SEO

I've had vbseo for a few months now. I've waited enough time that everyone told me to wait. I haven't had any sort of significant traffic increase. Some of my members have told me that the blog areas have some sort of lock on it and they don't even benefit from the SEO stuff. Google has only about half of our pages indexed. Any ideas? Am I doing something wrong?

can you post a site url for a review?

also, see: Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First

Free Lunch Room

And I had the person that installed it for me do all of those things.

some suggestions

• I have no idea what your site is about. it's not about food or lunch, but you don't tell me otherwise. i just see random modifications like vbux???
• your categories should be re-ordered. you have 2 categories and 7 forums of off-topic stuff before even getting to posts that matter. Things that come first in code get higher weight, as they are deemed more important.
• Free Lunch Room takes me to Free Lunch Room Why didn't you just install in root? Do you have a proper re-direct set up? Why not make a homepage?
• i've been on your site now for about 5 min, and i still don't know what it's about. I think that's a major issue to address. People come in and don't know what's going on...
• your footer with the 213123412321 users on should be turned off or only showed to members. Google recommends a maximum of 100 links max per page. you have like 700 right now due to whos online.
• turn off the archive. its useless with vbseo and is hurting you more than anything.
• validate your code:
  • [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.freelunchroom.com/board/ - W3C Markup Validator
  • W3C CSS Validator results for http://www.freelunchroom.com/board/ (CSS level 2)
  • Cynthia Says Report
• a huge design flaw... you don't have a REGISTER link anywhere. someone would have to try to login with garbage to see the vb error with the register link on it. I just went back to look again, and now i see its a huge banner. call me ad-blind, but that looks like an ad... not a 'join' invitation. I'd suggest putting a plain text link under the login box on the left nav.
• why the mis-matched icons? (see screen shot)

Attached Thumbnails

 

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My Blog | the Ultimate Guide to vBSEO

Who should I host with?

It's one of the largest work at home sites / make money online. Does vbseo need to understand what my site is about for it to work? If so, where are the settings to initiate that? Do I teach it keywords?

The structure is fine, it has to be this way. Does vbseo not work if you have off-topic stuff before the content relevant stuff?

We're going to be creating another homepage similar to what vbseo does on the root. The re-direct IS properly setup.

It's a work at home product. We don't want people that just browse around for 5 minutes. I'm not asking for help on member retention or conversion. I'm just asking about getting our pages indexed on google.

I don't know where you saw the "213123412321 users"...are you talking about the "What's going on?" portion of vbulletin?

The vbulletin guys actually said that the archive is search engine friendly and it helps. Can you be more descriptive when you say "it hurts you more" so I can pass it to the vbulletin guys?

Forwarded to the design team.

Again, don't need help with conversions or member retention...we're doing just fine with signups. Just wondering why google has indexed so little of our pages...

Same response as above.

it really has nothing to do with vbseo.... it's about google and what/how google 'reads' your site.

there's 0 keywords on the page relating to 'work at home' or 'make money online'

work at home - Google Search
make money online - Google Search

You're not there... and it's because your site has 0 mention of it.

again, it has nothing to do with vbseo.

look at #12.
Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist

vbseo won't/doesn't order your forums... because that's already built into vB.

The less offtopic clutter early on, the more likely words in your (currently lower) sections will hold weight for ranking.


they key here is that you shouldn't have to tell me this.

If i've never heard of you before (which i haven't) I should be able to see/tell what your site is about within 3-5 seconds, and google should be able to read it instantly.


yes, in the stats at the bottom. With all those users on, you're taking weight away from good links (your forums) and splitting them down 500+ ways to pass to the member profile pages.

the vbulletin guys also say their product is search engine firendly and that vbseo is not needed. Any seo expert will tell you otherwise.

dutchbb did a case study on the archive with real-world SE reults.
Why the vBulletin archive is useless and counterproductive

Took off the archive and the number of active users. I'm still not sure if you answered my question of why google has only indexed about half of our pages?