, how often do you actually consider application for group membershifts ? I mean how long does it usually take for you to either accept or deny ?

Juan - please don't get me wrong, vbSEO is reputable, you guys offer incredible support and an amazing product. These three things put you light years ahead of the vast majority of .com's.

As you see from my account, I am new to this forum. We just launched a forum about a month ago and now have almost 5k members so my days are pretty busy with that project but when ever I see an injustice with a good company, my advisory side just has to kick in

I could care less, brand it, don't, what ever. Personally, if I were you, I wouldn't offer a branding free option. The exposure you get is worth far more than the $$$ you'd make otherwise but I am sure you know that. The problem you are encountering is you are telling users that a decision hasn't been made yet in turn, these users feel like they are being strung along while you build your Google listings on their back.

People pay me a lot of money for my advice so take this one as a freebie or don't, it's up to you but either release a specific date range or tell everyone you aren't going to do it at all. If it were me, I'd rather miss a a release date which is common and understandable verses continuing to make your valued clients feel cheated.

The interesting thing and something you know, unlike most decisions to add major feature or function, this is simply a matter of removing a line or two of html so unlike the reasoning that it's in the pipeline of features and it's not come up yet, this is one area where the more savvy person will take offense. If anything, those are the loyal users you don't want to give up.

Again, I like you guys and I don't say that about many companies publicly, in fact, only twice in 15 years so take this as my plug, you guys are great. To me, I just hate to see a good company clearly make a bad decision when the fix is so easy. Give a date or say you weren't release it at all because you changed your mind. I guarantee you will get more customers then using this approach.

I think it's a very wise desision not to give an ETA. vBulletin itself has lurned a lesson about giving ETAs the hard way and they never do it again for releases. We have a promise about it so I don't mind the waiting and will be very happy to buy the branding free license once it's available.

True, you should not give an ETA - but "near future" is some kind of ETA and therefore people keep asking for a year now