Will I Lose Rankings?

I currently have a board that uses the vrewrite mod and has been using it for at least a year now. I am seeing an increase in redirect errors and I have a strong feeling it is caused by vrewrite. I'd like to purchase vbseo simply because of the support and ongoing development. I do not, however, want to lose any of the rankings I currently have that are associated with the "rewritten" SEO pages via vrewrite.

My question is, will I lose rankings by switching from vrewrite to vbseo because all the rewritten pages will now produce 404 errors?

you can set vbseo to use the same style url's as v-write and that will eliminate a lot of 404's.

thanks brian.

would i be sacrificing anything by setting vbseo to rewrite the same as vrewrite did?

is there anything else i need to consider in the transition from vrewrite to vbseo before i purchase?

What's your forum URL? I would like to take a look. You can PM it to me if you would prefer to keep it private.

Hi Joe,

I just PM-ed you our forum url.

thanks.

It looks like a bit of a strange setup; however, since our URLs are configurable, we will be able to accommodate you.

If you are not ranking well yet, you might consider choosing a new format.

Hi Joe,

Thanks for taking a look at our forum. May I ask what about our setup is strange? I thought we had set it up pretty much the standard way according to the vrewrite installation.

According to Google's "site" operator, we have over 50,000 of our pages indexed using the rewritten URL's. I would like to have our URL's rewritten the best way possible, so if the way they are currently rewritten via vrewrite is strange, does vbseo have a way to issue redirects to the format we will use with vbseo?


Thanks.

What is your traffic volume? That's the metric that will determine whether or not you should change your URL format again.

I thought it was strange that your sub-forum links are setup as virtual folders, yet they contain ".html". If they are intended to be folder names, they shouldn't have .html on them. That would indicate they are documents, not folders.

Likewise, this seems to be a significant configuration error, because your thread links do not have the .html part for the forum titles. This is inconsistent, and you definitely do not have link consensus.

This is the major issue with going with one of the amateur hacks. Rewriting some URLs, without a fundamental understanding of SEO factors like total link consensus, is more detrimental to your forum than anything.

Fortunately, you have made the right decision in seeking out vBSEO and we should be able to help you repair any damage.

Note: We can provide you with custom .htaccess redirects that will direct Google from the existing to the new vBSEO formats.

Also, once you are installed, or perhaps even before, you might want to submit your site for a critique. I think there are quite a few factors that you can improve prior to your re-launch.

Hi Joe,

I have purchased vBSEO and installed it on a test server. How do I go about submitting my site for a critique?

Thanks.

You should create a new thread here: vBulletin SEO Discussion - Critique Please at vBSEO.com

Is there any way to do it w/out publicly posting my URL?

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Note: We can provide you with custom .htaccess redirects that will direct Google from the existing to the new vBSEO formats.

What is the cost of creating custom .htaccess redirects?

Thanks.

That would be free, let us know your old and new URLs formats or URL examples.

I've tried editing my .htaccess file myself, but for some reason, it's not working. Here is an example of what I need to change:

old URL format:

http://www.site.com/forum/f-forum-name-1.html/

new URL format:

http://www.site.com/forum/forum-name/


For some reason, vRewrite named my subforum folders with a .html extension. So I'd like to redirect the .html file to the forum-name folder.

Thanks.

Hello,

you can add this in .htaccess right after "RewriteEngine on" line:

Code:

RewriteRule ^f-(.+)-[0-9]+\.html/$ http://www.site.com/forum/$1 [L,R=301]