SEO

Let me have it, the good, the bad, and what I could do better. All comments are appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Physical Evaluation Board Forum .

I'm just going to list some things if you don't mind:
1. Make the welcome message into an image; there is a tutorial on this site to help you do that. In the message, inform your users what the site is about too.

2. Better use of relevant replacements. Maybe put the RR's in a table, I'm not sure. I know most are not "nice looking" and I'm sure mine aren't either but I'm in the middle of creating a new skin for my site and I'm planning on testing some things out with them. I would just try to do the same
--I didn't look to see if they used header tags (h1, h2, etc), so if not, then you'll want to use them.

3. I would change your banner. From the looks of it, you have a fluid skin and your banner is fixed. You'll want to use 2-3 images to make the banner fluid. There's a good tutorial on vb.org on how to do that.

4. I personally don't like the skin. It's really close to the vb default and I'm not a fan of it. All I've seen is you've changed a few css values and not the images. I would look into buying a good skin or finding a good skin at vb.org. I just think the more attractive the site, the more members you might attract.

A lot of these are personal opinions which there is no need to be offended by and I didn't mean anything in an offensive matter. I hope you can take some of these ideas and better your site Good luck.

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"board forum" is pretty redundant.

If you can't take honest criticism, you will never improve. I appreciate the feedback!

Welcome message into image. I have only a general idea of what you mean, but I am very interested. I'll look for the article. One thing, I was thinking about using vBadvanced CMPS and having the main block be a welcome page. Is this the type of thing you mean?

As far as the RR, I just got this up. I already use h1/h2 tags on showthread (I think that's what its called, with forum description and post title) separate from RR. The RR I am using repeats the info, plus first 30 words of first post. Any other ideas of what I should do? I think/thought I was already there on this, but do you mean something else?

I am definitely going to fix the header. I found the article at vbulletin.org, so that should be an easy fix.

As far as skin, I had two concerns. One was that I keep reading about boards having performance problems/conflicts with skins, template changes, etc. The other is that I want to keep it pretty simple so the content isn't lost in the package. That being said, I would like to explore making it better. Are you talking about buttons, icons, and such? Or can you give me some examples of what might work better?

I appreciate the time and the feedback!

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Jason

Physical Evaluation Board Forum

briansol,

Normally, yes. However, the "Physical Evaluation Board" is an administrative Board, like a court. So, I can't really get away from "Board". I guess I could have jetisonned "Forum" but I also figured that it would differentiate from the official gov't pages that have no discussion areas and are simplistic. The URL is www.pebforum.com , so I could go with that, i.e., make the header say PEBFORUM . Do you think that is better?

But, I appreciate the look. If you have any thoughts/suggestions around this, I'd love to hear it.

You might try something that may end up coming up in user searches more commonly.

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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or even
"Physical Evaluation Board" Help Forums

I fixed the welcome message into image issue and the RRs are in effect. Anything else comes to mind.

From a graphic design point of view, I am interested in what ideas folks may have. I want to retain all current functionality, but if anyone thinks they can do a better job, let me know, show me some samples, I might use your services!

SEO point of view- I have a few remaining concerns...how is my use of h2/h3 tags? What about h1?
I have worked on my sig to get people to go to certain pages. What about tweaking the welcome image (for guests and for everyone?) to certain pages...I have PR3 on my url, but nothing anywhere else.

Thanks....btw, I am getting more visitors everyday...the numbers aren't shocking, but it is growing, and I only have had installed less than 3 weeks. Will post more detailed update in my blog later.

It's great to see that you've been making improvements, and starting to see some growth in traffic.

When I visited your site it loaded the logo header a little slow. It may have been my connection, but I did notice it's about 90kb. Do you think you can reduce it some without impacting quality?

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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With your banner being the size that it is, I would make your forums fixed in size.

And if you wanted a different skin, you can find free ones on vbulletin.org. Other sites such as transversestyles.com, vbskinworks.com, extremepixels.com, etc are all paid sites. All can be found on google if you search for "vbulletin skins". There are others out there that I can't think of on the top of my head though.

Hello All,

How about taking another look? I have a new template...thanks!

I am also wondering what is the utitlity(and it seems you get a hit on SEO) for having navbar for guests on homepage if you have links to register, forums, etc. in the body of the homepage? Does anyone recommend or do they take out the navbar for guests on their site?

If you can reduce links, or add rel=nofollow, then it can be beneficial. HOWEVER, you should not sacrifice your site navigation.

If your site is less easy to navigate for guests if the links are removed, I would consider it a bad removal.

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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I think your new template looks good and is very organized.

• Since you have 2 different login areas, I would probably remove one of them from your template.
• I think you should take the "forum title" out of the titles on the sub-forum and thread display pages.
• You should probably use a non-generic welcome message on your forum homepage.

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
vBSEO 3.2.0 Launched - Maximum Overdrive for Your Web Traffic! Over 100 Instant SEO Optimizations

vBSEO Google Sitemap Generator - Version 2.2 Released Mandatory Upgrade for vBSEO 3.2.0 GOLD

6X Traffic - $1400 in One Day with vBSEO! Imagine What the vBSEO Patent Pending Technology Can Do For You.