copyright removal

Has there been any further thought to allowing the copyright removal? Here is my logic for asking...if I buy vbSEO it is to gain a leg up on my main competitor's board (which is substantially larger). I know that as soon as they see I own it, they will also buy it. Therefore, I have not gained by owning vbSEO.

Hello disco4me,

Changes were applied to our copyright structure in vBSEO 2.0 Gold, Build 2. However, as previously stated, a copyright removal option is not available at this time. This decision may be revisited in the future.

if I buy vbSEO it is to gain a leg up on my main competitor's board (which is substantially larger). I know that as soon as they see I own it, they will also buy it.

With vBSEO, you will generally begin to notice specific threads achieve higher positioning within SERPs. Both you and your competitor should expect to achieve these positive results, even if installing and running vBSEO simultaneously.

For this reason, the benefits of using vBSEO remain even if two competing forums use the product.

Although I have seen the new copyright options, I too feel the need for a copyright removal/branding free option. I have a Vbulletin branding free, my CMS went branding free and so did my forum skins.

However vbseo doesn't provide the same and I too am waiting to hear about an 'upcoming' branding free version if any.

Originally Posted by disco4me

Has there been any further thought to allowing the copyright removal? Here is my logic for asking...if I buy vbSEO it is to gain a leg up on my main competitor's board (which is substantially larger). I know that as soon as they see I own it, they will also buy it. Therefore, I have not gained by owning vbSEO.

Originally Posted by Juan Muriente

Both you and your competitor should expect to achieve these positive results

Juan,

If you can help me to understand the logic of this, it will help me to decide about investing in your product....The idea behind owning vbSEO is to help get a leg up on other cempeting boards in the SEO world. If I invest in your product and

Originally Posted by Juan Muriente

Both you and your competitor should expect to achieve these positive results

where is the advantage if we "both" achieve positive results? I would be investing in the product so that I would gain the positive results and the other board would not. Since the other board is larger, they may even gain better results than my board...and I've been the one to facilitate that process by telling them how I achieved it through the visibility of your copyright. I really do not want to help my competition by telling them how I have achieved what I have achieved. They might figure it out on their own but I don't want to be the one facilitating the process.

I would think this would be a concern of many and I wasn't sure if you had taken this into considersation in your decision not to allow for copyright removal.

Thanks for listening and thanks for your considerations.

I was just about to purchase a copy of the SEO. Glad I kept browsing. I will not purchase anything with a copyright that is "FORCED" to be displayed. The ONLY reason companies do this is advertise their product as it has NO Affect on the legality of copyright.

Many companies try this route and then ALWAYS go the other way. Only "Mom & POP" businesses will stick with it and no one really takes them seriously. Its not customer friendly. In fact, I know a person that buys the software, takes the copyright off anyhow, then puts it in an open directory where thousands of people downlaod and use it illegally. Exactly what the company doesn't want. Only because someone tried to "FORCE" him to advertise.

Just my 2 cents, however you just lost a sale.

Adios,

I am also looking for the option to remove the branding, I would think that vbseo could appear on warez sites if some paid member doesnt realise.

theres no way for you to track or check if they are using vbseo or their own hack.

I agree, perhaps an added $50, or since you are starting out, make it $100 extra for copyright removal and then as you gain more customers, downgrade the price tag of the copyright removal. Vbulletin allows this and it brings in extra money.

dam man, I so wana buy this but the copyright thing I don't like, could you please let us know if you will be introducing the option or not?

In the SEO world, not letting people know your secrets is crucial. I am confident that vbSEO knows this. They are very careful not to let their secret get out by using Zend, callbacks, etc. That's ok, as it's there product and they can do whatever they want. However, I don't think they really care either about whether their product is a secret for the customer. Thus they include the copyright notice that advertises to your competitors what you are doing. Perhaps the underground will advertise their code someday and they'll know how it feels.

It is true that having a vbseo copyright notice will completely expose what you are doing with your site. This is very dangerous. Competitors will see this and most likely will buy vbSEO in order to catch up or be competitive. This is also something vbSEO knows very well and has obviously worked into their marketing plan. It's actually smart, because they want to sell their product. It's all about money isn't if folks?

I work in a very competitive successful firm in California. We would love to use vbSEO because it would make our "manual" seo job so much easier. However, with vbSEO links all over the place it will only be a matter of time before people catch on and everyone will be using it. With that in mine, vbSEO may have a product that will no longer be beneficial in the long run. Short term, vbSEO is great until everyone catches on...and they will.

We actually export our forum databases to excel and create HTML pages using other tools. It does the same thing as vbSEO in terms of getting pages on the internet and ranked well. The great thing is, we don't have to worry about being branded to death so our competitors are in the dark. Plus it's free and not all that much work really.

My point is this. If you aren't worried about the copyright notice, you should be if you are trying to be competitive in the SEO market. vbSEO is merely a short term solution until everyone catches on. In the meantime, my hats of to the team at vbSEO for beating all the other vbulletin coders to the punch and making perhaps a ton of money in the beginning here. Enjoy it as my prediction is it won't last long.

Good Luck!

I hope you are right! The price is too much for a hack or add on. $50 at most is all it's worth.

excellent point who ever made it, thats what I thouht, its free advertising for them even though we pay out $149.

what stops someone from keeing the .htaccess file and making the changes to all the links them selfs, I know my self I could not do the .htaccess part only the links in the templates and php I could.

so I would if I wanted grab the .htaccess file, remove the script and edit the links my self and retain no copyright,, since the .htaccess file would be very hard to copyright, and vbseo creaters would have to email the host to check the .htaccess file and prove its their own file.

I suggest you introduce the branding free options, as it would be your undoing if you do not.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

excellent point who ever made it, thats what I thouht, its free advertising for them even though we pay out $149.

what stops someone from keeing the .htaccess file and making the changes to all the links them selfs, I know my self I could not do the .htaccess part only the links in the templates and php I could.

so I would if I wanted grab the .htaccess file, remove the script and edit the links my self and retain no copyright,, since the .htaccess file would be very hard to copyright, and vbseo creaters would have to email the host to check the .htaccess file and prove its their own file.

I suggest you introduce the branding free options, as it would be your undoing if you do not.

Actually, as I have a copy of VBSEO running on my forum, I can tell you that having access to the .htaccess file, and even the code for the VB plugin would be of no use to you at all. VBSEO does not use a simple .htaccess system to rewrite the URL's.

Folks, I've copy/pasted part of my response to a similar question (posted recently) below:

A few people have expressed their concerns that displaying vBSEO's copyright would allow their competitors to follow suit by installing vBSEO as well.

I'll take this opportunity to post some thoughts regarding this:

vBSEO being used by competing sites will not render it ineffective. This is equivalent to saying that all blogs powered by Wordpress will eventually fail because the software provides good out-of-the-box SEO characteristics. Forums running vBSEO will be better positioned to harness SEO traffic.

SEO for any site is directly related to content. For forums, specifically, it is a thread-per-thread thing. Each thread, no matter for which site, has the opportunity to rank higher with vBSEO or other SEO efforts in general. To have your competitor rank higher for specific threads, a competitor would basically need to *craft* threads, thread titles and content within these. The nature of free speech (individuality) of people posting in forums makes this virtually impossible.

A branding-free version desirable? Several of our customers have been requesting this option. While it is not available at present, please rest assured we will make it available sometime in the near future.

Originally Posted by Juan Muriente

vBSEO being used by competing sites will not render it ineffective.

My initial point was that if I add vbSEO to my site, I don't want to point out to my competition how he can improve his site also. Obviously, my competitor having vbSEO will not render my vbSEO ineffective. However, my competitor having it "also" will take away some of the advantage of me having it exclusively.

I'm glad to see the copyright free version will be added in the future but the other side of the coin is, it will make vbSEO that much more expensive for me to consider.

I was just about to order this until I read:

"Modify and/or remove any copyright notices or labels that vBSEO™ places on each page of your vBulletin™ forums."

:/ WHY?! lol