New Features in vBSEO 3.0 GOLD: - NEW FEATURE: LinkBacks (Ping/Track/Refbacks) - "LinkBacks" is the generalized term we use to reference three methods of communication between websites.
This new system allows your forum to interact and build links with the "blog-o-sphere" via Linkbacks (TrackBacks, PingBacks and vBSEO's own RefBacks). 
While concepts like PingBacks and Trackbacks where originally developed exclusively for blogs, they are now being integrated into other types of content management systems (CMS).
By harnessing and expanding upon this technology, vBSEO gives you a powerful way to create inbound and outbound relevant linking between your forum and other sites, which not only has SEO advantages, but also enables a new stream of direct clickthrough traffic. For a more indepth technical description of LinkBacks, including PingBacks, TrackBacks, and RefBacks, please see our LinkBack overview. vBSEO includes a full section to manage your LinkBacks within the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php), where complete configuration of options for incoming and outgoing linkbacks, as well as permalinks, can be set.
The LinkBack system also allows for advanced moderation via a full LinkBack moderation system located in the vBulletin Admin Control Panel.
After you install vBSEO, see the "LinkBacks" category on the left side navigation of your vBulletin AdminCP. For complete details on how to configure and moderate your vBSEO LinkBack system, please see the vBSEO LinkBack User Guide.
- NEW FEATURE: Social Bookmarking - Many of you may be familiar with the concept of "social bookmarking" and websites like Digg.com, del.ici.ous, Technorati, or FURL.
Wikipedia defines social bookmarking as: Quote: |
Originally Posted by Wikipedia Social bookmarking sites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links through the practice of folksonomy techniques on the Internet... | Similar in some respects to the LinkBack system, vBSEO's social bookmarking features allow you to build inbound links to your forum on various social bookmarking sites. This provides you with an SEO advantage for relevant inbound links. It also generates clickthrough traffic from these sites while notifying them of new (or updated threads) via RSS feeds.
You can enable or disable the social bookmarking feature within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php). When enabled, you have the option of displaying social bookmarking icons at the bottom of (1) each thread only, or (2) each thread, and each post within the thread.
When your forum users click on these icons, they will be taken to the specific social bookmarking site, where they can follow the procedures specific to the site to create a link back to their chosen thread/post.
Since there is a growing number of social bookmarking sites, vBSEO has a built in feature to allow you to specify custom sites to be added. Digg, Technorati, del.ici.ous, and FURL are the 4 default options, which can be individually enabled or disabled.
To enter a custom social bookmarking site, you must enter text in the following format: Code: Bookmark URL,Icon URL,"Bookmark Thread" Text,"Bookmark Post" Text
Example: Code: http://reddit.com/submit?url=%url%&title=%title%,images/vbseo/reddit.gif,Reddit!,Reddit!
The example above would allow you to add the Reddit.com site to the social bookmarking options available on your forum.
Configurations may be difficult for non-technical users. If you require assistance, please post a request for help with custom social bookmarking configuration on our forum or via a customer support ticket. NOTE: Social bookmarking icons will only appear on your publically accessible threads. They will not be displayed on any private threads since they would not be accessible on a clickthrough.
To change the location of the social bookmarking icons, you can edit your vBulletin postbit template, and place the following code: Code: <!--VBSEO_BOOKMARKS-->
Caution: Do not use vBSEO's social bookmarking features in a way that could be interpreted by the social bookmarking sites as SPAM. It could result in your forum being blacklisted from participation. As a general rule of thumb, you should allow your users to use the social bookmarking features independently. If you submit too many of your own threads to these sites, you may very well receive a penalty for spamming. Avoid this situation, since it will eliminate a traffic stream for you, as well as remove the SEO advantage of having relevant links back to your forum. If you determine that you were unfairly penalized by these sites, you will have to submit a request for re-inclusion that may be a timely process without any guarantee of success.
- NEW FEATURE: Footer Archive Links - With the new vBSEO Footer Archive Links feature, you can place links to your main forum archive sitemap pages at the footer of each of your forum pages.
This process is useful in helping to direct Crawlers from your homepage to all of your forum threads.
Over time, threads that are not updated with new posts get buried deeper and deeper within your forum display pages. The footer archive sitemap links help search spiders reach them more effectively. Since vBSEO optimizes on a thread-by-thread basis, allowing easier access to your thread pages can provide SEO advantages. Good quality content and vBSEO will harness search engine traffic for thousands of different search keywords and keyword phrases.
This feature can be enabled and configured within the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php). You can choose to provide footer archive links for your MAIN archive pages only, or all archive pages (including deeper linking).
Either option (main archive sitemap pages only, or all archive pages) can be enabled for guests only, which prevents them from being displayed for forum users after they are logged in. vBSEO also provides the following code, allowing you to change the default location of your footer links within your vBulletin footer template: Code: <!--VBSEO_ARCHIVE_LINKS-->
Note: You do not have to place this code within your template. When this feature is enabled, vBSEO will automatically place the footer archive links in a default location near the bottom of your vBulletin pages. Note: Forums configured as links will not be included so that spiders are directed only to pages on your forum, not external sites.
- NEW FEATURE: Custom Redirects - 301 redirects are the search engine safe method of moving content on your server. Moving content on your forum is basically the assignment of a new URL or address for a given page of content (forum display page, thread page, CMPS page, etc).
vBSEO already has built-in features for automatically 301 redirecting all of your old dynamic vBulletin URLs (those ending in .html) to the new vBSEO-generated CRUs (Content Relevant URLs; those ending in .html). vBSEO also automatically applies 301 redirects whenever the title of a thread or the name of a forum changes, since doing so alters the Content Relevant URL address.
Our new Custom Redirects feature is intended for use whenever you, as a forum administrator, decide to move any of your pages to a new location and would like to ensure that the search engines replace the old page with the new one in the search index. Without a 301 redirect, the old page could be simply dropped or kept in the search index, and directing web searches to "page not found" errors.
301 redirects are not easy to implement for non-technical users. They require programming or editing of your server's .htaccess file (or other settings such as http_conf).
This feature takes much of the technical complexity out of the process, and is a convenient and search engine safe way for forum admins to manage the movement of important content from within the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php). Example: Code: 'mypage.html'=>'mynewpage.html'
The above is an example of the correct syntax to 301 redirect an old page called mypage.html to its new location at mynewpage.html.
Custom Redirects rules syntax allows for regular expressions. The ensures that you can move multiple pages with a similar address with only one rule. Example: Code: 'article-(d+).html'=>'articles/entry-$1.html'
The above custom 301 redirect rule would allow you to notify the search engines that ALL pages with names such as article-1.html or article-2.html, etc., should have their addresses updated to articles/entry-1.html or articles/entry-2.html, respectively.
For more information on the supported regular expression syntax, please see: Syntax for Custom Rewrite Rules
- NEW FEATURE: Add Titles to External Links - If you have posted a link on the vBSEO forums and noticed that it automatically had the title of the page linked to, set as anchor text on the link, then you have seen the Add Titles to External Links feature at work.
While inbound and outbound linking plays a significant role in effective search engine optimization (SEO), linking alone is not enough.
The actual anchor text plays an important role as well, since the search engines get a sense of which keywords more accurately describe the contents of the page based on the anchor text that is used in links to the site from other external sites.
You have mostly likely seen links on the web such as "Click here" for example. The text "Click here" is the anchor text, and the address of the web page it leads to is the link or URL.
Good anchor text for a link, from an SEO perspective, includes keywords that accurately describe the page, and preferably that occur on the page itself.
While inbound links to your forum are more important for your SEO in this regard, anchor text on outbound links should not be overlooked.
External links from your site, when linked to relevant or related content, is good for your SEO. It is a good bet that search engines do not like dead end websites with no external links. Having relevant anchor text describing your external links can provide further benefits.
Keep in mind that when this anchor text is applied, it also becomes a part of your thread content. So it, in effect, also adds relevant keywords to your page, providing onpage SEO optimization.
Users of forums, when posting links, rarely provide anchor text. Instead, they just post the link with a quick comment and go on their way.
The vBSEO Add Titles to External Links feature detects when an external link has been posted, connects to the webpage linked, retrieves its title, and then applies the title as the anchor text for the link posted within your forum thread. You instantly have improved onpage SEO and a more highly relevant outbound linking structure.
This feature can be enabled or disabled within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php).
With the vBSEO Control Panel you will also find a configuration option for Add Page Title to External Domains "Blacklist". In the text box provided, you can enter a list of domains for which you do NOT want page titles to be automatically retrieved. Only the root domain is necessary to block all URLs for the site (e.g. mydomain.com will block all pages on that site from having their titles automatically retrieved).
Additionally, when posting an advanced reply post or new thread, users have the option to disable this feature by unchecking the option for Automatically retrieve titles from external links, found in the "Additional Options" section of the new post page. Note: This feature is available only for vBulletin 3.5.x and later versions. Note: If the page being linked is 301 redirected, the title of the destination page after redirection will be captured by vBSEO.
- NEW FEATURE: Your vBSEO Affiliate ID - If you are a participating affiliate in the vBSEO Affiliate Program, with this new feature, you can add your affiliate ID to the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php).
This will cause the vBSEO copyright notice (if you are using a linked version) to track the traffic you send to www.vbseo.com. Sales resulting from such traffic will earn you commissions. At present, all traffic you send will earn you commissions for up to 1 full year. If someone who clicks your link buys vBSEO within the year, you can earn a commission. Many of our vBSEO affiliates are earning significant monthly income just from using this feature without having to actively promote vBSEO!
For more information, please check out our vBSEO Affiliate program forum.
- NEW FEATURE: URL Rewrite Settings - vBSEO, since its earliest release, has always provided complete flexibility in determining your URL format, used our advanced configuration options. In fact, there are over 130 different configuration options!
URL rewriting not only adds relevant keywords to your forum URLs, but also consolidates multiple (different) URLs into ONE URL FOR EACH UNIQUE PAGE, canonicalizing all your forum pages for increased relevancy.
Having one URL per resource structure in place enhances your forum's internal linking structure by creating a network of fully consistent links that allow search engines to properly find and index your site's unique content.
A consistent link structure also ensures incoming links ALWAYS "create value" by pointing to main content pages and never to secondary or duplicate entries, thus increasing relevancy for your core content with each linkback (links posted by users in external sites) to your forum.
The results will be significant SEO improvements for all aspects of search engine interaction including (1) crawling, (2) indexing, and (3) ranking.
While our default URL Rewriting options are often all that you will need for your forum, how to achieve a certain type of URL structure is a common question among our customers.
Now, with our new "Select Your Forum URLs Global Format" feature, you can choose one of your favorite vBSEO URL Rewrite presets and have it fully active in seconds, with all 130+ configuration options predetermined for you. Currently, 5 presets are included for you to select from:- Default vBSEO Settings
- www.vBSEO.com URL style settings
- www.WebmasterWorld.com URL style settings
- www.DaniWeb.com URL style settings
- www.vBulletinZone.com URL style settings
- www.vBulletinSetup.com URL style settings
You can select the default or checkout the forums located at each of the sites (option 2 through 5) to indicate which you prefer.
To do so, simply select your desired preset from the dropdown menu, and click the Load Preset button to complete the process. All of your custom settings will be replaced with the 130+ configurations needed to achieve the selected preset URL Rewrite style. Note: You may also set a customized URL structure by expanding the Advanced Settings (click the '+' link). Caution: Once you load a preset, your custom settings will be overwritten. If you plan on experimenting with the vBSEO presets, please remember to create a backup of your custom URL Rewrite settings using the Download/Backup your Current Settings.
CRITICAL WARNING: As indicated in your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php), your URL Rewrite settings should not be changed once set! Once you select your URL structure, it is STRONGLY recommended that you DO NOT change the settings again. Doing so will directly impact the URL integrity of your forum, losing valuable incoming links and search engine positioning. While our automatic 301 redirects will automatically update the location of all URLs, repeated large scale changes to thousands of forum display, thread and other URLs will most likely lead to significantly negative SEO impact or possible penalization. To avoid any negative impact, choose your URL Rewrite settings and keep them the same for the life of your forum. TECHNICAL NOTE: vBSEO URL Rewrite Presets are stored in XML files and are located within your /imports/xml/ folder. All preset files have the following naming convention: Code: vbseo_urls_PRESETNAME.xml
- NEW FEATURE: External domains "Blacklist" - This new vBSEO feature is located in the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) in the External rel="nofollow"s section.
By entering a domain name into the text box provided, links posted on your forum to the site will ALWAYS have a rel=nofollow attribute assigned to them, telling the search engines not to follow the link or index the content.
This helps to conserve PageRank value that would otherwise be passed to the external site. Conserving PageRank ensures that it will be more heavily distributed within your forum pages or to other external links that DO NOT have the rel=nofollow attribute applied. Note: Even if you have the Add rel="nofollow" to ALL External URLs feature disabled, the External domains "Blacklist" will still add rel=nofollow attributes for all links to the specified domains.
- NEW FEATURE: Add Thread Titles to Showpost Links Anchor Text? - This feature applies the same settings as the Add Thread Titles feature to showpost links posted within your forum. See your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) for more information.
- NEW FEATURE: Meta Description for Member Profiles - This feature allows you to define a custom format for the meta description tag of your member profile pages. The following patterns are supported:
- [username] - Member username
- [usertitle] - Member user title ("Moderator", "Registered Member", etc.)
- [bb_title] - Your forum's main title
- [user_field_1], [user_field_2], etc. - Custom user fields as defined in the vBulletin Admin CP
Sample Meta Description Phrase: Code: [username] is a [usertitle] in the [bb_title]. View [username]'s profile.
- NEW FEATURE: Direct Category Links - Enable this option within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) to convert forum category links to an inpage anchor URL format such as:
Code: http://yourforumsroot/#category_title
Doing so allows you to conserve PageRank on your forum homepage by preventing links to separate forum display pages for each category. The inpage anchored links ensure that the category link "jumps" you to the right forum category without refreshing the page, thereby not passing any PageRank.
The PageRank conserved is then distributed more greatly to your forum and thread URLs.
- NEW FEATURE: Direct Links to Threads For Guest Visitors? - This feature is an SEO enhancement that is active only for guests viewing your forums. Note: This is not cloaking since it displays equally for guests and spiders.
When activated from within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php), it removes the "-new-post" component for links to the newest posts in each forum on your forum homepage.
Doing so creates a direct link to your thread pages from the homepage as opposed to the default redirect which *may* or *may not* pass Rank depending on the SE.
Note: Without this feature vBSEO 301 redirects new post URL to the thread URL (anchor) for link consistency.
Since this would be considered a loss in the user friendly functionality of the forum, when activated, it is only applied for guests. Logged in users will be forwarded to the new post URL as expected. You may consider this an acceptable tradeoff for SEO purposes.
- NEW FEATURE: A new configuration option has been added to the vBSEO configuration file (config_vbseo.php) allowing users running the vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator to define custom search engine robots to be tracked when crawling their forum.
PHP Code: // ****** OPTIONS for vBSEO Sitemap Generator ****** // Additional robots detection definitions (delimited with "|") define('VBSEO_EXTRA_ROBOTS', '');
- NEW FEATURE: A new configuration option has been added to the vBSEO configuration file (config_vbseo.php) allowing users to link to portal homepages rather than the forum homepage:
PHP Code: define('VBSEO_FORCEHOMEPAGE_ROOT', 1);
- NEW FEATURE: Beta option to use cookie tracking for vBulletin search highlight, so that user is redirected to a clean URL free from query strings.
This helps with link consensus if the user then copy/pastes the link somewhere else on the web.
The following option must be enabled from within the vBSEO config_vbseo.php file: PHP Code: define('VBSEO_SEARCH_REDIRECT', 1);
- NEW FEATURE: A new configuration option has been added to the vBSEO configuration file (config_vbseo.php) allowing the last modification header sent from the server for each thread to return the last modified time as the time of the last post made on the thread.
Since threads are dynamically generated, having a stable last modified date can help improve their appearance as fully static (i.e. .html) type URLs: PHP Code: define('VBSEO_LASTMOD_HEADER', 1);
Last edited by Juan Muriente; 04-13-2007 at 02:16 AM.
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