Am I doing all correct so far? please help me improve

Hello everyone
Please could I get some feedback for my forum
Bonus Paradise Gambling Forum

The Forum went live mid May 2008
Vbseo Was installed on June 12 2008

Within the last months I did try to make changes to my forum
most what I have read here

replace showpost with permalink
top stats not visible for guests
I did put the guest welcome message off
In Sitemap it adds only Showthread and Forumdisplay
I blocked archive via robots.txt too

Well now I do compare my forum since the start with another gambling forum.
The other forum went live around 20 Feb 2008
and has not VBseo, suddenly over night they have now in google
over 35.000 links

I have 1980 links in google
So now I wonder, why do I have VBSeo
Am I doing something wrong?

they are 3 month longer live than I
does 3 month make such a diffrence?
they have many links in google show profile
they have at every link also their forum title still.

I dont allow to index members anymore
due I got errors about double title tags in my webmaster tools account.

I hope I can get some tips and comments from you

Regards
Marina

There are many factors that could cause one site to index faster than another, such as building high quality inbound links which would help accelerate indexing.

However, the # of threads indexed is going to relate to the actual content page count. Since you have disabled many of the low value pages, you have effectively reduced the total that you will see.

On top of that, keep in mind that the site: query is inaccurate and should be used for trending only.

The key metric really boils down to your traffic. Traffic *should* go up as indexed pages increase, but this is not always the case. A smaller site with high value content with lots of inbound linking may (all else being equal) out perform a larger site with lower value content and less links, etc. (as an example).

Keep in mind that your other forum launched several months earlier, giving it a head start on content building & link building. But also keep in mind that if that site is *not* running vBSEO, then it's going to contain a large number of low value (noise) content in that index count. Remember, the index count tells you Google found that page... not that it plans to send any traffic to it.

How is your traffic doing on both sites?

Many thanks for your reply Jo
You just have no idea how much I appreciate and how happy I am to be a member here.

About how is my traffic

please check my attached screenshots from googe analytics

I find the traffic stucks a bit

Would you recommend that I include the showpost in my sitemap maybe?

If you can afford the time I can send you the link of the other forum which I am comparing with , via PM
just dont wanna post it here, dont like they think I am jeaullous
the biz I am in is not the easiest one, lol

So far I feel I dont see much more traffic since I have VbSeo
What am i doing wrong?

Should I include showpost pages again in sitemap?

Have you been doing any 3rd party link building with any success?
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website : SEO Book.com

Do you create new content actively, such as launching discussions on high interest topics, or creating articles, etc? You should analyze the keywords that are delivering you traffic now, find some variations of those keywords, and then start creating threads that focus specifically on those. That's an easy way to build small new traffic sources that could help you take off.

How is your long tail? How has it progressed since launch?
Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

Many thanks for the tips
I will look to build more links
sure need to learn much more in such things

And I go read now about the long tail thing, lol

Yes we trying to add daily fresh topics, but most are promotions for the sites we promoting,
yeah we should have much more interesting discussions.
Will work on all
thanks a lot

Oh Joe,
Is my desgin ok you think?

and please last question,
should i try what happens if I include my showpost pages again in the sitemap?

I like your template although I might replace the surrounding background with a lighter one in a nicely contrasting, light casino color.

I would not recommend adding showpost. I don't think it will be helpful.

I think you should try getting some more specific keywords into your forum categories. For instance, you could get coverage on most of the top poker players there (Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, The Grinder, etc), the various poker TV shows like "Poker After Dark", movies about poker ("Lucky You", "Rounders"), Poker sites (Pokerstars, Full Tilt, etc), poker books (Barry Greenstein), poker strategies, etc.

What you have now covers generic topics. You could tighten it up a bit, and get much better keyword coverage:
Strategy for Optimizing Keywords in Your vBulletin Forum Title and Descriptions

thank a lot for these tips,
wow you are great!

which background do you mean with the "surrounding background" ?
the image I have?

It looks like dark tree patterns or something. The true background of the page, from the edge of the browser window up to the edge of the content area.

oh yeah its this image


It does look very nice if you login, lol
but yeah, you are right
as surrounding background it dont has a nice effect

I will find an idea.

1st I am going to read and learn more about keywords and link building and try to improve.

Once again, many thanks for the great tips Joe

I hope I can show you in a few months better traffic stats from my site.

Kind regards
Marina

You're doing good, but I think a few tweaks and some fresh linking building will help you make it to the next traffic jump.

hello Joe,
I am back, lol

Please I would need someone check on my new robots.txt
do you think I can go with that one?

This disallow might override the showthread.php allow you have farther up:

Disallow: /forum/*.php

oh , thanks
I will better then disallow all again like
disallow reply.php and so on
thanks Joe

hello Joe
I am back, lol
glad to tell the traffic is raising

Now I would need some advice again please

I made an international area
So far I have now .....
Online Gokken - Promoties - NL
Online Spielen - Casino, Poker, Bingo - DE

Now I think I should maybe modify the metas for this forums and subforums?

Can you tell me how i do that and what would be best to do,
should i maybe also include then this meta for the D.C language = DE and NL

I have seen also that there is now a mix up
means english and german or dutch mixed in this part above the forum


I would appreciate if you could help me here what is best to do

Many thanks
Marina