Strange Traffic Increase

Okay, so we just installed vbseo about 2.5 weeks ago and finally got it running right. Before installing vbseo we were getting around 250-320 visitors per day. Now, we are getting between 950-1100 visitors per day.

On the surface, this appears to be simply incredible, but when I started examing it, not so much.

While the traffic according to vbulletin software has been going through the roof, we have not been getting any more signups than we did before. Additionally, the traffic has increased slightly according to google analytics, but nothing close to 1000+ visitors per day. Lastly, when I click on "currently active users" that are browsing the forums, the majority have been looking at one single thread the last 5-6 days. Below is a screenshot:

http://www.leanbulk.com/forum/strange.JPG

Could somebody please tell me what exactly is going on here??

Jordan

where does vbulletin record traffic?

I don't know what you're comparing to VS analytics...

Lean Bulk Forums - Powered by vBulletin

^^^^^^^

At the bottom of the page it says "Visitors (#)" - This has been around 1,000 per day for about a week.

I am more concerned with the # of visitors going to that one thread with zero increase in search engine traffic. What is this all about?

My guess is, vBSEO may have helped that particular thread get index'ed, someone found it, and shared it on a popular forum or something of that nature. Check your analytics for referral sources (if you don't have analytics enabled, register for analytics and enable it asap as it is VERY helpful), once you found the domain, do a grep on the access.log for that domain, to see which page it comes from. My visitors are always surprised when I go back to their forums to thank the person who shared the link (and this usually bumps the thread which brings in more attention).

Do you have LinkBacks enabled? The thread should show the referring sources for that particular thread as "RefBacks'. If there are no RefBacks, (presuming you have our LinkBack system enabled), then it is more likely to be search engine traffic for that thread. As suggested, check your analytics package to find out how visitors are arriving.

The thread might have gotten picked up and ranked prominently for something outside of your niche, so your visitors are arriving, but not sticking.

What is the thread URL?

Tip:
[HOW-TO] Remove "Powered by vBulletin" from Your Page Titles

If your clicks are not converting into sign-ups, then you need to look into business aspect of your website.

I do not feel that VBSEO has anything to do with it

vBSEO certainly has something to do with the traffic. We also expect signups to increase, not only due to increased traffic, but also due to better page relevancy. That is, they find what they expect to find more often.

However Jamie is right on the mark. If you are getting more traffic and not converting to new members or posting activity at a steady or increasing rate, then you need to examine your site to see if there is anything you can do to boost this area.

SEO helps get you more traffic, but you also have to optimize all marketing aspects of your forum.

Given the content of that thread (ie; "hot chicks") versus the apparent focus of the forum in general (bodybuilding?) I wouldn't be too surprised there's not many signups coming from it.
I was going to suggest using vB 3.7's "notices" to flash a notice to Guests along the lines of, "Want to build muscles and pull babes like Hayley, Christina, register now for tips" etc for just that thread. But 3.7 can't do it for specific threads so you might need a custom mod to do it.

Originally Posted by Jeffmakepeace

Personally, I do not go for any traffic generator software because all these softwares gives your fake hits of bots and this will increase your server bandwidth. It would cost you more than your organic search engine promotion methods.

What do you mean by "fake hits of bots" Jeff?

There is certainly nothing "fake" about the search engine crawler activity that results from installing vBSEO.