SEO

I've been running 4-case studies with vBSEO on 4 of my different forums.

Two of these forums started running vBSEO as of September 28th, and both had ranked very good for a specific term each, which is where they got the majority of their traffic. Unfortunately, less than two weeks after installing vBSEO, everything is going horrible.

I wrote the details with stats of my case study here: TylerReviews - Batch #18 TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur’s Journey

Normally I only look at the stats and numbers once a month, but since one of these sites is my biggest forum and also my biggest income earner, I've been looking more closely.

For MovieForums.org SERPS previously it was:

“movie forums” [G 3 M 3 Y –]

and now it's:

“movie forums” [G 5 M -- Y –]

For PokerForums.org SERPS previously it was:

“poker forums″ [G 1 M 4 Y 2]


and now it's:

“poker forums″ [G 3 M 4 Y 2]


So Google seems to have dropped me. Now, this could just be due to a temporary change, as I do jump around a lot for 1-3 for "poker forums", but I've been at #3 for "movie forums" for months... and only after I've installed vBSEO have I dropped.

In addition, my Google organic traffic has decreased slightly instead of risen.

Should I be concerned here, or is it too early to worry about anything.

I was really looking forward to seeing a nice increase in traffic after purchasing 4 licenses of vBSEO... instead so far it seems to have worsened things!

Somebody help calm me down please

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Tyler Cruz
TylerCruz.com
PublisherSpot.com: Professional Reviews of Ad Networks

The numbers in "G 3 M 4 Y 2" represent the rank on the 1st page, or the page # is appears on?

__________________
Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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2 weeks is simply not enough time to make any conclusion.

simmer down, beavis

It represents their overall rank. (#3 on Google, #4 on MSN, etc.)

Nothing stands out as being particularly wrong in both forums: the URL structure is consistent, homepage aliases are in place, 301 redirects are in place, archive settings seem right, etc. etc.

My only concern would be with the many sitewide links, specially in your footer and sidebar (see attached). Now that each and every forum page has more "significance" due to link consensus, I'd tend to believe these links play a more important role all-around, and as you know, outgoing links are a factor in relevancy algos.

Attached Thumbnails

   

__________________
Juan Muriente / Crawlability Inc.
vBSEO Styles: Version 1.0 PRO For Everyone Version 2.0 For vBSEO Customers

vBSEO 3.3.0 Gold Released with New "Virtual HTML Display" Feature Available for Download Now

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Some of the speculation on Google skipping a page rank update is that they are clamping down on sites that sell links. Site by site by human intervention. True or false, many sites that sell links are showing evidence of this. No idea if that applies to you but every site should now put rel="nofollow" on all paid ad links IMO. They are paying for the ad not the PR. It's just too risky to take the chance now if Google is really looking at sites on a case by case basis. Plus, Joe is right, that's an awful lot of links.

TylerReviews - Batch #18 TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur’s Journey has 43 followed external links and is showing pagerank not assigned. That's not good IMO.

The top level url is showing 79 followed external links.

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I have had the same problem with MSN. my site was between #1 and #3, and now it doesn't even appear on MSN. I can search for the domain name and it doesn't even come up? Any ideas? Google #4, Yahoo #3..

I know it as a fact. Definitely true.

It only affects your pagerank. Not your SERPs necessarily.

So it's kind of just preventing sites from selling links. Anyway if you see your PR dropping I would get rid of all those links or use the nofollow tag ASAP.

So how would you add that nofollow tag to a link?

Ah excellent, just wasn't sure thanks.