Best Possible Way to run vbadvanced on my forums

[Martyn]

i still want to keep my forums a forum, but have a main page similar to vbseo with important news and information..... i know vbseos front page is heavily modified and they dont ever share it, but it would bt nice to get some hints/tips or even a some suggested sections like they currently have that will improve my site that little bit more!

thanks for reading

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Hello Martyn ,

Our homepage isn't actually heavily modified We are using default cmps modules and we just added some important content.

When you prepare your homepage make sure you listed imported articles over there that will grab both users and bots attention.

[Martyn]

But from a SEO point of view, will it drain pagerank? and crawling? even briansol went from portal, to just forum, is this a bad idea? or done correctly can it be beneficial?? is so, how thats why im here asking.... :P need as many opinions/suggestions as possible...

[Martyn]

so no one actually knows?....

[Joe Ward]

Hey Martyn - The key thing with the homepage is that you should make sure you have some interesting content for your users before going ahead with it. Avoid those maintenance message vBA pages that I see far too often. Very bad choice for a homepage as you can imagine.

As far a link value (or PageRank) is concerned, having a well structured homepage can actually be an improvement. Choose the links wisely. I don't consider "recent threads" to be the best candidates. Instead, get some coverage for your most niche-relevant sub-forums, most popular threads, etc., to help drive the link value through to them.

Keep links for low value content like the FAQ page (if you keep it at all), chit chat or maintenance notice forums, etc, off the page. Provide a keyword rich intro (or some content of text) that includes anchor links on carefully selected niche keywords into your sub-forums or threads, etc.