SEO

Hello,

I am going to start a new forum and want to give it every advantage in search engines I can.

I am torn between a phpbb3 + seo mods solution or a vBulletin + vBSeo solution. vBseo would be the main reason I'd go with vBulletin, but I have some questions and concerns about it.

The main reason I am considering going with VBSeo is for the search engine friendly urls. If I'm not mistaken, they put words from topic titles in the url itself. Researching the benefit of doing this has yielded seemingly mixed results. Some people seem to swear that it isn't all that helpful to do, and that Google and other search engines afford the dynamic looking urls the same weight.

1) Can anyone speak to the advantages of using the search engine friendly urls, ideally citing examples from their own experience? What kind of difference can one expect between using seo friendly urls and not?

I am also nervous because I keep reading that if vBseo stops supporting the product for one reason or another that I won't be able to keep up with or account for vBulletin updates in the future. I'd hate to invest so much time and money into something only to find myself stuck.

2) Is this a valid concern? Why or why not?

3) Also, what if vBulletin updates in the future are incompatible with vBseo? Has this ever happened? Is there a substantial likelihood that it might?

4) Will I be able to make template changes and otherwise customize the site without breaking it if vbseo is installed?

5) Is it easy to configure the optimal vbseo setup for somebody who has no clue what all of it means?

6) Is vbseo compatible with CMS mods? I haven't even explored what is available for vBulletin yet, but I know I am going to want to add some additional content pages.

I've been maintaining a few phpbb2 forums for years, but for all of my tweaking topics rarely appear in search results - or at least not high enough to get clicked on. I am really hoping to be able to use vBulletin and VBseo to change all that for the new forum I am starting. Also, the well established forum likely to be my new forum's biggest hurdle appears to be using vbseo, or at least has search engine friendly urls.

Thanks so much for any and all insight you can offer!

there is 0 comparison. vb is the professional choice. phpbb is the fee choice. Good board, good software, nice style... but it's not as mature of a product as vb is.


1 +2) it's not about SEO urls so much as it is link consensus. vbseo takes care of this.
vbseo isn't going out of business. they are doing well. And besides, if you already have the product, i'm sure myself and 2312321 other forum owners will ban together to support a future version should vbseo ever go under (which is doubtful).

3)vbseo always follows vb releases. 3.2 was a fix from 3.1 when vb released the 3.7.x series. Obviously, you should make sure vbseo is compatible with releases before upgrading your main vb board to the latest.

4) sure. vbseo doesn't effect templates.

5) see my sig "ultimate guide".

6) yup. it works with vb advanced

__________________
My Blog | the Ultimate Guide to vBSEO

Who should I host with?

Its not so much putting keywords in the url anymore, that was more a couple updates a go. But SE friendly URL's provide more advantages such as type in traffic and more professional looking. The ability to have the URL rewritten multiple different ways, makes it versatile for matching other products you may use (such as wordpress) in structure.

I beleive this to be a valid concern, however not something that is even on the minds of anyone who has ever purchased vBSEO. Any company could go tits up at any time, however there are signs which would indicate when something like that would happen and as you can see vBSEO is going strong here. Even then the member base here is great at providing user to user support and you can expect help from as well as staff every step of the way.
vBSEO works pretty diligently when new vBulletin releases are announced vBSEO is usually gold with a compatibile version in a few weeks, however since vBulletin changed to plugins and products, I do beleive there has never been any issues with vBulletin getting updated and not being able to use vBSEO the same day (even on a older release of vBSEO).

Yes, you can even customize vBSEO along with other SEO tactics and tricks to get the best result. (of course if you're changing core files to any product with no clue, potential to break is there)

Upload, Import Product, Finished. Thats all there is to installing, to get optimium configuration options depends on your site, you can read Briansol's ultimat vBSEO guide and get lots of good information

vBSEO is compatiable with any vBulletin powered modifications. vBADvanced is a common one you may check out.
Your welcome, and good luck in your search for information


phpbb2 does suck

Hi Johnny - it looks like you have gotten some great help so far. If you have any more questions for us, please post a followup.

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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Thank you for the replies.

Is vbseo the most mature, effective, stable solution to optimize a forum for search engines? That is, of all the forum types and seo options for them?

I am weary about dropping $180 for Vbulletin and then Vbseo for $149 and possibly the branding removal option for another $117 when in the several years I have been putting in countless hours working on my forums, I don't think I've made more than a dollar a day from them in Adsense, so spending nearly $500 to get started with vBulletin and vBSeo is a big deal...

Speaking of the branding removal option, does it have any benefits with search engines or is it strictly aesthetic?

Thanks!

Honestly Johnny i am not happy with vBulletin for a long time since they are still making us use an 5 year old core engine with useless updates IMO but i still purchase vBulletin and use on my sites just because vBSEO. I just started a new forum which is 1 month old currently and daily adsense income average is 5$ and itis increasing each other day because my SE referral numbers are also increasing every day

Thanks for your message. Can I ask the amount of traffic you're getting at your forum to make $5 a day, Mert? I am leaning heavily towards moving ahead. The competition uses it and must do so for a reason.

Is there a SEO benefit to paying extra for the option to remove the vbseo brand, or is it just an aesthetic preference?

How about with vBulletin itself? Are there benefits to getting the option to remove their branding?

Also, do you know which is generally better, to have thingforum.com or thingforums.com. That is, which are people more likely to try by default (with thing being whatever topic of interest...)

Thanks!

Only aesthetic preferences. Having either copyright in your footer neither helps nor hurts SEO
I think the mass of people when typing naturally put forums over forum unless you've already got an established thingforum.com

Currently i have around 700~750 unique visitors daily and the number is increasing each other day as my SE referral numbers are increasing. Brian is the adsense master i just read his instructions. You may want to check our Adsense section as it includes really important tips.

I also think that having copyright info doesn't have any effect on SEO at all.

I personally always prefered forum instead of forums but that is mainly because of my original language. Both domains are pretty similar , if i were in your shoes i would go without s as the domain is even 1 letter short. IMO short domain names are pretty important on end user side.

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Mert Gökçeimam / Crawlability Inc.
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One of my forums averaged over 1,000 unique visitors a day last month according to Google Analytics but I just checked AdSense and it made only about $60.00 last month. By Brian you mean briansol, right? Are there any specific posts or topics of his you'd recommend I look at? I'd love to increase my Adsense earnings if possible.

So I've been able to reach an average of 1,000 visitors with a phpbb2 board I modified to grab meta descriptions from the first posts of topics. I also blocked a number of things via robots.txt.

If I were to switch this existing forum to vBulletin + vbSeo, do you think I would see a significant increase in visits and thereby "revenue"?

Or would the site simply fall out of search engine results because suddenly none of the links to it (other than the home page) would lead anywhere any more?

I cannot simply guarantee that switching vBulletin + vBSEO will increase your earnings. As you will import your data via impex if you ever hard deleted 1 single post or 1 single thread you may loose some traffic at the beginning otherwise you can easily continue without loosing any traffic with a single .htaccess redirect rule.

I can only show my personal exprienced to you Progress Report You may want to check this site. Because of very serious real life problems i couldn't take care of the site lately. However even in that condition you can see the traffic boost in the site. This sites adsense income is pathetic as it is directed to webmasters and maişnly webmasters donot click on adds

Here is my latest projects google referral number stats

These are some pretty good examples why i would not start a forum without vBSEO.

I honestly believe If you switch to vBulletin + vBSEO in long run you'll see profit. Of course installing vBSEO is not the only thing to do. Still the most important thing on success is your site content. If you continue adding content to your site and apply some suggestions members had in here , you'll be good to go.

Sorry, the crux of my most recent question was whether it was a bad idea to switch a several year old, established site that is already indexed from phpbb to vb with vbseo, and whether I would still realize whatever benefits there are to be had from vbseo. Based on everything I'm reading, though, it sounds as if it may be. I know nothing about .htaccess. Do you think somebody here would be able to help me make it so that phpbb2 links get redirected properly?

Your stats for September are incredible. Did you just install vbseo shortly before September 8th or something? It looks like that's about when it took off. If not, what changed then?

I have printed briansol's optimization guide. Does anyone know if anyone else has created similar guides that offer different or conflicting advice so I can study them and try to determine which settings are best, or is briansol's accepted as "gospel" as much as anything may be?

Sorry if I sound anal about all this. I've been waking up at ungodly hours for years now to work on forums before work and I am very excited at the prospect of something finally coming of it all.

Oh, and what's a "hard delete"? Does that refer to deleting something from the database manually or via phpmyadmin or the like? While I've added topics programatically, I don't think I've ever deleted them that way.

If you consider purchaisng vBSEO you can create a support ticket and a support staff will help you with the .htaccess redirect rules. It is not that hard to switch from phpbb to vBulletin. vBulletin has a tool named Impex which allows you to easily import your data to vBulletin.

That site was started at the end of May and it started to pick up traffic. Nothing was changed. In fact due to death in my family and some health problems i couldn't even had time to check the site. However the important factor is articles that i wrote and published before. If you have unique content on your site which other sites it is not that hard to receive traffic. Because content is the number 1 success point on a site.

You may want to check Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First as this thread also includes lots of important tips.

Please Johnny if you have any more questions donot hesitate to ask them. We are happy to asisst you.

vBulletin has two options to delete posts and threads. Soft delete and Hard Delete. Soft delete will remove the thread from member access however the data will stay within database , on Hard delete everything is removed.