Critique Request

Hi just wondering if people can give me their opinions on this forum.

The skin is out of date but i really think its the best suited to the forum content that i can find, i have contacted the designer several times with no reply.

Its a new forum so any comments would be appreciated. Im not new to VB but has been over 5 years since i last looked at the backend of a forum.

Ultimate Nature Gear Forum | Wildlife Photography Forum

[Edit]
At present we are gettting decent rankings on google for a couple of phrases/keywords but could be improved

Phrase: "nature forum" page 2 38,000,000
Phrase: "wildlife forum" page 3 3,160,000 slipping on this
Phrase: "wildlife photography forum" page 1 3,140,000

I like the style that you setup and I think you should consider the vBSEO 2.0 Style when it gets released. You will able to keep your existing color scheme and header graphics, but still get the benefit of a better template, with options for a fluid layout.

Are you getting much traffic for the tags at the top of your homepage? If not, I think I would be safe in suggestion for you to move that to the bottom of the forum list.

I wouldn't mind seeing you enable your sub-forum descriptions on your homepage. You can be sure to write them with lots of related keywords for the sub-forum. But don't add them if you only have generic subscriptions of the style: "In this forum we talk about {insert sub-forum topic}". That style is not valuable enough to warrent its addition on the very important homepage.

It looks like you might be using our Relevant Replacements. If you are that's great. I would rather see you use the H1 tag for your titles, instead of the H2 tag. We'll have an article about this coming up soon.

I see you are using the tags at the top. Again, unless you know this is yielding results for you, it is my strong recommendation to move this into your side column, or to the bottom of the page. This allows the subject content of the page to dominate the first content better, whereas tags are not real content in the sense of sentences/paragraphs are not very unique, page to page.

On your thread page, it is my standard recommendation to replace the post number link with a permalink instead. As I stated earlier today in another thread, this effectively disables the users' ability to view "individual post" pages (showpost).

Thanks very much for your comments Joe i will have a look at the forum on monday.
Much appreciated.

Hi Joe

Im very interested in the VBSEO 2 style, is there a planned date of release?

With the tags i need to try and find out how to change their location away from $navbar, i have removed them from the homepage for now.

Yes i am using relevant replacements, i got one of you's to do the install onto our server. I have just changed from H2 to H1.

"On your thread page, it is my standard recommendation to replace the post number link with a permalink instead. As I stated earlier today in another thread, this effectively disables the users' ability to view "individual post" pages (showpost)."

Do you have a link as this is somthing i do not know how to change myself

vBSEO 2.0 Style is currently being evaluated by our Pre-Release team. We need a thumbs up from them before we can proceed with the release. There were a few minor issues discovered and some suggestions that we'll be implementing (based on their feedback) before it gets released.

You can change your permalink setup from within the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php). Search for this option:

Replace post number link with Permalink
Will replace individual showpost links with the "Permalink" link. Note: Posts will no longer be accessible individually.

Cheers for the Joe, i have changed the permalink, i dont know if its down to the SEO or what but ive had 15 new members in the last two weeks.

I am not sure if the Permalink change would lead directly to new members unless you received a jump in your traffic.

Has your traffic gone up in the last two weeks since you made the change?

Sorry Joe what i meant is from the install of VBSEO i have been getting more members joining.

Originally Posted by UltimateNatureGear

Sorry Joe what i meant is from the install of VBSEO i have been getting more members joining.

That's great. I'm very glad to hear that.

However are you long tail stats doing so far?
Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

That's great. I'm very glad to hear that.

However are you long tail stats doing so far?
Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

Cheers for the link, will have a look more in depth tonight.