vBSEO strikes again

Late yesterday afternoon, a member submitted a post about a commemoration taking place in Falkirk, Scotland - Falkirk Cairn.

I hit Google, trying to find a suitable image of this cairn. I wasn't paying much attention to the URL's, I was just clicking the links and when I clicked the 5th link, I was looking at the above post.

Less than 20 hours after submission, this post was number 5 of 68,500 results. Now that impressed me.

Thank you, vBSEO!

it's #4 now, congrats Mike
I've been pretty happy with the 24 hr turnaround for threads on our forums as well.

I deserve a good slap for not installing vBSEO sooner.

That is nice.

Sometimes I see my forum threads after 30-60 minutes in Google! as the 1-5 result.

VBSEO is really doing well.

Originally Posted by Loco

it's #4 now, congrats Mike

At #3 now.

And _THIS_ thread is at #6. wow!

Originally Posted by Mike54

I deserve a good slap for not installing vBSEO sooner.

While this is a command feeling among new vBSEO users, we cannot encourage slapping.

That's good to know!

Oddly enough, the thread with that keyword has dropped from sight.

I've been watching this for a couple of days now. A keyword will explode up near the top of page 1 and the next day it is gone. Just yesterday, I had a rather unusual keyword that was #1 of 139 results. Today, there are 119 results showing and I'm not in there at all.

That's an example of the "freshness" algo. Basically, theory is a new resource gets pushed up to a rankable, traffic bearing position. Then it's click through rate can be measured to determine if the new resource is worthy of that ranking, or should fall back deeper into the SERPs.

Don't let that bother you. It's a great sign if they are getting ranked even temporarily. True success will depend on your long tail growth in the long run:
Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

Thanks for that explanation, Joe. I was unaware of that theory.

I have been happily watching long tail growth, so life is good.

Check out:
Google Freshbot

i equate it to finding your lost remote, you put it someone prominent, then you lose it again....lol

good job though Mike, im gaining rankings on some nice keywords with vbseo too

Thanks Chase. It's been interesting to watch the results get better and better. And I'm learning more, along the way.

I'm thinking we're close to another 30-day update for you?

yeah i think the 16th or 14th

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

It's a great sign if they are getting ranked even temporarily.

Joe, I'll see them bob up, near the top of page one, and then disappear. Then within 5-7 days, they come back at number one on page one.

Thanks for the speedy service on my recent, third license purchase.

It's time for me to report on one of my sites. The T-Bucket site shown in my signature was one I opened in October 2006, more as a special interest lark than anything else. I figured I would be lucky to ever reach 250 members for this site, but I went ahead with the project.

In January 2007, it was clear we would never reach 25 members, let alone 250. I started looking for another topic to work with, figuring I would close the T-Bucket site down. But the site started finally growing. I installed Zoints SEO and started trying to optimize the site, as best I could. In May of this year, it seemed as if we had hit a plateau and the site just wouldn't get any better.

In May, these were some of the numbers I was looking at -

Search Engine Traffic - 28.75%
Long Tail - 7.03 hits per keyword
Google pages - 2,790
Yahoo pages - 4,656
MSN pages - 1
Members - 439

Now remember, I didn't think I would ever see as many as 250 members, so I didn't think the site was a failure. But I was disappointed in how all the numbers had just gone stagnant.

On 17 May, I installed vBSEO. And today's numbers are much better.

Search Engine Traffic - 34.24%, which is an increase of 5.49%
Long Tail - 2.70 hits per keyword, which is clearly more long tail dominated. My keyword count is up 435%, in just 100 days.
Google pages - 10,200, which is an increase of 7,410
Yahoo pages - 5,249, which is an increase of 593
MSN pages - 109, which is an increase of 108
Members - 697, which is an increase of 258. This 100 day increase alone is more members than I had ever hoped to have, total.

I had worked hard to optimize this site on my own and I now figure vBSEO is the best partner I could have hired. To those people wondering if vBSEO is worth the expense, my answer is an emphatic 'YES'. Maybe you're thinking a freebie SEO script is all you need, because I once felt the same way. But are you really willing to settle for your site being less than it can be?

Yes, vBSEO is easy to install. Yes, it is easy to change over to vBSEO from Zoints SEO. Yes, you will be able to get excellent support from the vBSEO staff. Yes, vBSEO is easy to upgrade.

No, my site isn't the most visited vBulletin site on the Internet. No, I'm not buying cars with my site's revenue. No, I'm not able to retire on my new-found income. But look at this - in just 100 days time, my site revenue figures (new sponsors and donations) have improved to the point of paying for not just one, but three vBSEO licenses, paying for my VPS hosting and allowing me to put a little cash in my pocket to boot.

Special thanks to Joe Ward, for making me change the way I was thinking about my sites and SEO. And thanks to Oleg Ignatiuk for helping me through those times when I wasn't thinking at all.