vbseo - is it worth it?

[Masetek]

I've got myself a copy of vBulletin and have got it running fine, made my template, customised etc. Now it's time to get the SEO side of it underway. I have been reading about vbseo and am after some feedback from other people about it. I know Cutter just bought it. Does anyone else run it, and what do you think? Are there any other competitors products that I should be considering?

cheers :)

[Cutter]

there are some free plug-ins on vbulletin.org that you can try. If the money is more important than time, then go that way. Thats really your only other option, that I'm aware of.

[Chris]

I wouldn't worry about it for the reasons stated in my VB optimization article.

[Masetek]

I forgot about that article. Thanks.

[Masetek]

Good article, pretty much followed it word for word. It seems they've disabled url string sessions by defualt in 3.5 because when viewing the forum as a guest I didnt get them.

I am a bit confused about this hack (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=83230&page=19&pp=15) though. I see that it displays last posts on your forumhome, but I want to display them on my main pages (not a part of forum). Basically like you have done with this site and 4LHR. I also want to display specific latest threads of specific pages. How to I do this?

[paul]

I had also missed that article and found it really useful now that I am seriously considering adding a forum to an existing site.

[Chris]

I think this is the hack I use:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12324&highlight=last10

Originally for VB 2.x, but is so basic it still works.

[Masetek]

Thanks :)

[Masetek]

One more thing :)

I read the easiest way to disable the vb archive is to simply delete the archive dir, which I did. Is the the only/best way to go about it?

[Chris]

You can easily turn it off in the admin area.

[MrGeeK]

Chris,

Your article made a lot of sense, but one thing you didn't cover (I think) was the keyword in url features of vbseo, how important do you think that is, if at all?

[Chris]

I don't think it is that important.

Really, I consider the URL to be treated roughly as important as the rest of the page as far as keyword weight. This opinion is actually pretty liberal as many think the URL doesn't matter at all.

So basically you're missing the equivalent of one keyword instance in your content.

Also, if someone links to a thread using the anchor text as the URL then you'd get it in your anchor text, which is good. However I feel that forum urls are usually so long that people tend to truncate them and just use things like "This thread" as the anchor text when linking.

OVerall though, I just don't see the benefit being worth it considering it could mess up your URL integrity at a future date.

[Cutter]

One of the benefits to the keywords isn't seo, but reading your stats. Depending on how you run and promote your site, this can be very important to know.

[MaxS]

I definitely think vBSeo is a worthwhile investment.

[cyanide]

This site Total Web Talk (http://www.totalwebtalk.com/forum/) is running it and has experienced an increase invisitors, serps and search engine crawling

[Tigermoth]

I've used vbseo on a few of sites.

Bear in mind that it uses mod_rewrite which can be very server intensive. The cost of using vbseo is not really the initial purchase but the upgrade you'll need to do to your server. With 200 or so users online an entry level dedicated server will start to struggle and combine this with the extra spiders (particularly slurp) who are taking pages more quickly becuase of the non .php urls and the problems get worse.

I believe them when they say that the new URLs probably result in higher rankings but you need to weigh this against needing to upgrade your server.

For a smaller site, I would recommend using vbseo as the load increase will be minimal and the higher rankings will allow your forum to grow more quickly.

For sites with lots of users online (200 or so) and lots of posts (meaning more spiders) you'll need to weigh up how much you need increased rankings and whether you'll need a new server.

Chris

[Tigermoth]

Regarding the archive. I would think carefully about removing the archive before you do it. I'm not entirely convinced you would suffer duplicate content penalties as a) it's on your own site and b) the content is presented in a very different way (i.e. no pages, no nav, etc).

Don't remove the archive if you want higher rankings for the archive pages and have a good way of monetizing them - i.e. you want search engine visitors for their ad views rather than for the possiblity of making them new members.

In summary, I would say the archive pages will achieve slightly higher rankings than your normal pages but people visiting them are less likely to post, register, etc. You can use the archive pages to serve more prominent ads than you would on your normal forum pages.

[FPU]

It may be alright, but I would listen to what Chris mentioned about URL integrity :eek:

I know forums that do real good without it......

[s2kinteg916]

Ive used vbseo on multiple sites and here is my 2 cents. VBseo is probally great for smaller sites but big sites where viral marketing / word of mouth overpowers seo rankings i dont think vbseo is needed at all. For my future sites im going to save my money and using it for promoting and branding.

Your money is better spend getting custom hacks done or advertising on adwords, as well as picking up some gallery software.

[ramprage]

I was just looking at starting up a new community site and getting this. I noticed there's a free alternative script to this in the vbulletin.org forums, I hear its not as flexible but then again it's free :D

[Toucan42]

I wouldn't worry about it for the reasons stated in my VB optimization article.

I can't seem to locate this article everyone is talking about. Help?

[Chris]

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/vbulletin-optimization/

[paul]

... as well as picking up some gallery software.

I bought PhotoPost as a gallery because it claimed to be "integrated" with VB. It's true it uses the same login, but after that things seemed much less tightly coupled :)

Even though I am not a coder the VB code seems really mature by comparison. Is there a better answer to incorporating pictures into your vb forum?

[sinjix_media]

I think the fact that they charge $150.00 for the product is arrogant.
It really grinds my gears.

I heard somewhere that installing the vewrite hack from VB.org is just as affective.

[Chris]

I bought PhotoPost as a gallery because it claimed to be "integrated" with VB. It's true it uses the same login, but after that things seemed much less tightly coupled :)

Even though I am not a coder the VB code seems really mature by comparison. Is there a better answer to incorporating pictures into your vb forum?
IF it was an older version try a new one, their integration is much smoother now.