Critique: PaintBaller.ie

Evening all,

Can you do me a favour and throw an eye onto my site and see what you think. I recently converted from a phpbb2 forum and portal system to vbulletin, vb advanced and vbseo and so far so good.

Using the 301 redirect tool to redirect all old phpbb urls to the new vb ones, works like a charm.

Currently doing the google dance in search engines while the spider are currently being confused with all this new data

Thoughts please and thanks

PaintBaller.ie

Welcome

• your style looks great
• i want you to remove your forum title from your thread pages
• i would you to use Virtual HTML Display Check Out : (How To) Add Virtual HTML Display In Your Forum Template - vBulletin SEO Forums
• i would you to disable your archive and remove it from your sitemap
• i would you to remove Recent Threads from guests only (using conditionals)
• i would you to use H1 Tags Check Out : Add H1 Tags to your vBulletin Templates for Long Tail Search Optimization
• I want you to remove include every thing in your sitemap (Albums,Members Profiles Pages,Showposts .....etc) and only include thread pages and forum pages only

Originally Posted by marco1

Welcome

• your style looks great

Cheers, I used a 'paid for' template and edited it a lot

Originally Posted by marco1

Welcome

• i want you to remove your forum title from your thread pages

The paintball webforum / website is a competitive market and I feel that brand recognition is important. The fact that the user see's 'PaintBaller.ie' in the search result may encourage a click over a competitor?

Originally Posted by marco1

Welcome

• i would you to use Virtual HTML Display Check Out : (How To) Add Virtual HTML Display In Your Forum Template - vBulletin SEO Forums

Done now, i didn't realise I have to edit a template. i thought enableing it in the vbseo options was enough.

I notice the code is in <!-- brackets --> ... does this not deactivate it?

Originally Posted by marco1

Welcome

• i would you to disable your archive and remove it from your sitemap

Done, I left it actve because I thought it would act as another sitemap.

Originally Posted by marco1

Welcome

• i would you to remove Recent Threads from guests only (using conditionals)

Can you explain please? The recent threads is a great tool my members find and they request it. It is one of the things that separates my from the competition. It is part of vb advanced.

Originally Posted by marco1

Welcome

• i would you to use H1 Tags Check Out : Add H1 Tags to your vBulletin Templates for Long Tail Search Optimization

Which method is best?


I have also cleaned up the site map.

Re : using conditionals

Open Navbar Template
FAQ
Search for

HTML Code:

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="faq.php$session[sessionurl_q]" accesskey="5">$vbphrase[faq]</a></td>

and put them in these Tags

HTML Code:

<if condition="$show['member']"> Code Here </if>

Example

HTML Code:

<if condition="$show['member']">
<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="faq.php$session[sessionurl_q]" accesskey="5">$vbphrase[faq]</a></td>
</if>

And for Calender
Search For

HTML Code:

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="calendar.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[calendar]</a></td>

And replace with

HTML Code:

<if condition="$show['member']">
<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="calendar.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[calendar]</a></td>
</if>

Re : H1 Tags
Method 2 or 3 (I Use Method 2)

cheers,

for the FAQ and Calendar, I just removed them from the navbar altogether because the calendar is not used and no one really reads the FAQ anyways I find.

I have been tweaking my site for a while now. Any more comments regarding the layout or design?

Another few updates lately. Any thoughts or comments on it would be great.

Hello Richie,
Apologies for my late reply

Are you didn't get any more traffic with these changes ? if yes what's your long tail in this month and in the last month
Also if you want re-critique you can open new critique thread with this title "Re-Critique"

HI Marco, no need for apologies.

I thought it be best to up this thread rather than have two. The easiest way to explain my traffic is to show you:


For scale, peak unique visitors was 32,700 in june.

• Nice increase in may one month after the changes suggested were maid.
• Numbers were sustained for another month ( June)
• July sees a big drop in traffic. ( general forum activity also so it could be topic related)
• August sees the numbers back up to May numbers, ( roughly 1000K unique a day)

Long Tail
Not sure is this is what you mean by long tail, but here it goes. From analtcics.

April:Search sent 14,704 total visits via 8,302 keywords
May:Search sent 16,518 total visits via 9,281 keywords
June:Search sent 17,132 total visits via 8,455 keywords
July: Search sent 12,893 total visits via 5,847 keywords
Aug ( so far) Search sent 8,566 total visits via 3,946 keywords

Make any sense?
Cheers,
Richie

I Just checked your site and I didn't found any of my suggests

Please try to use vBSEO Relevant Replacements Check Out : [How to] Setup Relevant Replacements with vBSEO
Please try to remove your forum title from your thread page Check Out : [How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy
Your Google PR Is 4 and that's good
Your site is very slow but maybe in my connection

Originally Posted by marco1

I Just checked your site and I didn't found any of my suggests

Please try to use vBSEO Relevant Replacements Check Out : [How to] Setup Relevant Replacements with vBSEO
Please try to remove your forum title from your thread page Check Out : [How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy
Your Google PR Is 4 and that's good
Your site is very slow but maybe in my connection

My apologies macro, I was full sure I had the RR installed, I was confused with the regular forum description. I have installed RR there now.

What is the implication though of having the <h1> navbar text the exact same at the <h2> thread title text in show thread. Is it not duplicate content?

I was hesitant at first to remove the Forum title for competitive reason in my market, however I have removed them from the thread pages to see how it goes.

What is the implication though of having the <h1> navbar text the exact same at the <h2> thread title text in show thread. Is it not duplicate content?

You can replace RR code in the first you will need <h2> replace h2 with h1 so you have now H1 In your RR and you can remove any other codes to add H1 Tags in your forum

Sorry, I don't quite follow . I will clear up my question a little.

Just to clear up, I have followed: [How To] Add H1 Tags to your vBulletin Templates for Long Tail Search Optimization

and that effect is high lighted as 'h1' in the attached image.

I have now just used RR to turn off the forum description in the admincp and install RR with as marked 'h2' in the attached image.

Notice the way the two texts are the same, just one is h1 and the other is h2. Will this have an effect of seo or should I change something.

Originally Posted by paintballer.ie

Sorry, I don't quite follow . I will clear up my question a little.

Just to clear up, I have followed: [How To] Add H1 Tags to your vBulletin Templates for Long Tail Search Optimization

and that effect is high lighted as 'h1' in the attached image.

I have now just used RR to turn off the forum description in the admincp and install RR with as marked 'h2' in the attached image.

Notice the way the two texts are the same, just one is h1 and the other is h2. Will this have an effect of seo or should I change something.

Hello again,

Please Check Out : Critique Please