SEO

I run a large and successful forum. I'm worried that changing all the links on the forum will lead to a loss of the high google ranks and placements the forum has gained over the years. I'd therefore like to use vbseo in a couple of sections only on my forum (not all the forum sections). Is there an option to do so or does it have to be the whole forum?


Second question; I run LiteSpeed Web Server and it does not support htaccess. Is vbSEO compatable with LiteSpeed Web Server and if so, does that mean httacess is not necessary?

Thanks in advance

No, it's 'all or nothing'.
don't fear your links... All the old links will still work.
as an example, this thread

is really
copy paste that into a new window and watch what happens
All old urls are 301'ed to the new resource.

vbseo supports lightspeed. it uses the same htaccess rules.
see the read me area on other webservers
http://www.vbseo.com/readme.html

Trust us, you'll want to rewrite all the URL's for your forum. They'll continue to recieve more bennefit and increased rankings in the search engine. And after you get your settings how you want them, like briansol said, all the old URL's will 301 redirect to the new ones.

Thanks for your reply guys

Well this is my fourm:
Canada's Shopping Bargains, Freebies, Deals, Offers, Flyers, Coupons, and Contests Forum

I'm a bit concerned about Google getting 500,000 301 redirects at once. Can this be done incrementally?



Sorry one more question
Some thread titles are very long. This will caused the SEO'ed url to be way too long and google doesn't like that. Did you guys address this issue?

Our sitemap will help alert Google of the major change and they should begin a fast paced re-indexing in most cases.

The 301s will ensure that any traffic getting sent to the old format will still arrive at your site as usual, while Google continues its process of updating the index.

We cannot do it incrementally, although Google will actually proceed incrementally on its own. That is, it will ready your sitemap fully and be aware that it needs to re-crawl all pages, but it will do so over time, with large groups of URLs processed during major crawling sessions.

We do have a URL clipping feature, allowing you to specify the maximum length of URLs. This is not commonly used by our customers, and I have even heard some customers reporting that they had better performance without it enabled, so it would not be a part of my recommendations for you at this time.

However, if you are considered about long URLs do to long thread titles on your forum, then you might consider using a URL structure that does not include keywords in the URL, such as:

/forum keywords/t1.html or
/forum keywords/t1/ or even
/f1/t1.html

The important thing to realize is that establishing link consensus is far more important than having keywords in the URL, so even using a format without keywords, you still take advantage of vBSEO, especially its power in boosting long tail search results for you.

Pin the Tail on the SEO Donkey (with Link Consensus)!

What is the Search Long Tail? - vBulletin SEO Forums

Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

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I'm a fan of the f1/t1/ format myself! Seems to be getting great results at a clients site i've used to test it with and I think i may launch all forums ith that format from now on!

But good luck with your vBSEO enabled forums, you won't regret it.

Yup. Id's only is the best way, as outlined in my ultimate guide.