Tracking Norcalmotocross.com

Originally Posted by jwashburn

I have been reading http://www.vbseo.com/f84/4-months-no-improvement-11990/

I have made some changes to my robots.txt file and removed the archive link. Lets see what happens. Life is after all a giant experiment.

Hey dnt remove your archive link....it would have indexed you might loose some try traffic.try to build some back links...submit your site to free directories..loads available out there if you want to spend money then you can even think of yahoo directory they charge $299..its worth but again you got to have patience and wait for some time.any help feel free to pm me

If you're running vBSEO 3.0.0, you need to have vBSEO Sitemap 1.7.

Took a look at this forum, and I see a couple very disturbing things in regards to wanting to be indexed and ranked by google, or any other search engine for that matter.

1. Your biggest forum only shows threads in the last 3 weeks. You are never gong to be properly indexed like that.
2. Your good content, that people would most likely want to link to, is in private forums. It is your choice, but the best way to build quality links is to have quality content for people to link to.

#1 is the biggest problem though. Guests see content in the past three weeks, Search engine spiders only see content in the past 3 weeks. Forum settings need to be set to "forever", IMO. A two year old thread could be exactly what someone on google is searching for.

Originally Posted by Mike

Took a look at this forum, and I see a couple very disturbing things in regards to wanting to be indexed and ranked by google, or any other search engine for that matter.

1. Your biggest forum only shows threads in the last 3 weeks. You are never gong to be properly indexed like that.
2. Your good content, that people would most likely want to link to, is in private forums. It is your choice, but the best way to build quality links is to have quality content for people to link to.

#1 is the biggest problem though. Guests see content in the past three weeks, Search engine spiders only see content in the past 3 weeks. Forum settings need to be set to "forever", IMO. A two year old thread could be exactly what someone on google is searching for.

Could not agree more. You need guests (search engines) to be able to see anything and everything that you would want to index.

Being as I run a motocross web site myself, I can tell you that getting users to register by not allowing them to see the forums is hardly worth it. I use the hide links mod so that if their are links etc, they won't be accessible, but they will see the content and know what they are getting before signing up. You might think you are giving away the information, but it will come back 10 fold if you are known as a good forum with good information. I can't believe how many new members we get lately, and most of them state in their welcome threads that the reason they came was because of the good information, and friendly atmosphere. So don't discount the good info you have, and that it won't bring new members.

My forums was 4 years old in Dec 2006, I installed VBSeo in between Christmas and New years. So it's been 3 months, and I can tell you vBSeo has made a huge difference. My referrals from ALL sources were about 30% and direct access was by far the most at around 60%. Now, Google alone is around 60% and direct access is no longer the top method of getting hits on my site. Woo hoo!

No to mention that if I had 5 new users in one day that was awesome. Now, I'm averaging around 15.

I like your site btw, other than the pictures on your portal push it wider them my browser window, which drives me nuts but I'm goofy like that

Good luck.

Ill give it a shot and make some changes. I am not sure on how to change the what a guest sees in terms of old content.

Mike where do I make that change?

You have the forums settings to only show the posts from the last three weeks, go into your vB control panel and then Forums, then change each forum to show from the beginning instead of last 3 weeks.

You are going to have to this for each forum. It's a pain in the ass but worth it. I made exactly the same mistake.

So did I. I didn't realize until checking my site:www.domain.com that the information didn't go back very far which meant I was losing a lot of information from the past. I changed it and WOW, serps were going nuts after that.

I just made the changes suggested. However I am starting to see some results from Google before I made this change. I will update again in a month or so

You will definitely see changes, you have just given all the search engines more valuable content to digest.

Agree'd, but you'll have to give it some time. They don't work over night.

Sorry for some reason that one went twice.