Do I really need it?

Okay... the obvious answer coming from you guys would probably be yes, of course. lol

This is what I'm looking for. My partner and I have created a new home theater forum Home Theater Shack - Forums for Home Theater Discussion ... Official Home of the BFD Guide and Room EQ Wizard and I wanna compete with the big boys like hometheater.com, avsforum.com, and hometheaterspot.com. They are really the big boards of home theater.

What I don't know is if search engines are even the right way to attract new members. We actually have a pretty good attraction as it is, being we have about 500 members in less than a month... but we need to attract more of the members who will be interested in posting. My partner and I had informational sites that we had established for many years prior to developing the forum. We incorporated these sites into the forum and require registration prior to downloading certain files, such as the Room EQ Wizard software that works with the BFD, which is a subwoofer parametric equalizer that has been the bomb in the home theater world for about 5 years now. I authored the BFD Guide which is a very detailed and comprehensive guide to setting up and using the BFD to equalize your sub. In a little over a year that we've had our counter installed on the BFD Guide we have had over 72,000 hits. So... we are bringing in people interested in those two items and not charging anything for them. We don't want to charge. Everything is free!

Lot's of members come there simply to download the REW software and certain files we've developed to help with the BFD and REW. They get what they need and go away. We need someway of building content so they will hang around. In order to build content we need members who will stick.

So... again, I'm not really sure if SEO is what we need or not. Is it possible to for any of you guys to glance at our site and tell me if SEO will really help us. We eventually want to grow big so that we can generate some advertising dollars and pay for the little bit we've spent, which hasn't been much thus far. More time than anything else.

I simply need some honest direction... if I'm posting the wrong things are asking in the wrong place... please forgive me.

Many thanks in advance!
Sonnie

Why not require that you have to register in order to obtain access to the BFD Manual and the REW software too, and within this require that also newly registered users make 5 posts before being allowed access. This way you can help at least build on your community and encourage interaction as well.

For something with so many product names, model numbers, and technical information, SEO should be considered a very big factor.

Try promoting your DVD or future contests as heavily in the header of your site template as you do with the BFD Guide and software.

Consider adding new forums that will generate a lot of interesting content and/or discussion and start them off with some exciting threads (controversial, fun, etc.). Consider DVD reviews or a forum that tracks the best deals in equipment found on the web, etc. You should send out a newsletter to members to remind them of the latest info posted and encourage them to visit you again and to post.

If you can get your ad revenue started, sponsoring monthly contests is a good idea to continue.

Originally Posted by Michael

Why not require that you have to register in order to obtain access to the BFD Manual and the REW software too, and within this require that also newly registered users make 5 posts before being allowed access. This way you can help at least build on your community and encourage interaction as well.

We felt like requiring people to register and/or have a minimum number of posts would possibly cause more harm than good with the members. I lot people own the BFD already and may have changed systems... they are right in the middle of setting it up with their new system and get hung up. They immediate jump on the computer and head to the guide to get that piece of info they are missing so that they can get right back to getting their unit set back up. If they were to hit a wall of some sort, especially having to make a certain number of posts, I can only imagine they would get extremely upset and probably just make some sarcastic posts simply to get their minimum posts. Plus, my partner is fairly set on allowing people to view the info without any hiccups whatsoever and only require registration and login for certain downloadable files.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

For something with so many product names, model numbers, and technical information, SEO should be considered a very big factor.

Excuse my hillbilly ignorance but I'm not quite following you. Can you elaborate?

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Try promoting your DVD or future contests as heavily in the header of your site template as you do with the BFD Guide and software.

You mean like create a button for it similar to the two that are up there now? I could do that no problem. Maybe have the button link to the thread I suppose. Thanks for that idea.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Consider adding new forums that will generate a lot of interesting and/or discussion and start them off with some exciting threads (controversial, fun, etc.). Consider DVD reviews or a forum that tracks the best deals in equipment found on the web, etc. You should send out a newsletter to members to remind them of the latest info posted and encourage them to visit you again and to post.

This has been a tough one. We've considered breaking the categories down some, but ALL of our mods and a few people from vBulletin that scoped out our layout thought that we should keep the categories lumped together until we get more content. It supposedly makes the overall forum look busier. I can't think of any new categories other than breaking down the current ones further. Like for instance, Speakers could be broken down into Speakers and Subwoofers. This will probably be our first major break up since the BFD and REW is all about eq'ing the sub. One of the biggest and most popular sub manufacturers is giving us a sub to give away just because they want to see our site succeed. They are extremely heavy participants in several of the big daddy AV forums and they suggested that I not get too many categories to start with. It seems that a lot of people don't want to go to a forum and see that most of the threads in a forum haven't had responses is so long. One of the owners explained it to me but I can't remember what he was tellling me... but he's been involved in forums for a long time and sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

On DVD reviews. I think those will get started here pretty soon. We've got a few mods who claim they are going to get us up some reviews shortly. If not then we'll have to get some mods that will.



I think I like the idea of vBSEO and I believe I could install it okay. The part I'm not sure of is actually getting my keywords placed correctly in the various pages.

Is there a way that I can find out what keywords are searched for that lead searchers to the bigger forums?

I ran a few keywords through some difficulty generator and they all came back "Easy" as far as chances of getting the page using those keywords to rank #1 on Google. Those words were "home theater" and "home theater forum" and "home theater forums", but I have no idea if those are the right words to even shoot for. Searching for "bfd guide" or "room eq wizard" already have us at the top.

I suppose I need to look into the vBSEO program a little deeper. I fret spending this money and not getting any positive results.

Sonnie

What the heck... I bit the bullet and purchased it. It just sounds like it will be good.

Where can I get help with .htaccess? I've read a few sites on it but just can't seem to understand it and if I even need it. I have Hotlink Protection through my Control Panel... is this the same thing?

It's a good purchase My site has been open a week, and i'm already pulling #1 results on search engines for some keywords..... and I have a whopping 50 posts on my board. lol

.htaccess tells the server (apache) how to handel stuff. Be it permissions, or calling apache functions like mod_rewrite.

if you used cPANEL to prevent hotlinking, it should have written an .htaccess file to your site root. example.com/.htaccess

ftp that file to your machine, and open it in notepad/save it locally.
delete the file from the server.
upload the included .htaccess.txt file that comes with vbseo. Rename it so it's not .txt anymore
chmod it to 777.
install vbseo, making all your changes, etc.
open the .htaccess file
paste in the rules from the cpanel version that you saved locally at the bottom of the .htaccess file.

that should do it.

Welcome aboard Sonnie.

My comment about technical information:

When you have a forum that provided information about home entertainment systems, there will be model numbers and product names that people will talk about. If you can get good positioning in the search engines for such product names, you can generate a lot of traffic to your site. While vBSEO is a must-have for any vBulletin powered forum, you (in particular) should result in getting a lot more traffic for specific product related searches.

Well low in behold I do have a .htaccess file in my root directory. I had to show dot files to see it.

Once I get vBSEO installed I may need a little more guidance on what to do. I am a bonafide country redneck hillbilly that gets easily confused with this stuff. I'm in the wee early learning stage... still wearing diapers, so to speak.

1. So delete this one on the server and upload that included .htaccess.txt file in vBSEO and rename it to take the .txt off the end... got that part.

2. chmod it to 777... easy enough.

3. After installing vBSEO I'll open up the new .htaccess file that I uploaded earlier and copy and paste the info below in that new .htaccess file.

Here's the info in my current .htaccess file (should I show this?):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://hometheatershack.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://hometheatershack.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.bfdguide.ws/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.bfdguide.ws$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.hometheatershack.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.hometheatershack.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.hometheatershack.com/bfdguide/index.html/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.hometheatershack.com/bfdguide/index.html$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/index.html/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/index.html$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.snapbug.ws/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.snapbug.ws$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.vbulletin.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.vbulletin.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp|xls|mpeg|mp3.txt|req|mda t)$ http://hometheatershack.com/display.html [R,NC]

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Welcome aboard Sonnie.

My comment about technical information:

When you have a forum that provided information about home entertainment systems, there will be model numbers and product names that people will talk about. If you can get good positioning in the search engines for such product names, you can generate a lot of traffic to your site. While vBSEO is a must-have for any vBulletin powered forum, you (in particular) should result in getting a lot more traffic for specific product related searches.

Thanks Joe!

You mean like "Denon" or "Yamaha" or "SVS", and even more detailed like "Denon 3806" , "SVS PB12-Plus/2" , and "Velodyne DD-15"... specific model numbers, etc.

But how can I optimize for so many different keywords as these? I'm putting together a Manufacturer's Link right now and just got through the A's and B's thus far. There are literally thousands of manufacturers and hundreds of thousands of models.

Exactly. But you don't need to optimize for these specifically. vBSEO will do that for you. The threads that you or your members create about these topics will naturally generate traffic for you.

Consider creating a forum called "Member Equipment List". Then contact all of your forum members and ask them to list their set-ups and gear. This would be one start to getting those product names into your forum. Of course, you'll do better when the product names are actually in the title of the threads.

That's a great idea. I might do it as a sub-forum below the Gallery | Custom Installation forum. Then ask members to be specific with the model numbers.

This would be a good way to search for a product and find out what members own what so that another member might propose a question directly to the owners of that product.

You're good Joe!

Hello Sonnie,

Here's the info in my current .htaccess file (should I show this?):

You can just get the contents of .htaccess file from vBSEO package and put it to the bottom of your existing .htaccess, and it should work correctly.

Cool... thanks!

Hey Joe...

On the "Member Equipment Listing" forum that you suggested.... if I have "Disallow: /showpost.php" in my robots.txt file, will those threads or posts with the equipment listings be indexed by the bots?

I do not have "showthreads.php" in the robots.txt file.

Having that disallow could affect the 301 redirects. I would suggest removing it.