Working?

I suppose I would like to ask a simple question and that is how are we to tell if this is even working at all?

How do we know if we have optimized settings or not?

I mean, how do we tell if we're doing something wrong or not?

Thanks for a response.

Patrick,

Monitor your site statistics. You should see improvement. Best overall indicator of success is growing levels of web traffic.

If you installed our default settings, and the URLs are all rewritten correctly, then your installation has been a success.

Thanks Joe, I feel relieved that the initial installation has the correct choices set up for optimization. I mean it is seO lol.

Alright then how do I keep track of my sites stats?

I notice others do it in there analysis and reports, how do they do that?

Simply go to the search engines and type:

site: legionofangels.net

and that returns the number of indexed pages?

Nope, that doesn't work.

It's this:

site:Legion of Angels

I needed the www

So basically I'm for statistical purposes I'm looking for the number of indexed pages correct?

Are you running Google Analytics or another stats package?

The best way to see results is to notice:

a) Higher unique search visitors
b) Higher numbers of different keywords sending you traffic

You can also search google for:

site: legionofangels.net, or better
site: legionofangels.net vbseo

FYI - This will *only* provide you with a very rough *estimate* of indexed pages. This count is not reliable, but can be used to determine indexing trends only.

Always rely on your growing hits for determination of ultimate success with vBSEO.

I am using Google Analytics, and I notice no higher impact. The actual website gets the same number of hits it has in the past few months.

The actual forum gets pretty much the same number of hits as well during the past few months. I won't deny variation, but he variation is between 10 and 20 guests, if you viewed the chart you'd see little to no difference.

We've currently had our SEO running since mid-August. The 2 days where our site spiked in traffic was when we released an art piece that got viewed by tons of people, therefore leading traffic to us because of that.

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In closing I truly hope that I need to include the "www" in the Site: search for google or yahoo. Because if not my stats are:

Google: Site 288 Forum 194 < (kinda low for 3 months later, going on 4)

Yahoo: Site 1230

You should definitely be using either www. or non www. version only.

The spike you saw so far was only due to your promotion. That seems quite certain.

Stick with it. Keep developing content and building linkbacks. Many of the most successful forums running vBSEO waited several months before extremely large traffic jumps occurred. This is simply the nature of the ever changing SEO world.

But one this is for certain. Patience pays in SEO. Many sites will never achieve maximum success due to making too many rapid changes, and not understanding that SEO is a chess match with moves made in months, not hours or days.

5 years ago, it would take 1 month or more for the index to make any changes at all with Google! We're lucky we're not in those days anymore. It made for some very happy or disappointed SEO-ers (myself included) who had waited for 30 days to find out if what they had modified results in success, failure, or no impact.

Oh Joe, please realize I'm a staunch supporter of VBseo over free versions that would not install properly on our site.

When you say either use www or not www option, which one is better?

Is that a function within the SEO options in our admin cp? Because I would guess since there are 4 K pages in Yahoo and 5 K in Google after searching the site with www, we have it listed that way instead.

But where do we have it listed that way, in google or yahoo webmaster controls, in VBSEO, or in admin cp?? (( slightly confused, slightly with you ))

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I understand that it probably takes time for things to work, and I'm ok with that, I just don't know how long and I would like to start tracking my progress.

Secondly, we've made ZERO adjustments to the SEO options, but we have continued to constantly add content on our site. You meant specifically SEO changes right? No content changes hurt my SEO does it?

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Lastly I have been considering a URL change, but might not act on it until another 2 years have passed. How much SEO damage or "reworking" will need to be done if we switch urls?

You can specify www or non-www in your Google Webmaster controls.

You can also setup a custom 301 redirect in your .htaccess file that will always redirect from one version to the other.

We use www. here, but you can use either. The key point is consistency. It should be one or the other and not both.

If there is one thing that you might explore for further customizations, I would say check out our Relevant Replacements feature.

New Resource:
[How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects

One last question.

Is that RR basically a tag system similar to Zoints Tags?

No - Relevant Replacements are in no way similar to a tagging system.

What they do is allow you to add extra relevant text to a page, in prominent positioning, in order to change the keyword relevance for important terms such as those occurring in the title or first words of the post.

So they can:

• Allow you to repeat some keyword phrases to increase the keyword relevancy for those terms
• Move the text up higher in the page, to allow for a first text priority boost, or to get it listed above navigation code, etc.
• Allow you to add extra semantic formatting, such as bold, emphasis, or even heading level tags for extra important indication.
• Possibly allow your Google or other search engine snippets to be replaced with the relevant replacement formatted text (this varies from forum to forum and is not guaranteed)
• Further improve the Content to Code (C2C) Ratio, by adding more content.

i prefer to NOT use www.

it's deprecated.
www. is deprecated.

I agree.

Originally Posted by briansol

i prefer to NOT use www.

it's deprecated.
www. is deprecated.

Pardon my aggravation, not towards you but towards a possible change.

If we did change this how long would it take for all the URLs to be re-indexed correctly then?

no one can answer that.... but it doesn't matter. the www. will re-direct and send the 301 code to non-www.

there is also an option in the google.com/webmasters portal where you can set your specfic domain (www or not)

I think that the Google Webmaster panel will ensure a very fast update.