Would changing forum names and switching postbit template affect my SEO?

[myandy99]

Hi experts,

I am reorganizing my forum and will change names of some existing forums.

Also I am thinking to switch from the default postbit template to the legacy postbit template with user info showing on the left side instead of on top.

How much would above changes affect my SEO?

I am on vB 3.6.8 with vBSEO 3.3.0

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Hello Andy ,

If you are having forum names within your url rewrites , renaming your forums will have a negative effect. You need to correctly 301 redirect each of your renamed forum to new name.

Changing postbit template shouldn't have any effect as on both template formats the user info is listed before post content.

[myandy99]

Thanks. I have done some 301 redirect based on instruction on this site but at this level it seems beyond my skill set.

Can you please give an example?

For example, change from
xxx.com/forums/america-abroad
to
xxx.com/forums/americans-abroad

Above represents an example of changing forum name from America Abroad to Americans Abroad

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Hello Andy ,

You can use the following format within your Custom Redirect Rules section in vBSEO Cp

'^america-abroad/(.+)$' => 'americans-abroad/$1'
'^america-abroad/$' => 'americans-abroad/'

[myandy99]

Great. That worked perfectly. Thanks!

[Mert Gökçeimam]

You're welcome