Critique Please

My Forums

Any feedback massively appreciated.

Hello Danny

Design :

• Good Forum Design
• Good Welcome Message

SEO :

• i want you to replace your showposts with Permalink Check Out : [How To] Replace Showpost Links with Permalinks - Max Out Search Engine Crawling Efficiency
• i want you to use vBSEO Relevant Replacements Check Out : [How to] Setup Relevant Replacements with vBSEO
• i want you 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
• I want you to use Virtual HTML Display in your what's going on box Check Out My Blog :[How To] Add Virtual HTML Display In Your Forum Template
• I found some HTML font tags on this page. While this is not a critical issue, you should use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to separate your website's content from its appearance.
• More than one H1 tag : More than one primary heading tags ( 5 H1 tags found) have been found on the page. This is not a critical issue, but we suggest having a single primary heading per page.
• 301 Redirect : Search engines may think GrandOldTeam Forum / The Everton Forums and grandoldteam.com are two different sites.You should set up a permanent redirect (technically called a "301 redirect")
• Congratulations your Google pagerank is 3
• I want you to remove include every thing in your sitemap (Albums,Members Profiles Pages,Showposts .....etc) and only include thread pages and forum display only From vBSEO Sitemap Generator
• Are you Installed vBSEO Sig ?

Thanks marco. Appreciated.

Originally Posted by marco1

SEO :

• i want you to replace your showposts with Permalink Check Out : [How To] Replace Showpost Links with Permalinks - Max Out Search Engine Crawling Efficiency
• i want you to use vBSEO Relevant Replacements Check Out : [How to] Setup Relevant Replacements with vBSEO
• i want you 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
• I want you to use Virtual HTML Display in your what's going on box Check Out My Blog :[How To] Add Virtual HTML Display In Your Forum Template

Done all these, no idea what Virtual HTML Display did though?.

Originally Posted by marco1

• I found some HTML font tags on this page. While this is not a critical issue, you should use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to separate your website's content from its appearance.
• More than one H1 tag : More than one primary heading tags ( 5 H1 tags found) have been found on the page. This is not a critical issue, but we suggest having a single primary heading per page.
• 301 Redirect : Search engines may think GrandOldTeam Forum / The Everton Forums and grandoldteam.com are two different sites.You should set up a permanent redirect (technically called a "301 redirect")

Sorry, no idea how to address these changes.

Originally Posted by marco1

• Congratulations your Google pagerank is 3
• I want you to remove include every thing in your sitemap (Albums,Members Profiles Pages,Showposts .....etc) and only include thread pages and forum display only From vBSEO Sitemap Generator

Thanks, assume pagerank 3 is good then?

Have removed everything apart from 'Include Forum Display Pages', 'Include Show Thread Pages' and 'Include Archive Pages' - should I remove Archive pages as well?

Originally Posted by marco1

• Are you Installed vBSEO Sig ?

vBSEO Conditional Signatures? Yes I have this installed. I haven't made any changes to its config though.

301 Redirect

Check Out : [How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects

vBSEO Sitemap

Yes you should remove include the Archive

vBSEO Sig

You should first enable it from vbulletin option and then setup it to add rel=nofollow in your forum Signatures

Originally Posted by marco1

301 Redirect

Check Out : [How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects

vBSEO Sitemap

Yes you should remove include the Archive

vBSEO Sig

You should first enable it from vbulletin option and then setup it to add rel=nofollow in your forum Signatures

Thanks, done all them. With regards to 301 Redirect, this is currently my htaccess;

[Removed htaccess after approval]

Does that look ok to you?

Thanks again - fingers crossed for improved google listings!

Yes the redirect seems Ok

Originally Posted by marco1

Also provide me in your critique thread with your long tail and visitors number in this month and in the last 2 or 3 months (Screenshot from Google analytics)

Am not sure this will be of much use? The football season starting has massively influenced figures, as has traffic from NewsNow.

Last month the forum received 110,000 visits according to analytics. Only 23,000 were from search traffic.... which could definitely be improved which is why I turned to vbSEO but unfortunately it hasn't helped.

Looking at awstats, we've only received an extra 3,000 visits this month compared to last year from search engines. Pathetic really considering the website has grown massively in the past year.

Hello Danny,

Who is say that you are don't see any changes in your traffic ? I Just checked your traffic,index,SE Bots,Long tail and your Keywords
Since 3 months and Your site traffic increased more than 40% and also your Alexa rank
2nd : You until now didn't complete my suggestions

Originally Posted by marco1

Hello Danny,

Who is say that you are don't see any changes in your traffic ? I Just checked your traffic,index,SE Bots,Long tail and your Keywords
Since 3 months and Your site traffic increased more than 40% and also your Alexa rank

And yet, my Google Rank hasn't changed in the slightest.

Also an idea to check back earlier, or better yet, compare with this time last year. The nature of my website dictates that May/June are very quiet because simply, there are no Football games - so naturally, there is no discussion to be discussed. Understand? There was also no news, meaning several thousand views wern't coming from newsnow.com and other various feeds. July/August are naturally the busiest months because thats when the season begins which is why I used statistics from the same period, last year - with an extra 3,000 visits this month compared to last year from search engines.

vbSeo hasn't altered my google rank in the slightest. Despite being the most active Everton forum, the only one on vBulletin, my sites listing for a search for Everton forum has remained the same - even behind a forum thats been closed. Even more frustrating is seeing brand new forums, with no seo optimisation on poorer forum software being just one place behind mine.

Thanks for all the advice, but as I say, vbSEO hasn't done its job in improving my Google Ranking. Traffic from search engines is stable compared to prior vbSEO.

Originally Posted by marco1

2nd : You until now didn't complete my suggestions

Don't understand that but all the above suggestions were done immediately, see above "Thanks, done all them".

The problem I've had is, traffic from search engines haven't changed - which isn't surprising given my forums rank hasn't changed.

Originally Posted by Danny1878

And yet, my Google Rank hasn't changed in the slightest.

Also an idea to check back earlier, or better yet, compare with this time last year. The nature of my website dictates that May/June are very quiet because simply, there are no Football games - so naturally, there is no discussion to be discussed. Understand? There was also no news, meaning several thousand views wern't coming from newsnow.com and other various feeds. July/August are naturally the busiest months because thats when the season begins which is why I used statistics from the same period, last year - with an extra 3,000 visits this month compared to last year from search engines.

vbSeo hasn't altered my google rank in the slightest. Despite being the most active Everton forum, the only one on vBulletin, my sites listing for a search for Everton forum has remained the same - even behind a forum thats been closed. Even more frustrating is seeing brand new forums, with no seo optimisation on poorer forum software being just one place behind mine.

Thanks for all the advice, but as I say, vbSEO hasn't done its job in improving my Google Ranking. Traffic from search engines is stable compared to prior vbSEO.

As you said here the last months there is no match's and that's the problem in any football forum or any sports forum

Let me show you some reasons of your problem and all other sports forum :
Sure when the season end the people will not open your site until the season start
and you will ask me the season is start so why I didn't have the same visitors and that's should be more visitors than the last year
here is the problem the most of people will be hard to remember visit your site and you should now makes some Good threads and new threads about Everton and send them to members e-mails
Since 3 years and me friend have 2 sports forums also the same problem happen with his forum and the best thing to send e-mails to your members with new and good threads in your forum

Originally Posted by Danny1878

Don't understand that but all the above suggestions were done immediately, see above "Thanks, done all them".

The problem I've had is, traffic from search engines haven't changed - which isn't surprising given my forums rank hasn't changed.

No, there is some suggest didn't complete or maybe deleted if you have done some changes in your forum

301 Redirect

Check Out : [How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects