Optimum Settings for newbies?

Hi guys, great mod, just 1 small question before I buy - is there a thread/article/manual which tells you the optimum settings for vBSEO if you have no idea whatsoever how to do it yourself?!

I run a wholesale business forum if that helps.

Hey Jason,

Once vBSEO is installed you'll be able to choose from a couple of setups, which are working fine in (nearly) all cases.

Take a look at the announcement of vBSEO 3.0 GOLD, if you like

NEW FEATURE: URL Rewrite Settings - vBSEO, since its earliest release, has always provided complete flexibility in determining your URL format, used our advanced configuration options. In fact, there are over 130 different configuration options!

URL rewriting not only adds relevant keywords to your forum URLs, but also consolidates multiple (different) URLs into ONE URL FOR EACH UNIQUE PAGE, canonicalizing all your forum pages for increased relevancy.

Having one URL per resource structure in place enhances your forum's internal linking structure by creating a network of fully consistent links that allow search engines to properly find and index your site's unique content.

A consistent link structure also ensures incoming links ALWAYS "create value" by pointing to main content pages and never to secondary or duplicate entries, thus increasing relevancy for your core content with each linkback (links posted by users in external sites) to your forum.

The results will be significant SEO improvements for all aspects of search engine interaction including (1) crawling, (2) indexing, and (3) ranking.

While our default URL Rewriting options are often all that you will need for your forum, how to achieve a certain type of URL structure is a common question among our customers.

Now, with our new "Select Your Forum URLs Global Format" feature, you can choose one of your favorite vBSEO URL Rewrite presets and have it fully active in seconds, with all 130+ configuration options predetermined for you.

Currently, 5 presets are included for you to select from:

1. Default vBSEO Settings
2. www.vBSEO.com URL style settings
3. www.WebmasterWorld.com URL style settings
4. www.DaniWeb.com URL style settings
5. www.vBulletinZone.com URL style settings
6. www.vBulletinSetup.com URL style settings

You can select the default or checkout the forums located at each of the sites (option 2 through 5) to indicate which you prefer.

To do so, simply select your desired preset from the dropdown menu, and click the Load Preset button to complete the process. All of your custom settings will be replaced with the 130+ configurations needed to achieve the selected preset URL Rewrite style.

Unfortunately the same question here, really clueless without a manual here. Anybody want to recommend settings for Game-Artist.net ?

Cheers

There's no recommendation because they all work and they all have their limitations.

using titles:
pros: keywords in the url
cons: changing the title changes the url, possible duplicate issues requires you to also use an id for best compatibility

using ids:
pros: faster/less load, url won't change
cons: no keywords in url

using ids + titles:
pros: speed of just titles, keywords in url, no duplicate issues to worry about
cons: long urls, kinda funny looking, load of titles still inherit.

.html vs / is really whatever you want. there's no solid proof either way which indexes better, so long as its in the same hierarchy.



Seo is a long process of trial and error.

unless you really know what you're doing, i'd recommend using one of the 5 presets. otherwise, you may end up with weird issues or pages that don't work.