Removing vBseo

After some thought, and reading we have come to the conclusion that we will begin preparation for the removal of vBseo from our bigboards.

There are a couple reasons for at least getting to this point

1) vb4 - friendly urls.

2) with all of our bigboards, none (yes none) seemed to benefit from the product according to Google Analytics. Even with vBSeo staff assistance on one bigboard it just never took off.

3) support. never really cared about giving root to staff members here to fix bugs, though that is an old gripe.

4) moving forward with updates and migrations is a lot easier without third party additions. Have to be honest, I really like the vbulletin albums over that photopost stuff.

5) when comparing successful vBseo forums and feedback from vBseo staff, there seems to be a disconnect between do as I say, not as I do. That just doesn't feel right.


I am sure I could go on as to why to remove 25 licenses in total.

Question is

1) how do i determine which licenses can be sold?

2) does support on current licenses include removal support from vBseo? ie: rewriting rules

1) licenses that are not expired can be sold/transfered as per vBSEO™ - End User License Agreement (EULA)
2) as long as the license is active, support is granted. we have sample instructions created here: How to uninstall vBSEO - vBulletin SEO Forums

Thanks Brian for the fantastic support!!!
I have listed them forsale here
Hopefully someone who is not upgrading to vb4 will find these licenses cheap and useful.

Question, is there a problem with me renewing my licenses and selling them for $1 above renewal cost? If there is an issue with it and its in fine print somewhere, I just won't renew your product.

Thanks Brian!

Seems that my posting to sell my vBseo licenses lasted a whole 4 minutes.

Guessing dissatisfied customers can't sell their licenses here?

tsk tsk

*since my customer status doesn't allow me to sell my licenses here, you can reach me on http://www.theadminzone.com , same username.

Licenses are not allowed to be re-sold on vbseo.com, which is why your thread was pulled.. You can place them on other forums like TAZ, DP, SP, etc. This has always been the case.

You may sell for any price you wish, again, as long as it is active, as you will need to create a ticket (which requires an active license) to perform the transfer.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

Licenses are not allowed to be re-sold on vbseo.com, which is why your thread was pulled..

Brian, how was I supposed to know that?
This just seems to be one of those 1 sided rules for vBseo.com, like not mentioning your personal site (notice I didn't mention it in fear of you deleting my posts again).

Not being able to sell my vBseo licenses upon removing them from my sites on vBseo.com, lol.... ok... And while Michael B. has been kind enough to link me to some unknown members sticky about selling forums, I am not sure how that relates to me. The person is not a staff member to begin with.... more trickery?

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

You can place them on other forums like TAZ, DP, SP, etc. This has always been the case.

Again, is there a rule set, policy, TOS or something that states as a license holder I cannot sell my licenses here on vBseo? I mean, if there is, why hasn't anyone including you directed us to it?

It just seems off that because we are willing to liquidate our licenses you don't want them sold here, as if it's going to be or have some big negative impact.

Heck, if I was happy and could sell them I would have less to say You personally are just making this a painful transition

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

You may sell for any price you wish, again, as long as it is active, as you will need to create a ticket (which requires an active license) to perform the transfer.

Sounds good Brian, already posted 3 of them up for sale and removed 1 vBseo setup from a site.

And for the record, don't go around telling people we've known each other well before you became a staff member. Its unfair you get to reference personal information yet when I mention your website you delete my posts.

Hell, you threatened to 'expose' my company.. this is what you do with customers private information? Please don't take liberties pretending we are friends when it benefits you, and when there is a response punish me playing the mod card.

You ARE the reason this has gotten so far. I rather lose the traffic and a couple K a month than to be moderated to death by an over zealous moderator who makes up the rules as he goes, let alone tells people how to SEO their site when his own personal site isn't setup like that, yet, you are the formal spokesperson for the site.. such BS and a joke man.

Side note, you have to laugh at how much of a spiral this has turned into. You get to blame me, and I get to say 25 licenses paid for. Guess in this case, customer is wrong.

Originally Posted by NICEGUY77

This just seems to be one of those 1 sided rules for vBseo.com

Many rules have "emerged" over the years of managing the vBSEO community. Most staff members have been with us for years and know them from *experience* more than anything else (this is not the first time someone has tried to sell a vBSEO license via the marketplace).

That said, we should definitely do a better job at documenting such rules in ways that make them more easy to reference, minimizing confusion in cases like this. This will definitely improve moving forward.

Originally Posted by NICEGUY77

After some thought, and reading we have come to the conclusion that we will begin preparation for the removal of vBseo from our bigboards.

The stats posted here clearly display a significant drop (-33%) in unique visitors after removing vBSEO.

However, a deeper analysis is required. I've posted a response to the thread you reference here:
Removed VBSEO - Feel Confident About The Decision

Hello Anthony, I've been following this thread with interest. I must say it's definitely a courageous move, and an interesting test-case to follow.

I couldn't help but noticing your latest traffic stats graph:


A quick glance shows what I would consider a significant drop in unique visitors, from 17556 to 11773 (skipping Sept since it was the transition month).

As you have noted, you were expecting a hit (we all do on a global URL update), and it appears you are doing better, with 12,984 uniques on Nov.

Originally Posted by anthonyparsons

the overall hit of actual unique traffic is now marginal after two months, where it is basically 13k after only two months.

The average uniques for the full 8 months that vBSEO was installed, from Jan to Aug (again, skipping september as it's the transition month) is 16809, from the current 13K, is 33% less traffic, which I wouldn't call marginal. But even that number could be off since we are *not using the right metric*.

Since unfortunately we are dealing with a dynamic environment affected by many variables (including seasonal traffic changes, referrals from other sources, events, etc.), the real metric we should be looking at here is the *organic referrals*, which as nforums suggests above, can be extracted from google analytics (Traffic Sources > Search Engines). THAT is the metric that vBSEO impacts directly, and consequently the most revealing (and useful) for this test case.

I'd be interested in seeing a comparison of SE referrals for date ranges [Aug 1 - Sept 1] (last month fully vBSEO'ed) vs. [Oct 1 - Nov 1] (first month fully non-vBSEO'ed) or [Nov 1 - Dec 1] (second month fully non-vBSEO'ed) - note that I've skipped Sept since it was the month you removed vBSEO.

GA has an excellent tool to make these comparisons:
Traffic Source > Search Engines > Date Range (tick compare to past) - Highlight latest range in blue and earlier range in green.


Make sure you click "Show: Non-Paid" if you are running adsense campaigns, etc. For vBSEO the resulting graphic looks like this:


And possibly the most revealing representation of what's going on will be given by the actual percentage differences listed in the table below the graphic:

Perhaps some support on my next uninstall. This is from a bigboard so I want to atleast rewrite what is indexed.

Sections are written as:
http://www.123.com/f196/

Posts
http://www.123.com/t2823426/

User Profile
http://www.123.com/members/jimbob/

Hello Rick, I'm referring this thread to Oleg so that he can provide the requested revert rules. He should be replying before the AM (EST).

Originally Posted by Juan Muriente

Hello Rick, I'm referring this thread to Oleg so that he can provide the requested revert rules. He should be replying before the AM (EST).

Thanks Juan!

Hello,

you can use this .htaccess file:

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)/ http://www.123.com/forumdisplay.php?f=$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)/ http://www.123.com/showthread.php?t=$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^members/(.+)/ http://www.123.com/member.php?username=$1 [L,R=301]

Since there is no user ID in your member profile URL format, it would work for some usernames only.

Oleg, that worked perfect. Removed vBseo from one bigboard this morning and the google links are being rewritten perfect.

Another thing I noticed which I hadn't before. But if you write the word vBseo on my forum it alt tags it and underlines it for you. Didn't know it did that, is there a way to disable that feature?

Anyhow, I think you may want to sticky this thread, I have a few more big boards to remove your product from and the rewrites will likely be helpful to others.

Next one:
http://www.board2.net/online/message-board-news/

Thread:
http://www.board2.net/online/1111fun-messageboard/62328-thispostrock

Member:
http://www.board2.net/online/144-vbse0.html

We already have uninstallation instructions published on vBSEO.com . You can check How to uninstall vBSEO - Blogs - vBulletin SEO Forums for instructions and modify them to your own need.

Originally Posted by Mert Gökçeimam

We already have uninstallation instructions published on vBSEO.com . You can check How to uninstall vBSEO - Blogs - vBulletin SEO Forums for instructions and modify them to your own need.

Hi Mert,

Thanks for the link! I have already been forwarded it from 2 other staffers already. It looks pretty thorough. However, I am very new to htaccess and rewriting and since I have aprox 25 licenses of vBseo to uninstall, some with very different rewriting attributes, I will certainly need some help above and beyond what that link provides.

Thanks again though!