New VBSEO Forum - Help Please

[wetalk]

Hello all,

Looking for some critique on our settings for VBSEO and search.

www.WeTalkSports.com

We hired a coder to help us develop the site and set up VBSEO

I was wondering if there is any more we can do to hep get ranked higher, also looking to get ranked for particular KEYWORDS.

Any suggestions is welcomed greatly.

Free Picks , Free NFL Picks

Below are the top 3 listings for these Search words, Any help to compete with them?

I am looking to hire someone if they could help us! Let me know

Sorry If my questions or my expectations are high or absurd, I am not a web developer and I am not sure HOW difficult it probably is for this.

Thank you very much for any help with this or critiques you may provide.

Best Regards,
Rich
WeTalkSports.com


TOP THREE FOR " FREE PICKS" BELOW.. WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO BE HERE?

• Free Sports Picks: Free Picks - Free Pick, Free Baseball Picks ...
  
  We have free sports picks for sports bettors. We also have free nfl picks and college football picks as well as baseball picks.
  www.allfreepicks.com/ - 81k - Cached - Similar pages
  
• Sports Handicapping - Sports Gambling - Online Betting - Who To Bet On
  
  Who To Bet On offers the sports picks from the winning experts for the best online gambling. ... There are no free picks available at this time. ...
  Sports Handicapping - Sports Gambling - Online Betting - Who To Bet On - 66k - Cached - Similar pages
  
• Sports Betting Picks, Predictions, & Odds
  
  Right here you can get free sports picks each and every day from some of the top sports handicappers in the world. Each day our staff will be searching the ...
  www.sportsfreepicks.com/ - 25k - Cached - Similar pages
  
• Free Sports Picks - Sports Handicapping Monitor
  
  Free sports picks and sports handicapping monitor including picks from over 100 professional handicappers.
  

[FightRice]

there are tools/companies who can analyize your competitors sites for the keywords you want to rank for.

The report (if a good one worth its money) Will tell you what the top ranking sites are doing, and what you aren't doing, and make suggestions on how to get your site to the top.

One thing i noticed is you aren't making use of the relevant replacement feature, you may want to look into using it.

[Joe Ward]

• To be honest you have quite a few issues with your forum. It's clear that you are running it very professionally, but you should find many improvements in our standard suggestions here:
• Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First
• One thing you want to do immediately is:
• [HOW-TO] Remove "Powered by vBulletin" from Your Page Titles
• Your title on your homepage right now is next to useless because it is just your domain name without the .com attached. At minimum you should consider separating those words, but I would go farther and actually add a meaningful title for the site that includes some of the primary keywords that describe your site and what you want to target.
• The terms you mentioned could have separate forum categories themselves. This would help you out to get started.
• The notice you are running on the site is important, but it's skewing your page content results IMO, because it gets first text status.
• I think you should flip your navigation blocks from the left over to the right.
• I don't like having the forum category description at the top of each thread page.
• You should try our Relevant Replacements feature.
• I'd like to see those news blocks you have at the top of thread pages moved in the side navigation.
• I would replace showpost with permalink, a vBSEO setting.
• The "Pro Football" to "Pro Hockey" menus you have at the top in the gray nav bar could have "Free Picks" and "Free NFL Picks" added as links to the left to target that specifically.
• The footer section where you have site links actually has enough room that you could add links to each of your major forum categories (only the ones you want to SEO optimize) and could also include redundant links to "Free Picks" and "Free NFL Picks" to help with targeting those terms.
• I would get rid of the large, redundant login box on the left.
• I would get rid of the search forums box at the bottom. If you want to keep it, it should be up top and visible.
• I would look at stripping out via template conditions anything that is not necessary for guests, including stuff as simple as whois online. A sample forum I had set up to see how much could actually be stripped is kindle-faq.com. Keep in mind that this is not a live site and is not designed to look nice. The stuff that is removed is the purpose of the test. Now - you might not want to strip everything out, but take a look and see if there are things you could live without.
• Your template is heavy. You should take a look at it as search engines see it using an online service. Wherever you can tighten things up and keep the focus on the content, and the link structure very tight and focused, try to do that.

[wetalk]

Hey Joe,

This is amazing critique and I really appreciate it. Can you please recommend someone that can help me implement this?

I am really in need of someone that could help us.

Regards,
Rich

[Joe Ward]

You could try asking at vBulletin Modder or vBulletin SEO Setup.

[Brandon Sheley]

You could try asking at vBulletin Modder or vBulletin SEO Setup.

Thanks Joe, your the man

[briansol]

• it's VERY slow for me. just hangs for 15 seconds, then loads up. (see firebug screen. perhaps its just now, but i think this is a major issue if its like this all the time.
• next time you hire a designer, insist on valid code.
  [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://wetalksports.com/forum/ - W3C Markup Validator
• disable the archive and remove the footer links
• move all inline styling into the syllehseet.
  

  <h2 style="margin:auto;color:#0f1923;"> <a style="color:#0f1923;"

  should be classed, and all the rest.

[wetalk]

Okay a lot of the changes that JOE stated have been implemented...

Now to take what BRIANSOL has stated..

Joe can you take a look and let me know if we are missing anything..

Thanks for all your help!

[Joe Ward]

Looks like you have made some solid improvements. Nice work.

Could you hook the "Free service picks" link up to a page that describes them in more detail since you have to have at least 2 posts to see that forum, and search engine crawlers will never have that.

It's an important nav link, but it goes to a very low value page for search engines. You might even consider getting rid of that link, and just letting members find that area in the forum. Depends on your strategy.