Contemplating installing vbseo

Hello,
I’m contemplating installing vbseo on my forums and have some questions.

A bit of info about my forum. It’s a football “soccer” forum, now in its second year and although the rest of my site gets a reasonable amount of traffic the forum hasn’t really taken off.

Some time ago I added a rewrite mod with urls in the format of forum5.html. Unfortunately not all urls were rewritten so I’ve worked on it from time to time improving it. I also added your free vbseo sitemap which I modded in order to get it to work with my url format. Adding these did increase the amounts of bots, good and bad to the forums but not as much traffic as I would like.

As vbulletin changes and with my limited knowledge of rewrite, plus the time it takes to keep up I’m a bit sick of it, hence my interest and questions.

1; One thing that worries me and has concerned me since installing my rewrite mod is the problem of old urls, I’ve read somewhere that vbseo takes care of this pointing search engines and visitors to the new urls. Will this work for the original urls “forumdisplay.php?f=5” and my rewrite urls “forum5.html”?

2; I have moded my templates in a big way, will this have an effect on parts of vbseo, if so how much and will I be able to manually fix problem parts?

3; What is the best url format?

4; Are there any known compatibility issues or rewrites for the following mods?

15+ Posts to create links.
Radio and TV
Stop the Registration Bots
vBTube
I also use a login mod across the whole of my site that has the benefit of controlling ads for members via if statements for members/non members.

5; I’m currently on vbulletin 7.4 but will soon update. Should I update first or is it ok to update after installing vbseo?

6; What are Trackbacks and how do they work?

I’ve added my site in the usercp so if you could take a look and let me know what you think, that would be great.

Many thanks
Steven

Originally Posted by steveneff

1; One thing that worries me and has concerned me since installing my rewrite mod is the problem of old urls, I’ve read somewhere that vbseo takes care of this pointing search engines and visitors to the new urls. Will this work for the original urls “forumdisplay.php?f=5” and my rewrite urls “forum5.html”?

vBSEO will automatically take care of the default vBulletin URLs. By 301 redirecting them to the correct rewritten URL. For example : visit this URL : www.vbseo.com/showthread.php?t=30387 . And regarding your previous rewritten URLs (forumX.html), you can ask the support staff to provide the redirect rules to apply; so they won't end up being 404.

Originally Posted by steveneff

2; I have moded my templates in a big way, will this have an effect on parts of vbseo, if so how much and will I be able to manually fix problem parts?

Most probably, it won't.

Originally Posted by steveneff

3; What is the best url format?

I'd suggest you to take a look at this excellent guide :
Briansol's Ultimate Guide to vBSEO

Originally Posted by steveneff

4; Are there any known compatibility issues or rewrites for the following mods?

1. 15+ Posts to create links.
2. Radio and TV
3. Stop the Registration Bots
4. vBTube
5. I also use a login mod across the whole of my site that has the benefit of controlling ads for members via if statements for members/non members.

1 : Nope (i run a modified version of it too)
2 : No idea.
3 : Nope (haven't used it, but i don't see anything that would interfere)
4 : Nope (Infact, vBSEO can help rewrite URLs for your mods too, via CRR)
5 : No idea. (if it's a publicly available mod, can you please point me to it's download ?)

Originally Posted by steveneff

5; I’m currently on vbulletin 7.4 but will soon update. Should I update first or is it ok to update after installing vbseo?

The latest vBSEO version (3.2.0) will work fine with 3.7.X (till 3.7.4). For versions 3.8 and 3.7.5; they have released a patch to apply. The upcoming version of vBSEO (3.2.5) will fully support / be compatible with vBulletin 3.8.X

Originally Posted by steveneff

6; What are Trackbacks and how do they work?

vBulletin SEO Forums - LinkBacks

Hi Steven,

If you are using one of the freebie hacks, you definitely need to make the switch asap. I add some detail on that here:
What's vBSEO Features ?! ..

Alert: It is our recommendation that you avoid any of the attempted copycat apps, since none of them are up to standard in terms of trusting them with one of the most important factors of your site: SEO. To date, all those that we have reviewed have significant unresolved issues. If you plan to max out your forum with vBSEO at *any time* in the future, then I would urge you to stick with your default vBulletin installation until you are ready to install our professional solution. Most freebie users quickly move their forums over to vBSEO anyway, but this sometimes causes 2 update processes instead of just one.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for the info Shadab, the login mod is “Simple vB User login” with a bit of extra moding for my site but principally the same mod.

I’ve got to say when you start reading the tips and following the links to more tips it seams a lot to take in and kind off depreciates the reason for moving to a ready made seo solution. I would think a lot of people that come here including me, expect to some extent to be able to install the plugin and walk away. That said I’m sure I’ll be going through and implementing some of them.

Joe, dead right, from my own experience, I’d say that unless you are able to understand and fully implement the rewrite, stay well away or get vbseo.

As Shadab suggests in his answer to Q1 will you be able to supply code to redirect both sets of old urls?

Urls have got me thinking about the site as a whole. I have directories and forums that would, with vbseo rewrite, both have the same/similar names. Would it be better while I’m changing urls, to go the whole hog and change my existing site directories to have them both appear to be in the same directories.

Example:

Existing Directory: /premierleague/manchestercity/results/
New forum url: /forums/premier-league/manchester-city/article/

Not sure if this is possible without moving the forum to the root or if it would be worth doing but I see on this site you have the forum in a directory with member links somehow in the root. What are your thoughts on this?

What I think it should probably be:

Directory: root/premier-league/manchester-city/results/
Forum: root/premier-league/manchester-city/article/

Just come up with a possible problem in that existing directories /premierleague/ - /premierleague/manchestercity etc, already have index files in them.

Next question:

I have a simple script that looks in the vbulletin database and gets the last few articles with urls from each category, will I have any problems accessing the vbseo urls for this?

I’ve got to say when you start reading the tips and following the links to more tips it seems a lot to take in and kind off depreciates the reason for moving to a ready made seo solution.

Keep in mind, that it's really a 2 step process from an SEO standpoint:

#1 Install a professional SEO solution (vBSEO)
#2 Search for other SEO optimizations that can be done

vBSEO, automates just about everything that can be automated, 100s of SEO factors, and helps you achieve the vital stuff like link consensus.

However, important things that can be helpful such as what links to add/remove from your homepage, or how to create valuable keyword rich sub-forum descriptions is obviously something that would be very difficult or pretty much impossible to do (in the case of the latter).

If you plan to do none of the tips, step #1 (i.e. vBSEO) is still absolutely vital to help you move towards that absolute best SEO you can achieve.

On the other hand, you could also do all the tips and leave out adding vBSEO! However, that would not make much sense since the tips are all labor intensive, and vBSEO is a 5-minute installation in the hands of most developers.

So the obvious recommendation is:

• Install vBSEO to make a huge leap forward in SEO instantly
• Do the best you can with the extra tips, or hire a freelancer to help you.
• Build some links.
• Continue to build your community by creating create content and keeping discussions active.
• Don't forget about generic marketing principles (i.e. non-SEO related stuff)!

So - yes - you can install vBSEO with the defaults and walk away... and that will help you achieve better results. However, we certainly recommend that you stay proactive and always see what you can do to improve whether it's extra SEO tweaks, creating content, generating links, or any marketing promotion.

I’d say that unless you are able to understand and fully implement the rewrite, stay well away or get vbseo.

I'm confident enough to say that you should either get vBSEO or not do it at all. The reason I say that is, after over 3 years of being a member of the vBSEO Team, I can tell you this is certainly not a one man job. Anyone who has tried has never been able to come close to even achieving the fundamental link consensus. We did it, with thousands of hours of development and a full team making sure we got it right! In my opinion, most of those freebie hacks have done more harm than good for most users who have tried them. :(

As you noted earlier, the one you used did not even cover all of your URL formats. This is the case with all of them, and none come close to link consensus.

Re: Redirections from your current formats

Yes - the support team can evaluate your existing setup and give you some custom redirects that will ensure whatever format you are using gets send onwards to the new URLs. Hopefully, you have included the ID in your formats (most likely you have). This makes it much easier.

Our sitemap will also help ensure the update process is faster.

Re: Directory names

If you are going to make the changes, then this would be a great time to do a re-evaluation.

However, vBSEO also has a "slugs" feature that allows you to have sub-forums with the same name without having a conflict with URL names. However, it is certainly preferable that each sub-forum has it's own distinct name. Avoid duplication whenever possible.

Re: Root (/) versus /forums/

I prefer to be at root in most cases, particularly for sites that are predominantly focused on the forums, without many other distinct sections. It does help remove one level of depth and bring all of your content up "higher" in the structure.

The support team can help you figure out the best method for you prior to your install. After your purchase, you can open a support ticket to discuss with the team and they'll help figure out a good recommendation for you.

Let me know if I missed anything you wanted to know, or if you have any further questions. I'm excited about getting you vBSEO enabled. I want to see how much of an impact vBSEO is going to make in 30/60/90 days after getting you repaired from the existing rewrite you have in place. I'm expecting big things!

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Re: Redirections from your current formats

Yes - the support team can evaluate your existing setup and give you some custom redirects that will ensure whatever format you are using gets send onwards to the new URLs. Hopefully, you have included the ID in your formats (most likely you have). This makes it much easier.

My rewrite format is "root/forums/forum5.html" "root/forums/thread100.html" etc. will you be able to redirect these if I move the forum to the root and use the slug for category names?

If you are redirecting say "root/forums/thread100.html" to "root/my-category-title/my-post-title/" how does the redirect know what the category is?

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Re: Directory names

If you are going to make the changes, then this would be a great time to do a re-evaluation.

However, vBSEO also has a "slugs" feature that allows you to have sub-forums with the same name without having a conflict with URL names. However, it is certainly preferable that each sub-forum has it's own distinct name. Avoid duplication whenever possible.

So if I have a directory "root/premier-league/ with a blank index.html and a lower level directory "root/premier-league/news/ with some files in it, will I be able to have a forum category "root/premier-league/ and "root/premier-league/my-post-title/?

The only problems I can see is that:

1; I would need to block people from using the title "news" in the premier-league category.
Is that possible without blocking a title like "news-update"?
Alternatively could I block single word titles?

2; Maybe its just not possible to have a directory and catergory with the same url.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Let me know if I missed anything you wanted to know, or if you have any further questions.

In some of my pages I have a very basic script similar to vbexternal that lists the last 10 threads from a category via the vbulletin database, will there be any problem accessing the vbseo urls for this?

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

I'm excited about getting you vBSEO enabled.

Bet you say that to all the forums

If I'm using titles as urls, should I remove hyphen's from existing titles?

2; Maybe its just not possible to have a directory and catergory with the same url.

True. If you have the forum URL set to [forum_title]/ and If a directory exists with the same as a forum title, the real folder/directory will take precedence. Tip: Using ID's (forum ID's, member ID's, etc) in the URL format will eliminate these problems / conflicts to a great extent.

In some of my pages I have a very basic script similar to vbexternal that lists the last 10 threads from a category via the vbulletin database, will there be any problem accessing the vbseo urls for this?

It won't affect. If that script lists the URLs to your forum in the native vBulletin format (like showthread.php?t= and forumdisplay.php?f=), vBSEO will 301 redirect any of those URLs automatically to the new formats you have defined.

Example: I list the 5 latest posts from certain categories, below the blog posts in my blog. (See). And clicking on any of those links, you will be redirected to the correct rewritten URLs.

If I'm using titles as urls, should I remove hyphen's from existing titles?

No. Special characters like $ ? . / etc. are automatically stripped and not included in the URL.

Example threads :
The Fastest Way to $20K with vBSEO - The FireBlades Story
What's vBSEO Features ?! ..

Hi Steven,

It looks like Shadab has done a great job answering your followup questions.

I would also recommend that you choose a URL format that maintains the thread and sub-forum IDs.

Bet you say that to all the forums

You're right. I pretty much do say that to everyone, but it's true. The best part of our job here is when we receive a report that our customers are starting to see their traffic rise!

Yep, I think I'm just about done with my questions.

As you say it would be better to have the forum in the root but because of my other pages it would give me duplicate and or similar names.

I'm taking a look at vbulletin custom pages to see if I can intergrate the rest of my site and then move the forum but because of some complex php scripts it may not work.

Hi Steven,

I would think that if doing the move creates an opportunity for conflicts and other issues with scripts, etc, it is probably best to stay within the /forums/ framework.

You will still achieve link consensus with vBSEO using this setup (many of our customers do so successfully), and you get to avoid the move and the associated problems that might pop up if you do it.

OK finished playing around, the forum is staying where it is.

Just made the purchase, now of for some dinner.

Could you get those redirects to me and I'll get started in an hour or two.

Thanks Joe and Shadab for helping with my questions.

Thanks Joe and Shadab for helping with my questions.

Glad I could be of some help to you.

Hi Steven,

Welcome aboard! Please open a support ticket, and the vBSEO Total Support Team will help you prepare the necessary .htaccess redirects for your forum.

http://www.vbseo.com/support/

Originally Posted by steveneff

OK finished playing around, the forum is staying where it is.

Just made the purchase, now of for some dinner.

Could you get those redirects to me and I'll get started in an hour or two.

Thanks Joe and Shadab for helping with my questions.