Visitors halfed since implementing VBSEO

Any ideas on this?




The absolute zero is the time where I applied VBSEO, and removed tracking from the footer. I then added the ref code to the VBSEO C/P and had hoped to see it slowly rise, not fall.

Can you show us the graph covering the period 45 days prior to vBSEO install, up to present.

How was your long tail for the 30 days preceding your install of vBSEO? How has it been since Sept 1st to present?

Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

BTW - I am anticipating that re-indexing is taking place and should might expect a jump very soon.

Hi Joe ...

How long (average) takes re-index a forum from your experience?

I would *expect* traffic to rebound to starting levels and possible start exceeding them within 30 days. But large traffic drops of 50% are not something I recall hearing about before.

Have you changed anything else at the time of installation? Did you add our sitemap.

There possibly could be a small issue with your install. Please verify your sitemap:
Verifying your vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator is Installed Correctly

How about your long tail stats. I would be interested in find out if you lost traffic, did it relate to particular keywords that you lost ranking for, or you started receiving less traffic from all keywords (your long tail):
What is the Search Long Tail? - vBulletin SEO Forums

Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

Did you implement our style at the same time? Did you experience any downtime?

Ah! You're selling unrelated links in your footer. :( You have probably been penalized. When vBSEO starting getting your site recrawled, the extra attention may have gotten these notices.

Please remove them. After removing them and doing a review of other possible issues, you might want to submit a re-inclusion request.

You should also do a complete review of these resources. There is still room for improvement at your site:
Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First

Briansol's Ultimate Guide to vBSEO

Thanks for the information gents... I just realised too, it's page views I was looking at, not just visitors. Anyway, I've looked again since, and it has evened out - stats are now looking similar as before.

Regarding the links in my footer, I get $20 p/m for those, and though they may be bad SEO-wise, that $20 adds a nice chunk each month to my paypal account.

Now, if I removed them - would their removal help SEO to the point where I could recoup the lost $20?

easily.

I will NEVER EVER sell links again.

Thing is, Brian, I'm not too sure.. to put it bluntly, my website caters a political niche market... I've used adsense since almost the beginning, and it's only the last few months (prior to installing vbseo even) that my adsense has hit over $20p/m anyway. As it is this moment, my last 7 days tell me I've earned $20.98, which is great, but some days are $2, some are $0.90, and one unique day was $8.xx.

I don't even know which areas of my site are being clicked (that's how useless I am at general web management).

I've began using the adsense channels, and discoverd that my 'forum front' gets most clicks, Gawd knows how. The posts seem to generate very few indeed.

I think it's a KNOWN fact at this point that selling footer links kills your SERPs in google.


Your choice, $20 a month, or a sucessful forum with new members and traffic

Originally Posted by briansol

I think it's a KNOWN fact at this point that selling footer links kills your SERPs in google.


Your choice, $20 a month, or a sucessful forum with new members and traffic

What about selling links on the side bar? I've resisted selling any on my forum, but have bought 3 myself, and seen my PR jump from a 0 to PR3 in 2 months on the main page, and a PR4 for a section on my forum.

footer, side bar, same thing...

If you are going to sell links, make sure you add the no follow tag.

If using ZMTC or TextLink Ads, they won't allow the no follow tag, as Brian says, ditch them and get your rankings / search terms.

If not using a 300x250 Google ad, where the Navbar is, Google ads are pretty low income, normally.