Converting from IPB with IPBSEO (CommunitySEO)

Hello,

I'm in the process of migrating our IPB forum to vBulletin.

We currently use IPBSEO from CommunitySEO.

My question is: As we have used IPBSEO for a long time, our Web site/Forum is listed heavily in Google and other search engines using the URL's and configuration provided by IPBSEO.

As IPBSEO converts the URL's quite heavily from the standard IPB URL's, changing software will certainly change these URL's again.

Is there any way vBSEO is able to pick up where IPBSEO left off?

Once we have converted from IPB to vBulletin I am concerned that all my URL's are going to become "Dead URL's" on the search engines which is obviously going to hit us pretty massively.

I'd appreciate some help with this.

Thanks,

Tom

Hi Tom,

vBSEO is configurable, so it's likely than we can provide you with a closely matching version of your existing URL structure.

The only problem would be that the thread or forum IDs would be different, in which case the URLs will not be the same even if in the same format.

The good thing is that if you are making the switch to vBulletin, vBSEO in combination with our vBSEO sitemap will help accelerate the re-indexing process.

Also, since you will need to do an update, you might even consider choosing a better URL Rewrite format from either a vBSEO preset option, or a custom configuration.

Hi Joe,

Many thanks for the response.

I'm concerned about the reindexing part the be honest - Though I can appreciate we would be re-crawled, we've worked hard to get "first results" on Google et al with our keywords...Losing that would be a disaster.

Would it be likely that we would lose high ranking placements? And if so, would switching to vBSEO allow us to regain our position(s)?

Tom

How big is your long tail?

Are you ranking prominently for just a few terms, or many terms?
Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

In the case of high ranking for particular pages, you could setup custom redirects specifically for those pages to make sure it's a redirection instead of just a rediscovery.

Interesting! Nice article.

We target a combination of 4 terms "[keyword] clubs in [city]"

The first keyword, we utilise several all of which produce our site as we'd want.

One last question if I may:

With regards to the URL's that Google etc has listed for us - Will these simply become dead pages/404's in the search bots eyes or is there a way to make them appear valid with vbseo?

I noted the following in one of your articles:

"And keep in mind that you should have a 301 redirect in place on your site that ensures that any traffic coming in to the old location is instantly forwarded to the new location."

Couldn't a 301 redirect be used on the old IPB SEO'd URL's and point them at the new vBulletin SEO'd URL's?

Thanks again,

Tom

Unfortunately Impex does not keep the thread id's same because threads can be deleted and impex has to reorder them during import process. However as impex keeps imported thread ids and a custom hack can be prepared which will allow you to 301 redirect imported ids to new thread ids. As far as i remember Jerry prepared a hack similar to this. 404 / 301 after import redirect on import ids - vBulletin.org Forum