vBulletin SEO - is it worth it ?

I run a fairly busy forum, where I could use a better Google rank, I´ve looked into vBSEO before, but I have heard some concerns about the software, seems like vBulletin themselves don´t recommend it for different reasons, mainly vBulletin support had much work repairing databases and some say that server resources will increase - concerns about Hostgator has been reported.

Has there been done any documentation regarding a higher Google rank and/or better search engine placement after installing vBSEO ?

Thanks

vbseo wont change your google PR, it will however focus the bots on the quality content on your forums

Over time, you will see page rank flowing into your sub forum and thread pages, but more importantly think of it as the invisible "link value" that is achieved with link consensus and external link building. Focus more on that than your actual PageRank (visible in the Google Toolbar).

From: No Pagerank except on forumhome

More detailed info here:
Taking full advantage of vBSEO

vBSEO doesnt touch any regular vBulletin database tables therefore there is no way that vBSEO can harm your vBulletin database.

that's a false statement.

it alters the thread table for linkabcks, among other things

Hello and welcome to vBSEO,

Thank-you for expressing your concerns, it is very important for us as it helps us straighten misconceptions and/or confirm them when they do exist.

Originally Posted by wii

seems like vBulletin themselves don´t recommend it for different reasons, mainly vBulletin support had much work repairing databases

Would you care to share the source of this information?

I've never seen a report of vBSEO damaging a vBulletin database. %95 of vBSEO's interaction with vBulletin is non-intrusive to it's database, or core processes. It's also this characteristic which accounts for vBSEO's easy upgrades and instant compatibility across new vBulletin releases.

Originally Posted by wii

some say that server resources will increase - concerns about Hostgator has been reported.

IF a server is working near its full capacity, vBSEO will increase resource usage, for most forums the overhead is negligible. FYI the most trafficked vBulletin forum in the world uses vBSEO.

Originally Posted by wii

Has there been done any documentation regarding a higher Google rank and/or better search engine placement after installing vBSEO ?

As with anything SEO, anecdotal evidence is all you'll be able to find. Why? No conclusive tests can be made on environments you can't control. The web is not a controlled environment. Luckily, with vBSEO the anecdotal evidence is pretty overwhelming.

SEO gives you a real edge there's no doubt about it, and companies knowing it spend millions and millions of dollars optimizing their sites. vBSEO applies a load of accepted SEO best practices to your vBulletin forum for a fraction of that.

As one of our customers once said: "I know what good SEO is, and vBSEO (and their other products like sitemap, etc.) takes care of 95% of it".

I'm looking forward to getting you on-board and vBSEO enabled.

That was my take too, sort of. The cost is negligible, pretty much free in my book. My concern was also the potential to damage any existing traffic or rankings. Im not implying it would or can, rather asking "if" it has been known to?

all old content is 301'ed to the new url's, so you won't lose incoming traffic from old links.

Well, I´ve been following serveral vBSEO discussions on vBulletin, it´s clear that some of the vBulletin developers are not so happy about VBSEO, I will try to find those posts for you later.

I´m on a shared hosting with Hostgator, my forum runs very well, but I read posts that users on Hostgator had problems after installing vBSEO, because of the added resource usage, other concerns are also whether this will work with non-latin characters, and if there´s no turning back ? I mean, what if I regret this and want to turn if back to default vBulletin links, is this possible at all ?

Would be cool, if this could be tested on a liveforum of mine, and then see if it really gets more traffic than before, I do understand that it takes many months to actually see a change.

Originally Posted by wii

I´m on a shared hosting with Hostgator, my forum runs very well, but I read posts that users on Hostgator had problems after installing vBSEO, because of the added resource usage, other concerns are also whether this will work with non-latin characters, and if there´s no turning back ? I mean, what if I regret this and want to turn if back to default vBulletin links, is this possible at all ?

As with any shared hosting, if the server is already close to its limit, adding a piece of software such as vBSEO can cause additional load issues. We have a list of optimisations and options that can be turned off to lower the resource usage.

Would be cool, if this could be tested on a liveforum of mine, and then see if it really gets more traffic than before, I do understand that it takes many months to actually see a change.

That's correct, SEO is not an instant thing, it does take time. As with vBulletin, we provide all licensed members with the ability to run the software in a test installation. You can also try out the demo at www.vbseo.com/demo (to see the control panel and all of the options.)

I've removed the message above and sent via PM as to prevent confusion among community members.

Thanks, I will get back to you.

But do we agree that if I use VBSEO, I can´t turn back ? All the new links that it generates will no longer work if I decide not to use it anymore ?

Your previous links will change back to default vBulletin format. Any websites that have these modified links would point to missing pages.

But this is default behavior, and using standard mod rewrite it is quite easy to ensure the old archived links will redirect to the vBulletin formatted ones.

You can revert the default vBSEO URL rewrites by adding the following rules to your .htaccess file:

Code:

RewriteRule ^[^/]+/([0-9]+)-.+\.html$ showthread.php?t=$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)-.+/$ forumdisplay.php?f=$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)-post([0-9]+)\.html$ showpost.php?p=$1&postcount=$2 [L,R=301]

That will take care of redirecting users back to vB's dynamic URLs in the (unlikely) event that you decide to remove vBSEO.

Ok, good - just wanted to make sure.