Should we wait to install vBSEO before we launch our new vB forum?

[Psalmist]

We're ready to launch our new vB forum. Our budget should allow us to add vBSEO later this month.

Is it just as well to add it later?

Or should we postpone the launch of our new forum until we have vBSEO installed?

[Philipp Herbers]

Hey,

If you start your forum without vBSEO the search engines will re-index your forum pages since the URL will have changed. As this takes some time, I'd recommend you to add vBSEO right from the start to make sure that the vBSEOd URLs are indexed.

[Joe Ward]

Since your forum is new the re-indexing process will be quick if vBSEO is installed only 1 month after your forum gets created.

Whenever possible for our customers, we do recommend that vBSEO gets installed as early as possible. Ideal is right from launch.

But I understand you may be eager to get started. You will not experience any greatly adverse effects if your forum starts 1 month before getting vBSEO-enabled.

[Joe Ward]

Hi Psalmist - have you made a decision whether you will install vBSEO from the beginning, or wait until you have been running for a few months?

[Psalmist]

Hi Joe, to answer your question, well first of all actually we already have a running site, a chat site (which does not have a forum). The problem with a chat site (if all the chatting is done in real time through a chat app) is that the search engines don't see any of the "content" (which in this case is all the real time chatting), and you know the search engines like to see fresh content. So we're adding a forum so that in addition to the real time chat there will also be ongoing "forum chat", which will serve as regular fresh content that the search engines will see and index. Basically, we're redoing the whole site in such a way that the new site will simply be a customization of vBulletin (installed in root), with our chat app integrated. And since one of our primary purposes is SEO, naturally we'll want to go the whole way and add vBSEO to our new setup.

Actually we're trying to launch the new site today, within hours. Budget did not permit purchasing vBSEO before launch, but Lord willing we'll have vBSEO purchased and installed later next week (just days after launch). Thanks for the guidance.

Best regards

[Joe Ward]

Well - welcome aboard. Let us know if you have any questions and we will help you out.

Great idea moving to the forum. You're right. Your chat application was probably really busy, but the forum allows you to turn a bunch of it into user generated content. And that is what will really help your site grow.