can someone analayze my forum...

[24hourForum.com]

can someone analayze my forum... and tell me if its setup correctly for full experience using vbseo gold...

i lost my rank on google from 2nd place to 7th.. for 24 hour forum ... why?

[Ace Shattock]

When you talk about losing Google rankings, do you mean 'since going from default, dynamic vBulletin URLs to installing vBSEO'?

If so, this is usual, and a loss of 5 places is fairly minor. EVERY one of your URLs has changed, and a lot of duplicate URLs are now being 301 redirected to a single URL, so Google has to re-index everything.

Of course, SEO is a dynamic situation, where it is nigh-impossible to pin a cause to an effect.. Google doesn't just look at your site when determining where to place it in the SERPS, it looks at all the other sites in its index.

ie: Have you done any research on your competitors, their sites, the changes they have made? I notice that the #1 result for '24 hour forum' is a site with almost the same name as yours. Have they always been above you in the rankings?

Also, how many people out there actually search for the phrase '24 hour forum'? Is it a concept or phrase from a language other than English? I was not able to find any listings of that phrase.

[briansol]

1) fix your logo size to fixed width of the image. on my 30" monitor, it looks hideous stretched.
2) re-name your forums to NOT include 24 hour in all of them. Google probably thinks you're spamming with that amount of the same text in everything.
3) remove top stats for guests
4) stop your feeds. that 24HF reporter guy is just wasting space and giving you duplicate content.
5) move your css to files instead of inline (option in vb options -> styles)
6) fix your 341 validation errors on forum home. http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...urforum.com%2F
7) fix your 18 errors on forum display. http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...-cash-bonus%2F
and all the other pages too... a lot will overlap, due to header includes/footer, etc.
90% of your errors are HTML vs xhtml errors.
tag names need to be lowercase <meta instead of <META
and single tags need to be closed
<img ... /> instead of <img ...>
<meta ... /> instead of <meta ...>
etc
8) consider big re-organization of your topics. you have a LOT of forums. A lot of them should be one forum. ie, 24 HOURS TO LIVE To me, that's a single topic... not an entire category.

[24hourForum.com]

Hi Brian,

Thanks very much for looking into my site, i have made the changes to most of the issues.

Regarding # 6 and 7, the errors are caused by vbulletin coding, i have no idea why.. and i dont want to touch the back end, as i have no coding experience....

Regarding #5, do i need to create a file? im confused, if i chooes YES, the message below recommend to follow the steps..
If you would like to store the CSS stylesheet for each style as a file, you must ensure that you have a directory called 'vbulletin_css' inside the 'clientscript' folder, and that the web server has permission to write and delete files within that directory.

and regarding my logo, i have set with to 100% of frame size based on your monitor... how can i fix this issue? how do i make a logo that is in good quality for all screens? below is what i pasted in header

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.24hourforum.com"><img src="http://www.24hourforum.com/header.jpg" width="100%" height="141" alt="24 Hour Forum - Talk About Anything and Everything and Earn Cash" longdesc="http://www.24HourForum.com"></a></div>

Thank You so much for helping out. I made the changes and took out 24 hour ..

[Michael Biddle]

6 and 7 are caused by your style. You can edit your templates to fix those.

5, just change the option in your vbulletin options under the style option to have the css their.

For the logo, the widht=100% is what is doing that. It should be a number like 400px or how ever long it is.

[briansol]

#5 - just make sure vbulletin_css/ folder is chmod 777 so it can be written to.

#6-7 - stock vb template validates. it's changes you've done to your theme that has altered its validation state.

again, most are VERY simple, like missing closing tags, and CAPS on tag names.
see XHTML vs HTML for a primer on xhtml

[24hourForum.com]

Originally Posted by Michael Biddle

For the logo, the widht=100% is what is doing that. It should be a number like 400px or how ever long it is.

Thank You both for the reply, if i set the logo to example 400px, and someone from a monitor like 30" visits my site.. the logo does not match the size of the forum display itself... is there a way to incorporate the logo with the template style? the template is set to 100% screen size...

[briansol]

you don't want it that big anyway.

keep it natural size, and since it's centered, it will still look fine

[24hourForum.com]

Thanks Brian, my forum Result:Passed

Thank to you.

one last favour please, if you visit my forum now www.24hourforum.com , you see above 24 HOUR FORUM MONTHLY CASH BONUS category it shows the blue bar, how can i delete this? its already showing the bar below 24 HOUR FORUM MONTHLY CASH BONUS category - how can i remove the top one... ??

[24hourForum.com]

also regarding rss feeds.. i have several category rss feeds.. its not duplicate...

is rss feed bad for search engine ranking?

[24hourForum.com]

also, vbulletin downloads dont come with robot.txt

can you paste me an example i can use for myself.. search engine friendly.. i found one you posted.. should i use it? should i paste it exactly and publish it on my root?

User-agent: *
Disallow: /acp/
Disallow: /archive/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /clientscript/
Disallow: /cpsytles/
Disallow: /customavatars/
Disallow: /customprofilepics/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /install/
Disallow: /mcp/
Disallow: /signaturepics/
Disallow: /vbseo_sitemap/
Disallow: ajax.php
Disallow: album.php
Disallow: announcement.php
Disallow: attachment.php
Disallow: calendar.php
Disallow: clear.gif
Disallow: converse.php
Disallow: cron.php
Disallow: editpost.php
Disallow: faq.php
Disallow: forumdisplay.php
Disallow: global.php
Disallow: group.php
Disallow: group_inlinemod.php
Disallow: image.php
Disallow: infraction.php
Disallow: inlinemod.php
Disallow: joinrequests.php
Disallow: login.php
Disallow: member.php
Disallow: member_inlinemod.php
Disallow: memberlist.php
Disallow: misc.php
Disallow: moderation.php
Disallow: moderator.php
Disallow: newattachment.php
Disallow: newreply.php
Disallow: newthread.php
Disallow: online.php
Disallow: payment_gateway.php
Disallow: payments.php
Disallow: picture.php
Disallow: picture_inlinemod.php
Disallow: picturecomment.php
Disallow: poll.php
Disallow: posthistory.php
Disallow: postings.php
Disallow: printthread.php
Disallow: private.php
Disallow: profile.php
Disallow: register.php
Disallow: report.php
Disallow: reputation.php
Disallow: search.php
Disallow: sendmessage.php
Disallow: showgroups.php
Disallow: showpost.php
Disallow: showthread.php
Disallow: subscription.php
Disallow: tags.php
Disallow: threadrate.php
Disallow: threadtag.php
Disallow: usercp.php
Disallow: usernote.php
Disallow: vbseo.php
Disallow: vbseocpform.php
Disallow: visitormessage.php
Disallow: *.asp
Disallow: *.php
Disallow: *.aspx
Disallow: *.jsp
Disallow: *.cfm
Disallow: *.cgi
Disallow: *.pl

[Michael Biddle]

Robots.txt

[24hourForum.com]

Hi Michael,

so i should only add this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: *.asp
Disallow: *.php
Disallow: *.aspx
Disallow: *.jsp
Disallow: *.cfm
Disallow: *.cgi
Disallow: *.pl
User-agent: *
Disallow: /ajax.php
Disallow: /attachment.php
Disallow: /calendar.php
Disallow: /cron.php
Disallow: /editpost.php
Disallow: /global.php
Disallow: /image.php
Disallow: /inlinemod.php
Disallow: /joinrequests.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /member.php
Disallow: /memberlist.php
Disallow: /misc.php
Disallow: /moderator.php
Disallow: /newattachment.php
Disallow: /newreply.php
Disallow: /newthread.php
Disallow: /online.php
Disallow: /poll.php
Disallow: /postings.php
Disallow: /printthread.php
Disallow: /private.php
Disallow: /profile.php
Disallow: /register.php
Disallow: /report.php
Disallow: /reputation.php
Disallow: /search.php
Disallow: /sendmessage.php
Disallow: /showgroups.php
Disallow: /subscription.php
Disallow: /threadrate.php
Disallow: /usercp.php
Disallow: /usernote.php

[Michael Biddle]

*.php includes all of the .php files.

[24hourForum.com]

The following block of code contains some errors. Please, remove all the reported errors and check again this robots.txt file.Line 1Disallow: *.asp
No valid User-agent field defined before this Disallow.
The "*" wildchar in file names is not supported by (all) the user-agents addressed by this block of code. You should use the wildchar "*" in a block of code exclusively addressed to spiders that support the wildchar (Eg. Googlebot).
We advise you to start a file/directory name with a leading slash char (Example: /private.html).
Line 2Disallow: *.php
No valid User-agent field defined before this Disallow.
The "*" wildchar in file names is not supported by (all) the user-agents addressed by this block of code. You should use the wildchar "*" in a block of code exclusively addressed to spiders that support the wildchar (Eg. Googlebot).
We advise you to start a file/directory name with a leading slash char (Example: /private.html).
Line 3Disallow: *.aspx
No valid User-agent field defined before this Disallow.
The "*" wildchar in file names is not supported by (all) the user-agents addressed by this block of code. You should use the wildchar "*" in a block of code exclusively addressed to spiders that support the wildchar (Eg. Googlebot).
We advise you to start a file/directory name with a leading slash char (Example: /private.html).
Line 4Disallow: *.jsp
No valid User-agent field defined before this Disallow.
The "*" wildchar in file names is not supported by (all) the user-agents addressed by this block of code. You should use the wildchar "*" in a block of code exclusively addressed to spiders that support the wildchar (Eg. Googlebot).
We advise you to start a file/directory name with a leading slash char (Example: /private.html).
Line 5Disallow: *.cfm
No valid User-agent field defined before this Disallow.
The "*" wildchar in file names is not supported by (all) the user-agents addressed by this block of code. You should use the wildchar "*" in a block of code exclusively addressed to spiders that support the wildchar (Eg. Googlebot).
We advise you to start a file/directory name with a leading slash char (Example: /private.html).
Line 6Disallow: *.cgi
No valid User-agent field defined before this Disallow.
The "*" wildchar in file names is not supported by (all) the user-agents addressed by this block of code. You should use the wildchar "*" in a block of code exclusively addressed to spiders that support the wildchar (Eg. Googlebot).
We advise you to start a file/directory name with a leading slash char (Example: /private.html).
Line 7Disallow: *.pl
No valid User-agent field defined before this Disallow.
The "*" wildchar in file names is not supported by (all) the user-agents addressed by this block of code. You should use the wildchar "*" in a block of code exclusively addressed to spiders that support the wildchar (Eg. Googlebot).
We advise you to start a file/directory name with a leading slash char (Example: /private.html).