VBSEO Disappointment

sobal · #1 11-06-2008, 03:18 PM

Dear all,

I was interested for how does this VBSEO work in practise. Since I'm using vbb for over 5 years, I gave VBSEO a try.

My forums are visited by aprox. 160k users monthly. Maybe it is not high number, but always something.

After succesfull installation which was really ease I was surprised by nice reports served by VBSEO and I was waiting for the results.

After half a year of testing I must admit that the default installation was a waste of money. The growth of unique visitors count was at normal rate - aprox 5.81% per month, without any influence from VBSEO positioning.

In my opinion if you think that VBSEO will do all the hard work for you just out of the box, than you shall spent this money for a beer at the pub, it will improve your visits more than this software.

Unless I'm doing something really wrong, or I have missed some point. But afaik all is working great without any errors (server side monitoring - logs).

Joe Ward · #2 11-06-2008, 03:52 PM

My records show that you have been installed for just under 5 months now. I'm glad to see that you have seen continued growth, but I would certainly like to see that rate of growth accelerate for you too.

It is also notable that many of our most successful clients saw their greatest traffic jumps occur after more than 6 months as the impact of vBSEO slowly rose to an explosive tipping point.

Can we see a graph of your traffic from 150 days prior to your vBSEO install, to 150 days after your install so we can see the visual trend?

Also, can you generate your long tail stats from (a) 150 days before vBSEO, and (b) 150 days after (separately):
Measuring Your Long Tail - vBulletin SEO Forums

I would like to see how your long tail has been impacted.

Have you made any other significant changes to your forum since vBSEO was installed? Any new plugins, linking campaigns, content campaigns, add any new forums, change in amount of admin activity, change in any vBSEO settings, etc?

Did you install our sitemap at the same time as vBSEO? Have you verified it?
Verifying your vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator is Installed Correctly

We expect results even with our default options with vBSEO. However, if you would like to create a request for critique in our critique forum we can give you some further feedback. I can see that there are a few elements I would tweak on your site.