my progress report

Neither are a lot of other vBulletin options, that doesn't mean people don't use them.... It's there, so it's an option, that must have been put there for a reason.

And, I know I never strongly pushed the option, because I don't use vBulletin's archive at all...

Originally Posted by ConqSoft

Neither are a lot of other vBulletin options, that doesn't mean people don't use them.... It's there, so it's an option, that must have been put there for a reason.

The fact remains that he was told to trust them on turning the archive off and he did. It resulted in him going from 60 dollars a day to day dollars a month. So I would hope you could understand his frustration

Sure it is up to him to make the decision but he didn't write the software and he was being told by a "SEO Expert" that is what he needed to do.

Myself, I still use it but the archive is functional like default. I am giving it all this year at its current settings and seeing how I feel about it Jan 1 2007

But like I said, I know several sites that have went WAY down on Adense Revenue who DO NOT use vBSEO, so there's a good chance his decline wasn't caused by vBSEO at all....

That is, unless he was tracking his income using Adsense channels and can show that he was getting most of his revenue from the actual Archive Thread pages (as opposed to the Archive Index pages; ie, thread lists). And if it were me and I had that information, I certainly wouldn't have changed the Archive to redirect to the actual threads.

And, still, there's really no reason to stop using vBSEO at this point.... Just turn off the Archive Redirecting....

Over the years I have clicked lots of Google adds, now one site I go to daily has had the same ads for months. My point is IMO Ad Sense is stale. We use ad sense at work and spend around 35 per day I have affiliate site options tuned off. As I do not trust the relevance of the on page content and our ads.

I should also add that our spend on them have dropped by around 100% in two years yet we are still number 1-3 on all our ads.

On a footnote I hate the way some sites are over using the ads and I suspect that this may have adverse affect on sites that are using ads in moderation as surfers are less inclined to click on ads.

Originally Posted by ConqSoft

And, I know I never strongly pushed the option, because I don't use vBulletin's archive at all...

Maybe not, but you are also not one of the admin here. When I initially turned it off, I immediately got a PM from the staff here with a notice that they were creating a private forum for me, and that it was extremely necessary that I turn the archive back off, and that they were going to explain further from there. Nothing after the first post was ever said in that forum. No reason for me to make that up, I think I have people here to vouch for me.

Since turning off this program completely, my ads are actually more relevent, even with the site targetting option now turned back on with adsense. Still not back up to the $60-$80/day average, but I have climbed back from $2.00 per day back up to the $30/Day range.

Site runs faster - members love that.

No more errors or complaints from peopel using the subscribed threads features - members love that.

I had no intention of saying anything further, but you seemed to want to keep this alive in here so I figured I would come back and say my peace.

I wish no ill will on the product, but I will say that for all the great support in getting going, it really seemed to disappear once problems seemed to exist.

Originally Posted by sportsoutlaw

Maybe When I initially turned it off, I immediately got a PM from the staff here with a notice that they were creating a private forum for me, and that it was extremely necessary that I turn the archive back off, and that they were going to explain further from there. Nothing after the first post was ever said in that forum. No reason for me to make that up, I think I have people here to vouch for me.

Huh? Care to explain that a bit more? I have no idea what you're talking about...



As for problems with subscribed threads, no idea what you mean there either as it all works fine for me.

And speed isn't an issue for me, but that can vary depending on the server you're on. I have a dedicated server that can handle the site fine...

Duplicate post.

Well, I will have to say that holding out and waiting for Google has paid off for me.

After installing vBSEO on my site the Jagger updates started rolling out. Things got pretty dicey there for a while and my referral traffic from Google just died.

Once Jagger was completed, things seemed to normalize a bit, but Google still was looking at all of my old URLs. Then came the BigDaddy update. BigDaddy threw me for a loop. I know it was supposed to be an architecture update, but my site (along with thousands of others by the looks of it) went ENTIRELY supplemental and stayed that way for about 3-4 weeks. The only page I had indexed was my main page.

I was following this thread quite closely during that time and came VERY close to pulling vBSEO. I was getting desperate. I wasn't sure if it was Jagger, BigDaddy, vBSEO or something else I had done that was killing me. I was actually getting more referral traffic from Yahoo and MSN than Google! And that is saying something.

Yesterday I went to look at my NetTracker reports to check on my site performance and traffic and I noticed that my Google referrals had gone through the roof. I did some checking and my site is out of the Supplementals, being indexed with the new vBSEO URLS, and scoring VERY high in the SERPs for some rather competitive keywords. In most cases I'm #2 or #3, right behind the developers/manufacturers of my relevant products.

Google is indexing hard and I'm watching my indexed pages climb. It took a while, but I believe that in the end installing vBSEO was a very beneficial thing for me.

I'm quite pleased now that I stayed the course and kept vBSEO installed during all these recent updates.

You can say that again.

Congrats.

Originally Posted by ConqSoft

You can say that again.

Congrats.

Well, I can see where Sportsoutlaw's frustration could come from. I was getting VERY frustrated as well. But everything I've learned about SEO work and Google is it's ALWAYS a waiting game. Do what you can now and then sit around and wait a couple months to see what type of real impact it has.

My business model is a bit different than some. I don't look for traffic to push through to Google Adwords or other campaigns. I look for recurring traffic and visitor retention. So seeing the fruits of my labor always tends to take time.

I'm going to keep an eye on things over the next week and post back once Google has had a little more time to make sweet search engine love to my site.

Yeah, SEO is a lot like controlling the Mars Rover. Send some commands and then a LONG wait before it receives and you get feedback.

93,000 pages indexed and rising. All vBSEO.

Several more SERPS in the top 3. Woohoo!

Originally Posted by plarkin

93,000 pages indexed and rising. All vBSEO.

Several more SERPS in the top 3. Woohoo!

Congratulations! Please keep us updated on your progress

I'll go ahead an close this thread temporarily since it is intended for tracking Michael's progress. I'm hoping we'll get him back on board in the near future.

My respect goes to Michael and everyone participating in this thread,
Juan