SEO

Hi there

I eventually arrived here at vbSEO after seeing it mentioned many times on vbulletin.org. I have often thought of looking into it but never got around to it. Now that I am using an ad network to place adverts on the site I am looking at ways to generate more pageviews.

My sites topic is Australian Speedway, the dirt track kind. Currently it is the largest of it's kind in Australia. We can be found at AustralianSpeedway.com Community Forums - yup, one of those dreaded subdomains! The forum has been running now for about 6 years and has mostly been funded out of my back pocket with help from site subscriptions. In the off season we consume around 70GB bandwidth per month, in the on season we top 120Gb+ per month with pageviews ranging from 800,000+ to 1,500,000+ per month.

The root level of the site is at AustralianSpeedway.com and that currently only hosts a single index page as a placeholder for a real front end. I have been threatening for years to put something there and will eventually use a Drupal product, be it Drupal itself or a derivative like vbDrupal.

I also run a Photopost gallery on the site, integrated with vBulletin but also with it's own subdomain - R.O.F. Memorial Gallery - Main Index - Powered by PhotoPost. BTW, I use subdomains to allow separate reporting on visitors/bandwidth. Oh, and I would much rather run a different gallery if I could ever figure out how to convert from Photopost to say Gallery2. But that is another topic.....

I have never "advertised" the site as such with most users finding it either via word-of-mouth or search engines.

My question for the vbSEO people is.... would it be beneficial to install vbSEO at this late date (6+years after first launch) and could I really see that much of an improvement in visits given the fact that the site is very focused in it's audience. What for example would be the impact of the advertising currently running on the site on vbSEO and how would I go about improving things in general and by using vbSEO.

One last thing. What sort of impact does using vbSEO have on the server and bandwidth. As mentioned above, we go through a fair swag of bandwidth per month and it could get scary if that skyrocketed!

Any and all thoughts welcome

Cheers
Bruce Nordstrand
Owner: AustralianSpeedway.com

Have a look in my sig for the ultimate vbseo guide you're in a PERFECT position to follow it to the "T" and have great results.

I would suggest removing it from the subdomain though. More details in that link. Being that you are moving everything anyway, its the best (if not only) time to do it... right when you install vbseo.

It's never too late to install vbseo. I suggest doing it ASAP.
EXPECT a month or so of decline while google works its magic re-arranging your links and positions. Shortly there after, you should see a great increase in SE traffic.

If your site is mostly word of mouth now, and not too much SE traffic, you have absolutely nothing to lose.


vBSEO is a search engine optimizer. it has little to do with advertising, other than the fact that you'll get more guest visits. Guests tend to be the money makers (94% of my daily income is from non-members).

As for server resources... if you're under 1 load now, you will be fine. vbseo DOES use some server resources. I've found it bumped me about .2 average in load. bandwidth, is unchanged.

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Who should I host with?

Thanks Brian

I will check out your guide and also cruise around the forum here to get a feel for what needs to be done. I admit I have procrastinated far too long with the site and need to get the ole A-into-G and make it star working for me, instead of the other way round.

Cheers
Bruce

Bruce,

You have come to the right place. As Brian said, it's a great time to get enabled. Whether 6 days old, or 6 years old your forum is going to benefit from improved SEO.

As you mentioned, it's largely about the pageviews. There are really only 2 ways to boost that. Get more traffic, and make the traffic more sticky (i.e. more pages per visit on average).

I think you'll have great benefit from vBSEO especially if you follow Brian's guide and also check into our recommendations:

Briansol's Ultimate Guide to vBSEO

Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First

Re: Bandwidth

With our HTML comments stripping and removal of unnecessary pages, I think you may even find that your bandwidth may be reduced significantly.

However, when vBSEO starts delivering results for you, it becomes unavoidable that masses of new visitors will lead to greater bandwidth consumption. Fortunately, it also leads to increased revenues which gives you the flexibility and financial capability to do what you have to, i.e. a bigger web hosting package to accomodate, a dedicated server, or even multiple servers once you grow to that level.

Remember to check out any thread on this forum where Brian helps with ad optimization. You'll find that you can boost your revenue this way, even without adding a single additional visitor! It's pure gold.

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