Why the vBulletin archive is useless and counterproductive

So how does one turn off the archive? (I don't have VBSEO installed yet)

Originally Posted by moniker

So how does one turn off the archive? (I don't have VBSEO installed yet)

My personal suggestion is *not* to disable the archive once you have installed vBSEO. It works as a sitemap for your forum deeper content. And with the new vBSEO feature,

Originally Posted by Juan Muriente

we have implemented a new feature in vBSEO which inverts the archive thread order so that new threads appear first when using the archive as a sitemap.

it can certainly provide an SEO benefit.

Originally Posted by moniker

So how does one turn off the archive? (I don't have VBSEO installed yet)

Wait untill I have tested this. maybe I'm wrong and maybe a vbseo-enabled archive isn't such a bad thing (like Juan mentioned).

I let everyone know in this topic how it turns out on our forums, so far there isn't a real difference but I'm going to test this for 4 more months.

As long as they are 301 redirecting to the original threads I don't see how it can be a problem.

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

As long as they are 301 redirecting to the original threads I don't see how it can be a problem.

i think so

but i think dutchbb have better seo sense than me, i will wait and see for this

Originally Posted by Juan Muriente

... For now, we have implemented a new feature in vBSEO which inverts the archive thread order so that new threads appear first when using the archive as a sitemap.

Where is this new feature? I can't find anything about thread order in the vBSEO ACP.

Thanks,

Jim

3.0.1 (pre-release)

If you are not running it yet please open a support ticket so that a staff member can provide you download details.

Is this like a beta, or are we talkin' release candidate here? I am on such shaky ground with my rankings already that I don't want to gamble on a beta anything right now.

Thanks,

Jim

3.0.1d is pretty stable. I have been running it for sometime now.

@Jim: no problems so far (on a busy forum). Also the results have never been better since this release I must say.

good read! I have my archive setup as a sitemap

However, locking the forum down makes the links in the archive fo away. Also, I was hoping that with the forum locked down that a summary of content would appear in the archive.

Is this a wrong expectation or approach?
I'm just wondering how the search engines will be able to "see" index content if I give view permissions to registered vBulletin members only.

Has anyone thought about this? i'm basically wondering if my ranking is going to go down when I make it so only registered members can view posts and reply to posts.

If you make your forum private then of course you will have no search engine pages to be ranked good or bad. Not a good idea if you want new members referred to you by search engines.

A well informed individual told me that displaying a "summary" of that information on another page was called cloaking.

That sounds rather bad. But I don't see it that way in my case. I want to restrict access to contact information so only members see that. Every post has someone's email address in it...

I just thought of the summarys as a way to get indexed and let them know what kind of content we have...

It's also to let the search engines know what kind of content we have. Is this wrong?

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

If you make your forum private then of course you will have no search engine pages to be ranked good or bad. Not a good idea if you want new members referred to you by search engines.

Originally Posted by mykkal

A well informed individual told me that displaying a "summary" of that information on another page was called cloaking.

If guests cannot read your pages but bots can see the content , then it is called cloaking as you cannot optimize your pages for search bots.