Starting new forum with vb/vbseo vs free solution then conversion

[Johnny5]

Hi everyone,

I am considering starting a new board and was wondering how much better you think it would be to start with vb/vbseo from scratch as opposed to starting with something free and waiting to convert when/if the thing takes off? I suspect it would be a long, long time before it recouped the license fees, if it ever did. At the same time, though, I wouldn't start it to begin with if some part of me didn't suspect it would have some potential. I guess the question is, with all other things being equial, how much more likely to succeed, and how much faster, is a forum that starts off with "guns blazing" (vb/vbseo) than a forum using, say, phpbb?

[Joe Ward]

Johnny - please do not use a free solution. You are better off using standard vBulletin than using a non-vBSEO plugin for your SEO. We are the only professional team doing this full time. We are the only ones who got it right, and I would hate to see you sacrifice your success by making a mistake right from the beginning.

It is always preferred to have vBSEO installed from the beginning. SEO optimization right out of the gate is going to give you the best growth rate you can get. However, if the budget it not available immediately, vBSEO will still help re-index your site and still provide its optimization benefits.

So you can start with vBSEO (preferred) or wait until later. However, you should NOT install a free solution.

It's up to you how to proceed. You should try to pick your forum topic so that you believe you can actually build an ad revenue stream quickly. Go into it thinking you "can" and "will" make money with it. You just have to be committed to putting some time into it, and making attempts to improve. For instance, there are lots of things you can and should do other than just installing vBSEO. We touch on *some* of the other aspects here:
Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First

If you pick a really great topic that is focused, with an original take, and you seed it with great content and keep it active, it would be hard for you not to do well.

We have customers who sell a forum and within a few months already have something new back up with 1,000 hits a day! There is a success formula out there if you look for it and vBSEO is a big part of that formula.

[Johnny5]

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate your response. I suppose anything worth doing is worth doing right.

[Joe Ward]

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate your response. I suppose anything worth doing is worth doing right.

Another way to think of it Johnny is how fast you expect to create content right away. If you plan to do a quick start and really get it moving, then it's even more important for that early SEO.

If you plan to start it up and just let it grow slowly waiting for the content to come from the users, then that could buy you a few months buffer until the content starts building up.

But you're right. If it were me, I would do it right from the start.

What's the new topic you are thinking of?

[Johnny5]

Thanks, Joe. I've just purchased another vBulletin license and a vbseo license will follow shortly. Do you think Google will count it against me at all if I start a forum on one server/ip and then move it to another a few months later?

[briansol]

Yup, do it right the first time.

And no, don't worry about moving IP's. I've moved providers tons of times and never had any issues with indexes.

[Joe Ward]

The only major worries I had about IPs were when I used to build networks of interlinking affiliate sites, and I wanted them all hosting on different IPs/geo locations to make them appear unrelated (i.e. not owned or hosted by the same person).

But moving service providers is so common, it would not make sense to penalize for it.

[Johnny5]

Thank you, Brian and Joe. That brings me to another question, would it be alright to just put the new forum on the same server with my existing forums if I plan on linking to the new forum from the existing ones? Or would I lose much love Google otherwise would have given the new forum if they weren't on the same ip?

[Joe Ward]

That is a very good question. I will have to research that. That is something I would have avoided in the past, but I was running about 20 sites with massive interlinking.

The sites should still be related (by topic) of course, if you do link them.

[Joe Ward]

Check out this resource:
Are Your Websites Sitting On The Same Server? Search Engine Optimization Journal - SEO and Search Engine Marketing Blog

I did this search:
seo hosting sites on the same server - Google Search

[Johnny5]

Thanks, Joe. The answer in the first link is the one I was afraid I'd hear. Where the sites aren't in the same niche, maybe it's not worth the trouble/cost of getting them on different ips? How does one assess just how much the link juice lost by keeping sites on the same server is worth?

You suggest only linking the forums if they are topically related, but I see many sites with links in the form of ads for unrelated topics. Do you think, for example, that having a small link to a travel site from a gaming site (topically unrelated) can be bad?

[briansol]

I host ALL of my sites on the same IP (even though i have 6). There are plenty of cross-links on it to other threads, etc.

All of my sites are indexed very well thanks to vbseo.


Perhaps a link from a new b-class range will be worth a little more, but the link is still a link that will get followed and thus your site will get indexed.

[Johnny5]

Thanks, Brian. That is encouraging. I just found this where it appears Matt Cutts spoke to the issue

November 13, 2006 @ 8:42 pm

Myth busting: virtual hosts vs. dedicated IP addresses

In pertinent part, Matt Cutts affirmed Craig Silverstein's (Google’s Director of Technology) answer to the question below and said that such link discounting is a myth. Of course, who knows what really goes on behind the scenes...

With ip addresses becoming harder to get/justify every day why does google discount the relevance of links that don’t come from a unique ip address.

As I've often thought and was recently reminded by Joe Ward, don't they already have your number if the domains are in the same AdSense, Analytics, and Webmaster Tools accounts, anyhow?